Major League Baseball Facing Unwanted Controversies as the Season Draws Near

Major League Baseball Spring Training has been in full swing for about two weeks now, but it has been anything but enjoyable for MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred and his team. The controversies and complaints from players, front offices, and fans have been pouring in from every direction ever since the first day of Spring Training. Whether it has been uniform complaints with viral pictures all over the internet, star pitchers coming out questioning the pitch clock reduction, or the fact that three of the top 10 ranked free agents for the offseason are still unsigned and we are a day into March; baseball has not been in the news for a lot of positive publicity lately.

These controversies are a significant issue for the league, its players, and its fans because, traditionally, this is the time that excitement for baseball is typically at an all-time high. The last two weeks of February are supposed to be a time for fans to be excited about new players wearing their team’s uniform for the first time, not laughing at a player’s uniform because the pants are see-through or the lettering of the player’s name on the back of the jersey looks like a $20 knock off. So, let’s take a look at each of the main issues facing Major League Baseball as we approach March and see if baseball can fix them before Opening Day.

We can start with the uniforms. These were the first complaints out of spring training and the most viral. This issue was apparent on the first day of Spring Training when players were unaware that the league switched uniform manufacturers to Nike Vapor Premier, which is run through Fanatics.  However, it took only a short time for players to notice that something was up, given that the entire uniform was off. The pants were too short, the jerseys felt fake, the lettering looked cheap, and the material felt cheap. All of those complaints were straight from MLB players. Some fans may have brushed this off at first, and it is hard to blame them since it is easy to assume that this could be a case of millionaire athletes being picky about the material of their uniforms.

However, the players’ complaints about their uniforms were quickly validated after many pictures began to surface on the internet of players wearing the Spring Training uniforms in games compared to the regular season jerseys last year. There is a distinct difference between the two, and one looks far more professional than the other. When more and more pictures began to surface on the internet, it became alarming to the MLB. MLB officials have come out and said they will visit every team’s facility this spring to ensure the uniforms fit each team’s standards before Opening Day. There does not seem to be any alternate solution to this problem other than fixing the quality of the uniform. All the typical baseball fan can do is take the MLB by their word and hope they fix the issue before the first actual pitch takes place.

The other two main issues of the MLB Spring Training involve problems that have to do with the sport itself, and they affect the game in their separate ways. The first is the changing of the pitch clock. For those unfamiliar with the pitch clock, last year was the first season that the MLB implemented a pitch clock for how long a pitcher could take between each pitch thrown. The chosen times were 20 seconds with runners on base and 15 seconds with the bases empty. If the pitcher failed to throw a pitch before the clock ran out, a ball was automatically awarded to the batter. On the other hand, if the batter failed to make eye contact with the pitcher in a “ready to hit stance” with at least eight seconds on the clock, a strike would be automatically awarded to the pitcher. As you would expect, this resulted in some crazy strikeouts and arguments, but anyway, the MLB’s competition committee decided to reduce the clock from 20 seconds to 18 seconds with runners on base.

They decided to keep the 15 seconds for when the bases were empty, but star pitchers were not timid about voicing their displeasure with this change. Max Scherzer was one of the louder voices, and his main gripe was the increased risk of injury that this could present for himself and his fellow hurlers. This one is easier to see from the MLB’s point of view since there has been a major emphasis on the pace of play in baseball and increasing action. The results were positive last season in the inaugural season of the pitch clock. Stolen bases were up, and the average time of the games was down. That was what baseball wanted to see, but this seems to be going a bit overboard. Scherzer brings up a valid argument about the safety risk this could cause for pitchers who now have to go through their routines quicker. All things considered, this is a wait-and-see concern as of right now. We could see even shorter games with even more action which is great for the game, or we could see too many pitchers suffering whether it is performance or injury. There are valid reasons for both sides of this rule change, and we will have to see it play out this season to see who is right. 

Now for the third and final spring training controversy; the struggling free agent market. Baseball has seen examples of notable players lasting a long time on the market unsigned before, especially with Scott Boras clients like Bryce Harper in 2019, but never this bad. Opening Day is less than a month away, and three of the top 10 free agent players of the 2024 offseason, according to The Athletic’s Big Board, remain unsigned. It was four of the top 10 until just recently when Cody Bellinger signed a three-year deal with the Chicago Cubs. How is this possible? Well, the answer to that question will differ depending on who you ask, or which sound bite you listen to. The owners and general managers will say the players are asking for too much compared to what they are worth or what the analytics say they are worth, and the agents will say that the teams are being cheap with their money. However, the fact that no one can dispute is that there is money uncertainty in the sport of baseball right now with the future of local TV up in the air. A handful of teams were admittedly hesitant to spend big money on free agents in December and January because of their uncertainty with their local TV networks over broadcast rights.

In fact, high-profile reliever Josh Hader, who signed with the Houston Astros this winter, said that the Texas Rangers told him they could not offer him a contract until they had their TV deal figured out. The future of sports TV seems to be streaming, and you could see it firsthand this fall with the NFL. Amazon got the Thursday Night Football game every week, and it even got its own playoff game. This was also the first year that the Super Bowl was exclusively streamed nationally. It is easy to see this model make its way into baseball in the near future, and teams are understandably not comfortable making commitments to local TV networks which could tie up a large portion of their budget for the next decade-plus. Now, while that may be a valid reasoning for the slow winter this year, that is not the overarching problem surrounding MLB free agency.

There needs to be a signing deadline for free agents, and this winter has made that abundantly clear because, at the end of the day, the Blake Snell, Matt Chapman, and Jordan Montgomery situations are not good for anybody. It's not good for the players who do not get the full Spring Training with their new teams, it's not good for the teams who have to get asked about players who are not even on their team while they are preparing for their own season, it's not good for the players on those teams that will work hard all spring to get their roster spot taken by a guy that got to camp a month late, and it's not good for the agents (Scott Boras) who will be making less money given that teams have proven to not be willing to cough up big number contracts three weeks away from the season starting. Plus, a deadline would create offseason excitement for the fans to keep them engaged, think of it like winter’s version of the trade deadline. This way everyone gets a full spring training to adapt to their new teams and get a healthy amount of preparation for a rigorous season. 

Overall, and contrary to what most of this article might suggest, baseball is in a good spot right now. The amount of star talent in the game is at an all-time high, and the addition of the pitch clock seems to fix some of the pace of play issues. However, all these issues popping up right at a time when people are supposed to be getting excited about baseball is concerning for the sport. On the bright side, there is still time to fix the uniforms before Opening Day, the pitch clock reduction could provide another positive impact, and the three big free agents will almost certainly be on teams by the end of March. Hopefully, by the time March 28 comes around, baseball fans will have fewer criticisms/questions and more answers.