Baltimore Orioles’ ownership representatives John and Lou Angelos spent the week at the owners’ meetings. Obviously the big story is that they appear to have hired a new GM in Mike Elias. However the owners also voted to extend commissioner Rob Manfred for an additional five years in his current role.
This is noteworthy for the future of the game. And it’s something to which Orioles fans should pay attention perhaps more so than Elias’ hire. I can’t tell you that I’m against everything for which commissioner Manfred stands, because that’s inaccurate. But I do have serious questions regarding the direction of the game.
Preliminary indications seem to be that Manfred isn’t against radicle change in baseball. And there are a lot of radicle ideas out there, such as seven inning games, and starting extra innings with a runner in scoring position. The idea of ties has also been floated.
People seem to be very caught up in the pace-of-play, and Commissioner Manfred seems to get that. Speaking for myself, I might not be against implementing a pitch clock. At least more so than I would be seven inning games.
I suppose my point is that baseball is timeless. Sure it changes here and there – there are rule changes every year in every sport. But that doesn’t mean that changing part of the fabric of the game (such as nine innings) would be acceptable.
None of this is to say that any of that will happen. It’s just chatter. However it’ll be interesting to see what if anything Manfred decides to do with his newfound tenure.
Birdland Crush 