Wednesday BP, 2/6/19

Among the many rule changes suggested in Ken Rosenthal’s big article from last night was a proposal by the MLBPA that wanted teams who won below a certain number of games over a 3-year span to lose draft positioning.

That seems like a rule that will never be accepted by ownership because they will always want the flexibility to change and be as bad as possible, but it is an interesting countermove by the players to force the owners’ hand to admit that winning does not matter anymore to the bottom line.

Baseball seems very concerned with increasing the pace of play, presumably for the future health of it, and I think the players taking a similar shot at correcting the growing anti-competitiveness just makes a lot of sense.

Of course, the big news is that we are very likely going to get the designated hitter in the National League, and pretty soon. Rosenthal’s report suggested that the DH could become universal as soon as this season. That is perhaps too drastic of a change to actually occur just a couple of months before the season, but it also means that if not 2019, then definitely 2020.

Remember, the players really want this because it means, theoretically, more jobs (oh, sweet MLBPA). For the Giants, though...

What would you, a national league baseball fan, want in exchange for allowing the universal DH?