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Less is more: Shorter DL stays could bring big changes
- Updated: December 1, 2016
As you surely know, the big baseball news of the week is that Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association agreed upon a new Collective Bargaining Agreement, ensuring that more than two decades of labor peace will continue uninterrupted for at least five more seasons. Most of the largest changes came in tweaks to qualifying offers and the luxury tax, but there’s one seemingly quiet change that could have some big repercussions on the field: The 15-day disabled list is reportedly turning into the 10-day disabled list.
How could five days — and it’s important to remember it is indeed days and not games — matter that much? It’s probably a bigger deal than you think, on both sides of the ball.
To start with, consider how this might affect how teams approach the starting rotation. In a five-man rotation, here’s what a regular starting pitcher’s schedule looks like following a start:
Days 1-4: RestDay 5: StartDays 6-9: RestDay 10: Start
Simple, right? Two starts every 10 days. Now think about how that looks with even a single day off included. And, realize that we may get additional off-days under the new CBA, according to MLB.com’s Richard Justice, who reported that “beginning in 2018, the regular season will begin in mid-week to create additional off-days during the schedule.” So while we don’t know how many more days off are coming, it seems that it’s at least “more.”
We’ll randomly assign the team’s off day to Day 7 in our hypothetical, but it could really just be about any day:
Days 1-4: RestDay 5: StartDays 6-10: 4 days rest, 1 team off dayDay 11: Start
(In our scenario above we’ve simply pushed each starter back a day rather than skipping the fifth starter, but if that happened, then the same effect would take place for that fifth starter, who would continue to not get two starts in a 10-day period.)
See what just happened? The 10-day window now includes just a single start and nine days (eight games) of eating up a …
