Last night, the Yankees were in the right place at the wrong time. Had they hosted the Red Sox one week earlier, they probably would have won the opening game of their four game series against Boston. After all, without the expanded rosters of September, Quintin Berry would have been playing in Pawtucket, not stealing second base at Yankee Stadium.
Quintin Berry’s stolen base in the ninth inning may have changed the course of the AL Wild Card race.
Complaints about Berry, who is now 22 for 22 in stolen base attempts, being on the Red Sox roster amount to nothing more than sour grapes. Nonetheless, his stolen base was an illustration of how baseball in September is different from the other months. Before the first of the month, there would have been no Berry, no stolen base, and, by extension, no tying run. Instead, Franklin Morales would have been toiling in the bullpen, with everyone in Red Sox Nation hoping the team didn’t need to use him.
The impact of the Red Sox expanded roster on last night’s game begs two questions. One is whether baseball should play under different rules in the final month of the season. The other is why don’t more teams eschew an 11th and sometimes 12th pitcher in favor of a position player like Berry who can have a specific, high leverage impact on a game?
The easiest way to address both questions would be to simply add a few more roster slots during the entire regular season. However, there’s no guarantee that some teams wouldn’t simply pack their bullpen even further. Not only would this thwart the promotion of a more interesting end-game, but it would further bog down the late innings with countless pitching changes. Besides, the owners would never agree to adding more roster spots, which would require the payment of a major league salary as well as the allocation of service time.
As a compromise, Buck Showalter has proposed implementing a taxi squad in September. Under his plan, teams would be allowed to have an extended roster travel with the club, but for each game, only 25 players would be active. Showalter’s suggestion is a good place to start. In fact, it is similar to the system major league baseball was prepared to use when replacement players were slated to begin the 1995 season. However, in order to address the two main concerns mentioned above, a few tweaks would be needed.
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Note: Data as of September 17, 2013, but assumes Marlins will lose 100 games this season.
