The winds of change
After more than a decade of TV announcers complaining about expanded MLB rosters, they got their way. Thanks for solving a problem that really wasn't one.
Also in this edition
Schwindel mania sweeps over Chicago
Jose Quintana's shift to Giants was well-timed
Colorado town’s baseball heritage leads us to the connection between the old west’s Bat Masterson and “Guys and Dolls” Sky Masterson
The Rays have dominated their division, especially the hapless Orioles
Hell’s Kitchen? Make that the Kitchen from Hell
Gone because of the long-winded
Expanded rosters now only expand a tiny bit. How did rules governing late-season call-ups become an issue TV announcers felt compelled to talk about for so many years?
It’s September, but there is still a lot of baseball to be played.
And a lot of air time for MLB TV announcers to fill.
And this year, filling that air time may be more of a challenge. One of their favorite topics in the broadcast booth from 2009 to 2019 is gone.
MLB rosters expanded Sept. 1, but instead of a 40-player active roster we used to have, it is now 28. The rule changed last year. But it was somewhat lost with the bizarre 60-game season, with games being canceled left and right, and no minor leagues.
Well now we have a full season and as we go through the final month there will be plenty of space available in the dugouts.
The calendar had just changed from August this season when Angels/ MLB/ ESPN TV announcer Matt Vashgersian recalled those super-sized rosters of the past and opined: “It made the games practically unwatchable.’’
Really?! Really?!
Nothing is worse than an extra pinch runner or pinch hitter who wouldn’t have been available in June. Oh, the horror!
It is true that before the rule requiring a pitcher to face a minimum of three batters, the expanded rosters made it easier for a manager to use more relievers, especially with righty/lefty matchups. And even after the three-pitcher minimum, managers often trotted out a couple of extra pitchers at times during September,
Certainly, that slowed the pace of play. Then again who could tell the difference from the rest of the season?
Not a big deal
Of course, you remember that time when the final playoff spot was decided because one manager took advantage of the rules that gave him so many options and he emptied his entire bench, making a travesty of the game.
Yeah, me neither.
The 40-player, active roster — or a great expansion of the roster — was one of those weird quirks that have been around forever (though I am exactly sure how long despite my best efforts to find out).
As the minor league seasons finished up, some players would get a chance to play in the big leagues. Sometimes they were veterans that the organization had stashed away for a late-season drive. Sometimes they were promising kids.
I remember September call-ups gave us previews of Vida Blue and Fernando Valenzuela before their incredible rookie seasons. Blue even threw a no-hitter.
Prosperous teams, such as the Yankees, made more use of September call-ups during the 1940s and 1950s than teams that struggled financially. You had to pay those call-ups more, plus meal money, and travel expenses. The St. Louis Browns, for instance, were not looking for extra bills to pay.
Having more players in the dugout was not always seen as a competitive advantage. In a TV interview for a Mets broadcast a couple of years ago, pitcher Jon Matlack said he was supposed to be called up in September 1969. But when the Mets found themselves in contention, they nixed the call-up.
And even in more recent times, not every team activated 40 players.
Taking Notice
The expanded rosters in September were like a tree in your neighbor’s yard. You see it. You know it’s there. You don’t think about it. That is until branches break, or the leaves start falling off when they shouldn’t, or the neighbor cuts it down. In other words, until something happens to make you think about it.
And in this case what made people — particularly the people in broadcast booths — notice was when MLB.com’s Mark Bowman broached the subject in 2009 with Doug Melvin, who was then the Brewers GM. 1
"You play 80 percent of your season with even rosters and then all of a sudden, you throw that out. It's like playing three-on-six in basketball or 11-on-18 in football," Melvin said. "I don't know of any sport in the world that does it like ours, with this kind of imbalance of rosters. I'd like to find out if there's any other sport that does that at the most important time of the year."
First, expanded rosters did not actually allow you to put more players in the field at one time.
Second, as a GM, Melvin could have expanded the Brewers’ active roster to 40 players.
But he had a point.
You played most of the season under one set of rules; then when you get to the stretch run, you play under another set of rules.
Of course, if the point of the rule change was to play by the same rules throughout, then it was a complete and obvious failure. We are still playing by different rules after Sept. 1. Now instead of adding as many as 15 players, we are only adding two.
Anyway, the announcers took Melvin’s inconsistency angle and ran with it. And ran and ran and ran.
“No other sports does this!” They would say.
Which is true. No other major team sport plays nearly every day for six months. No other sport has a minor league system quite like baseball’s. 2
No strong attachment to the rule
I can’t say I had strong feelings for keeping the expanded rosters. It had few defenders.
So I had to enlist outside help here. Michael Axisa, who covers MLB for CBS Sports, wrote in 2015 that he liked the expanded roster because September call-ups:
Rewarded an organization’s depth.
Rewarded good seasons from minor-league players.
Gave players a chance to audition.
Controlled workloads for young pitchers
I will add that the September call-ups gave marginal players a chance to get some more service time (important for qualifying for a pension), and, in some cases, the expanded rosters gave players their only taste of the majors.
Given that many a broadcaster is a former player of marginal ability, I was surprised that didn’t resonate with more announcers.
Why all the concern over this?
I think we can all agree that baseball has some real problems, largely with the pace of play, and that there are just too many walks and strikeouts.
But expanded rosters were hardly a pressing issue.
My beef is that of all the things the announcers could have used their platform to change this was what they chose.
How about complaining about this? Every time a batter fouls off a pitch nowadays, they step out the box, take a look around the park, readjust their batting gloves, check to make sure their helmet is on tight, deliberately regrip the bat, take two practice swings, put one foot in the box, adjust that foot before putting the other foot in.
Mike Hargrove who played in the 1970s was known as the “Human Rain Delay” because of his ritual between pitches. It was annoying. He was the outlier then. He’d be the norm today. Maybe kind of quick. Heck, he might be known as “Lightning Mike.”
So why did announcers keep bringing up the expanded rosters?
Well, I have no inside knowledge. I hate to simply project my own feelings and speculate as to someone else’s motives . . .
Oh, the hell, I do. Isn’t that what blogging is about?
I think was once Melvin’s quote about the inconsistent rules made the rounds, it sparked a fire.
Bigger rosters did make the games go a little longer. More importantly, they made an announcer’s job marginally more difficult.
All those substitutions mess up your scorebook and you have background information on this pinch hitter who spent most of the season . . . in where was that? . . . oh, in Tacoma. 3
And, as I noted at the beginning, there is a lot of air time to fill. So we got years and years of harping about this subject.
So yeah, Matty V., I think the rule change in roster size will make games in September more enjoyable to watch — particularly when I have the sound on.
BONUS FRAMES
Schwindel blooms at last
Frank “The Tank” Schwindel was on fire in spring training and went on a hot streak in late summer. The problem for him is those hot streaks came more than three years apart.
Back in 2018, Frank Schwindel turned a few heads during spring training when he hit .366 with a team-high seven homers and 18 RBI for the Cactus League.
Schwindel was coming off a season in which he hit a combined .329 and 23 homers at Double-A Northwest Arkansas and Triple-A Omaha.
“I’m really excited for what the future has for him,” Royals pitcher Danny Duffy, who dubbed him “The Tank,” told The Athletic’s Rustin Dodd.
The Royals were not ready to bring Schwindel, a first baseman who was entering his age 26 season, up to the big club. They had just acquired Lucas Duda and had other options. But Schwindel, an 18th round pick ut of St. John’s, was on the radar.
Fast forward to this Labor Day weekend. Now with the Cubs, Schwindel hit a grand slam in the seventh inning — his third consecutive game with a homer — to give Chicago a four-game sweep over the Pittsburgh Pirates in a meaningless yet highly entertaining series.
The media began throwing around the terms “Schwindel mania” and the “Schwindy City.”
“Probably the most fun I’ve ever had playing is these last couple days,” he told the media Sunday.
So what happened between spring training in 2018 and late summer in 2021?
A lot, but not much good for Frank “The Tank.”
Schwindel followed his excellent spring training up with a solid but not spectacular season in Omaha, hitting .286 with 24 homers and .842 OPS. He didn’t get called up.
He made the Royals Opening Day roster in 2019. He had one hit in 15 at-bats and was sent back to Omaha.
A few weeks later, the Royals released him. He signed with the Tigers organization and spent the rest of 2019 in the minor league system.
He didn’t make the Tigers major-league team in 2020 There was no minor league season. So Schwindel spent the late summer at the team’s alternate set in Toledo. He became a free agent in November and signed with the A’s.
Schwindel spent the first three months in Triple-A Las Vegas but was called up the A’s in late June. He appeared in eight games and hit .150. but hit his first MLB homer, He was waived and claimed by the Cubs.
The Cubs sent him to Triple-A Iowa. When the Cubs traded Javier Baez, Anthony Rizzo, and Kris Bryant near the deadline, Schwindel moved up to the big club.
In his age 29 season, Schwindel saw regular playing time in the majors for the first time.
From July 30 through the end of August he hit 340 with a 1.019 OPS.
Then he got hot.
Through the first seven games of September, he hit four homers and batted .444.
“Frank has this thing on repeat right now,’’ Andy Green, filling in as manager while David Ross recovers from COVID-19, said after Sunday’s win. “We’re going to ride it as long as we can — and not ask questions.”
It’s been a long summer for Cubs fans. They were hoping to get one more run out of the core of the World Series championship team. In the end, the team dealt their popular players. The rebuild is just beginning.
To make matters worse, the White Sox are cruising to the AL Central title.
Schwindel gave Northside fans something to cheer about.
Schwindel is unlikely a building block for the Cubs’ future. He’s already 29, which, in theory, means that in his rookie season he already is past his prime.
Even so, he turned it into prime time.
Out of the picture
When the Angels waived Quintana and the Giants claimed him, the timing was perfect for both teams.
The Giants claimed Jose Quintana off waivers from the Angels on Aug. 30.
Quintana was a disappointment for the Angels. He made 10 starts before being ousted from the rotation and sent to the bullpen. He pitched 53 1/3 innings for the Halos and had a 6.75 ERA. But he was better in the pen, with an ERA of 3.93 in 18 1/3 innings.
The Angels were happy for the Giants to pay him the final $1.5 million for the final month of the season.
The Giants were able to put him on the roster before Sept. 1, making him eligible for the postseason.
The timing was good for the Angels in another way. They were getting their team picture taken the next day.
Daymon Runyon, Bat Masterson and Trinidad
Last week I mentioned that a New York sportswriter Daymon Runyon gave Ted Radcliffe the nickname “Double Duty.”
Sportswriters in the first half of the 20th century often gave nicknames. Among Runyon’s best remembered are tagging heavyweight James Braddock as “Cinderella Man” — they made it a movie about him, starring Russell Crowe — and the New York Giants chief scout Richard Kinsella — who signed Hall of Famer Carl Hubbell after seeing him pitch when Kinsella took a break from his duties as a delegate at the 1928 Democratic National Convention in Houston — as “Sinister Dick.”
Back when you could become famous by writing for newspapers, Runyon was about as famous as they came.
He went beyond sportswriting, covering big news events for Hearst Newspapers, the first national media company in the United States.
His best-known character
Runyon also wrote fiction. He is best known for a play that he didn’t write.
Runyon’s fiction dealt with Broadway in New York. Today Broadway in New York is known for being the theater district. Broadway in the 1910s and 1920s was that and something more. Take the theaters, throw in the Las Vegas Strip and Miami’s South Beach.
Broadway of that era had an air of glamor and corruption that Runyon attempted to capture. And his characters, often gangsters and small-time gamblers, spoke in kind of hard-boiled, grammatically challenged, slang, which became known as Runyonsese.
“I long ago come to the conclusion that all life is six to five against,” one of Runyon’s characters says.
Broadway was a long way from Trinidad, Colorado, one of Runyon’s previous addresses.
Runyon was the son of a newspaperman in Pueblo Colorado. And the son sort of stumbled into the business. At age 12 or maybe 15, depending on the source, he was a full-time reporter.
Among the events he covered were prizefights at a local hotel promoted by Bat Masterson, according to the Denver Post.
In 1902, Masterson left Colorado for New York, which he had fallen in love with during a gig working as a bodyguard for Jay Gould, and became a sports columnist.
Runyon went through series of newspaper jobs. Some of his movement in the job market was prompted by his excessive drinking.
He moved to Trinidad, Colorado, and attempted to start a minor-league baseball league. That went bust. Eventually, he moved to New York, where he landed a job on the New York American.
I am not sure how well he knew Masterson --who counted a stint as marshall in Trinidad among many of his law enforcement jobs — when they were both out West. But the two connected in New York. And Masterson became Runyon’s best-known character. The fictitious version was a well-dressed gambler who went by Sky Masterson.
For the original Broadway play, Masterson was played by Robert Alda, the father of Alan Alda. Marlon Brando played the part in the movie.
Masterson died of a heart attack at his typewriter in 1921 at 67. Runyon was one of the pallbearers.
Runyon gave up the booze. He died of throat cancer in 1946 at 66. After his death, Walter Winchell, the influential newspaper columnist, and radio commentator, campaigned to start the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation.
The first telethon
In 1949, Milton Berle served as host for a 16-hour television event to raise money for the foundation. This was the first “telethon” a name newspapers used to the event the next day.
“Guys and Dolls” was turned into a musical, with songs by Frank Loesser and the story by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows. It won a Tony Award for the best musical.
It is believed that the play won the Pulitzer Prize for best drama in 1950 and that Columbia University refused to give it because of Burrow’s difficulties with House Committee on Un-American Activities. Officially there is no award winner that year.
Abe Burrows later won a Pulitzer for “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.”
Burrows’ son James might be better known to younger audiences for his role in creating “Cheers” and work on other TV shows.
Back to Trinidad: A town of fewer than 10,000 people in the southern part of the state, it was long known as the sex-reassignment surgery capital of the world. Local doctor Stanley H. Biber was a pioneer in the field.
In 2012, Trinidad became home to a team in the independent Pecos League. The Triggers were later the subject of a documentary on FS1.
For a short time, the Triggers used a snarling cowboy holding a bat for a secondary logo (see above). Ballparkbiz noticed that the logo bore a striking resemblance to the one used by a team in a summer college league. Apparently, the snarling cowboy was a piece of clipart.
Just as well. It doesn't seem like a good likeness of the dapper Masterson.
Giving the Bird to the AL East
The Rays entered Friday, Sept. 10, with a nine-game lead in the AL East. And they owe much of that to their mastery over the rest of the division. The Rays are 46-21 against division foes. That is the best in the majors.
But the Rays may not be as dominant as their rivals in the AL East as it seems. The Rays finished their season series with the Orioles with an 18-1 record. That means they are 28-20 against the rest of the division.
The Orioles are terrible, but they have gone 7-9 against the Yankees, 4-9 against the Red Sox, and 4-8 against the Blue Jays.
BEYOND THE PLAYING FIELD
Hell’s kitchen
Whenever something gets bad in our lives — not tragic, just bad — I console myself with this thought: That’s fodder for the Christmas letter.
Well, we might have an embarrassment of riches for our Yuletide missive this year.
We used to have an embarrassment of riches when it came to kitchens. We had two.
Now we have none.
This started with some plumbing problems and eventually resulted in both kitchens and the utility room between them being gutted as the plumbers replaced the drain pipe.
All right then. Now we just need some cabinets built and the countertops and sinks reinstalled.
We got an estimate. They said it would be six to eight weeks.
OK. After eight weeks we called and called and called. Didn’t get an answer. Finally, we got ahold of someone who is in another part of the business.
We have been dropped from the schedule. Demand for contractors is high. Our job is small.
They were not going to tell us.
We are looking for someone else.
So who knows when we will get our kitchen(s) back.