What further changes will the 2020 season bring to baseball?

The 15 biggest offseason trade candidates | MLB.com

Once again, a Rockies player makes it onto the list. No surprise, given the drama surrounding the team last offseason, right? Well, it’s not who you think. Mark Feinsand makes no mention of Nolan Arenado except to note the Rockies’ long-term commitments. What he does highlight is the rapidly thinning farm system (no. 28 in MLB Pipeline’s latest team rankings). If the team wants to inject a lot of talent into the system in a hurry, they should consider dealing a player who is under team control for one more year before he hits the free agent market.

I don’t like the idea of trading Trevor Story one bit, but Feinsand makes a good point. The Rockies will likely be able to gain a larger return for Story, since he has one year left of team control. But as Story takes a more active leadership role on the team, I think he would be much more valuable to the Rockies as someone to build around, especially with Charlie Blackmon aging and the sword of Damocles Nolan opt-out hanging over the team.

Why baseball should return to a 154-game schedule | Call to the Pen

After a month’s worth of games, a lot of people are asking questions about the rule changes we’ve seen so far and how they will impact baseball going forward, from the universal DH to the runners-on-second in extras. Joel Sherman of the New York Post sees an opportunity to take a couple rules mainstream and give us a 176-game season. He’d cut 146 games down to 8-innings and add 14 seven inning double headers each week. More baseball but with shorter games. To put another way, he would add 14 games to each team’s schedule while only adding a total of 52 innings (less than 6 nine-inning games), not including any extra innnings. Seems reasonable, right?

Manny Gomez at Call to the Pen has a different idea. Let’s go back to the 154-game schedule, but with 110 eight-inning games and 22 seven-inning double headers played either Saturday or Sunday; every team would have Monday off. Gomez’s plan would remove 198 innings from the schedule (again, assuming no extra innings), the equivalent of 22 games. Both plans are focused on reducing game times (seven-inning games have almost all clocked in well under three hours), though neither really address the scheduling issues at length.

I personally don’t like either of these plans. Though there is one I’ve heard bandied about in recent years that I do like. Reduce the season to 154-games with more balanced schedule and use the extra week in the season to make the wild card round a three-game series. I may back off my preference of that after seeing what expanded playoffs looks like in October, but right now it seems like a great plan.

What’s Behind MLB’s Fake Crowd Noise? A Conductor With an iPad | SI.com

This season is providing a number of opinions we never thought we would have. Is the three-batter minimum as bad as we thought? Are cardboard cut-outs in the stands good or bad? Added to that is the question of artificial crowd noise in the empty stadiums during the games.

Personally, I got so used to watching the #PurpleRowSim that I haven’t really noticed the piped-in crowd noise one way or the other. But one thing I never considered was just how difficult it must be. Check out this question from Emma Baccellieri’s piece for SI:

“’When exactly does the noise level elevate when our offense is threatening?’ and ‘What does a run scored sound like when it’s off a base hit compared to a sac fly?’ are questions we never really needed to ask ourselves until this season,” Milwaukee Brewers senior vice president of brand experience Teddy Werner wrote in an email.

The Oakland A’s estimate that over 1000 sounds go into any one game, which sounds crazy high and maybe an underestimate all at the same time. If nothing else, the article will give you a fonder appreciation for the intricacies at work.

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