MLB and the Players Association have so far kept their word to negotiate every day this week. Sadly, the news out of these sessions doesn't really provide much hope that an agreement will be reached in time to get the 2022 season underway as scheduled on March 31. I started writing a piece on that subject but realized that I just wasn't feeling it. Even for folks like myself who write as a hobby rather than for a living, the golden rule is still to write about something that interests you. These CBA negotiations are the equivalent of watching Steve Trachsel pitching on a day that he didn't have it. They're proceeding at roughly the same pace as a bad Trachsel outing, too.
I know that real Major League Baseball games will be played again. I believe (knock wood) that it will happen not too far down the road. For what it's worth, I'm in agreement with pundits like the Post's Joel Sherman that we'll be near a resolution when Rob Manfred and the owners stop pushing for a Competitive Balance Tax that includes vastly inflated monetary taxes and severe draft pick penalties. As currently proposed, this would undoubtedly act as a de facto hard cap. I don't think MLB will abandon this current position until some regular-season games are lost, and the hardcore owners are satisfied they have maximum leverage over the union.
Of course, they probably realize that if they push the players too far, they won't get the union to agree to the expanded playoffs that the owners covet so very badly. That's why I have reasonable hopes for a conclusion that doesn't drag on for months. Still, I'd be surprised and overjoyed if we're playing baseball before May.
That's enough on that tired subject for now. As bleak as things look currently, I still feel reasonably confident that we'll play most of a Major League season this year. Beyond the monetary concessions that both sides will have to make, we know that we will have some rule changes that impact the way the game is played on the field.
It seems almost certain that the Universal Designated Hitter will yank those ineffective bats out of the hands of NL pitchers permanently. As much as I enjoy a unicorn moment such as Dae-Sung Koo's epic trip around the bases against Randy Johnson in 2005 or a once-in-a-lifetime home run from Bartolo Colon, I'm years beyond caring passionately about the subject. But there is a potential change that I do care about, which seems almost as likely to happen as the Universal DH: legislation against the increasingly radical shifts being deployed against batters.
The use of these extreme shifts has the obvious purpose of making it much harder for predominantly pull-oriented hitters to hit ground balls through or line drives over an infield to their pull side. It's quite common to see defenses line up with 3 fielders on the same side of second base, one of them playing well back on the outfield grass. It's a defensive alignment more reminiscent of slow pitch softball than the baseball that most of us grew up watching. It often creates an aesthetic akin to Sunday morning Beer League softball.
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