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Joe Girardi, Terry Collins Against Roster Expansion

By Steve Contursi

Sep 8, 2014; New York, NY, USA; A fan watches from the second-to-last row of the stadium during the first inning of a game between the New York Mets and the Colorado Rockies at Citi Field. Mandatory Credit: Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports
Sep 8, 2014; New York, NY, USA; A fan watches from the second-to-last row of the stadium during the first inning of a game between the New York Mets and the Colorado Rockies at Citi Field. Mandatory Credit: Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports /
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Despite protests from both Joe Girardi and Terry Collins, we’ll see roster expansion to 40 on Thursday for the duration of the regular season. As we’ll see, they seem to have a point in objecting to the rule.

As near as I can tell roster expansion from 25 to 40 on September 1st has been a part of Major League Baseball since 1910.

And since everyone gets to do it and the playing field is essentially even, objections to the rule usually don’t carry the emotional weight necessary to prompt change, in a sport that is traditionally conservative by nature.

By and large, many in the baseball circle look at roster expansion as part of a baseball season. It’s a time when teams get to reward the players who have toiled in their farm system for a full year with a cup of coffee in “The Show”. And, with an eye toward possible trades over the winter, it gives management a close up chance to see who has progressed and who has not.

But beyond that, the whole dynamic of a major league team is altered. Suddenly, managers have four bench players to choose from in a pinch hitting situations instead of one or two , as well as an endless supply of relief pitchers at their beckon call.

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Games in the crunch of a pennant race can be decided by “John Doe” instead of the regular 25 (give or take the necessary call ups due to injuries on the big club) during five months of a six-month season.

Here’s Joe Girardi on the malady facing baseball as reported by Newsday. “I think during the most important time of the year you look for advantages for matchups,” he said. “You do that for five months and all of a sudden some of those advantages are gone because of all the call-ups.”

He means that it gives him more options in a game, but is that necessarily good for “baseball”. Mets manager Terry Collins agrees with his New York counterpart saying in an NJ.com article “I’d like to see some changes. I don’t know how you do it, whether you limit the roster to 30, predetermined, so the other team can counteract it. Still, it’s just a different game in September.”

Both men have good points. Why does the game all of a sudden change because the calendar has flipped to a new page at the same time that pennant and wild card races are at their peak? Roster expansion disrupts the ebb and flow of a baseball season as well as individual games.

The disruption to the flow of a game, and not to mention the time it takes, is often tied to a pitching change. So all of a sudden a manager finds himself with five extra pitchers he can use, what do you think is going to happen?

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Another question that no one seems to address is why minor league schedules don’t coincide more with the major league schedule by extending further into September. In baseball, though, often the answer to questions like these is simply that it’s always been that way. And in a sport that has a history that reaches back to the Civil War, change doesn’t come about easily.

Another thing that happens with protests like the ones about roster expansion is that the protests don’t have “legs”; meaning that because pennant races are at their peak now both Girardi and Collins say what they have to say. But, then they quickly move on to the game that’s being played that day. And the story is forgotten until it surfaces again at about this time next year.

Besides, you never know when you might catch lightning in a bottle as the Mets did in 1988. Gregg Jefferies arrived with a red-hot bat and catapulted the team to a pennant. In any event, Thursday will come, games will be played, and baseball will move on.

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Maybe baseball needs a “Suggestion Box” like the ones you see in stores sometimes. And every manager gets to drop one and only one suggestion in the box each season. And then, each one in the box must be addressed by Joe Torre and the Commissioner over the winter.

That way, things don’t get lost in the shuffle of a pennant race.

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