Baseball rule changes you'd like to see happen

- Trading draft picks up until the day of the draft. Or maybe only for the upcoming draft rather than say, a 2030 5th round pick.

- Eliminating balks unless there was a clear intent to deceive or at least an attempt to pick off the runner. Ie no moving baserunners simply because the pitcher flinched.

- Requiring Angel Hernandez to be at least 500 feet from any baseball field at any time.

1. Add one year before R5 eligibility for players who sign before turning 18. Literally doesn't help anyone that they become eligible so fast.

2. Ball/strike challenge system, not full roboumps. Freal, go watch a AAA game when they use it. It's great.

3. Draft pick trading. Literally no reason for it not happening already.

4. Not really a change but for the owners to decline to cut the domestic reserve list from 180 to 165, which they collectively bargained for the ability to do. Would be immensely short-sighted and dumb. For reference, currently the Red Sox are at 166 before adding any of the draftees, and that would be higher but for all the guys in MLB due to their injuries.

Curious as to what reason there would be for not using fully automated balls and strikes. I can't think of one reason. Even if the current technology needs work as long as it is 100% consistent that's a win.

Dump the zombie runner thing in extra innings. Not a fan of it.

Go back to double wild card single elimination game that was in effect 2012 - 2021.

Automated strike zone

No more automatic intentional walks. Make the pitcher throw 4 wide ones.

1. Get rid of the zombie runner.

2. Get rid of the zombie runner.

3. Have I mentioned the zombie runner, the bane of my existence? Overtime in other sports is the most exciting time, in baseball it's a groundout and a flyout and the game ends. Watching competitive, close, well-played games end it such pathetic ways is such a letdown. It's a disservice to the fans and the players. And when people are talking about the pace of play, they weren't talking about the pace after the ninth inning! It was the sixth through eighth that games tended to drag, and we're doing much better with that now.


Non zombie runner division:
4. Eliminate the draft in favor of a bonus pool that's aligned with previous season's standings. If Dylan Crews wants $10M, everyone is free to negotiate with him, but the teams with the largest pools are going to have a big advantage in that they won't be using their entire pool. Team's may trade up to 10% of their bonus pool and carry over another 10% to the next season. Signings under some number ($50K?) do not count toward pool number. No extra bonus money for "small market" teams. You're all multi-gazillionaires, you don't get like an extra $2.8 million in bonus money because you're in St. Louis or some such.

5. Agree with the above points above regarding closing the Noah Song R5 loophole. Players need to spend 162 team games on the active 26-man roster before being optioned.

6. Expand to (at least) 32 teams. Move the Rays to an actual place.

7. Deaden the baseball, then keep it as consistent as possible. Raising the mound would have an adverse effect, there are still too many strikeouts.

1. Get back to baseball! Stop taking the human element out of the game. (i.e., ABS system). Umpires make mistakes, fielders make error's, pitchers give up HR's. That is sports, Stop turning this into video games. ABS is only good for hitters, not pitchers! You want to speed up games, pitch clock is great but that is about it!

2. Ability to make trades day of MLB draft, just like other sports. So much more exciting.

3. Get rid of ghost runner on extra innings. This is not sandlot baseball.

Counterpoint: You've got a weird system in which players go up and down the board based on signability, not how good they are, and it's not the exception (e.g. Kobe) but the rule. Trading picks makes it more likely the best player goes first, second player next, etc.

"We need to save the teams that don't have good people in charge" is never, to me, a good reason not to do something.

I despise the zombie runner. I'll never understand the objection to tie games. Cap a game at 12 innings. If it's still a tie then end it as a tie. Yes that is a diversion from long time practice but the fact is there have been official tie games and the zombie runner thing is just completely gimmicky.

I do not care much for whether Noah Song is ever back on the Red Sox, but I think there can be improvements to the system. There are obviously injured list games played with most R5 guys, but I would like to see a modification where a R5 pick cannot be placed on the 60 day IL. So sure, a team can keep a player on the Major League roster for exactly 90 days and send them to the IL for the rest of the year, but they would be effectively playing with a 39 member roster rather than 40. This wouldn’t remove the grey area of R5 picks spending the majority of the season on the IL (and pretty well impossible to prove someone isn’t injured or how long they need to ramp up), but it would at least make those decisions slightly tougher.

Eh, I don't really want to punish a guy for getting legitimately injured. Like if someone busts his knee in May, it doesn't really help him to get sent back to his original team. They just shouldn't suddenly gain a half-season reprieve of his roster eligibility requirement. The 162-game rule would also just cut down on the sort-of unseemly practice of drafting injured guys in general. It's crazy that the roster restrictions basically made a hurt player more attractive than a healthy one because you didn't need to hide him for as long.