Say it ain't so, Joe.

[Frayed Knot]

Sounds to me like Manfred has since heard from from several owners/GMs who gave him a "not so fast" response after his original riffing off the comments from Mozeliak that momentum was shifting towards universal acceptance.
Or at least that's my interpretation of what happened and I'm sticking to it.

[Guest d'Kong76]

Should this atrocity take place, they really couldn't do it off-season and
say next year bbbyyy. It would have to be more like starting with the
2021 season bbbyyy.

[Frayed Knot]

It would be even worse the other way. If they ever decided to trash it there would have to be something like a 10 year lead-up period to allow all the contracts (Pujols, Fielder, etc.) to run their course.

[Guest d'Kong76]

Well, I did five years... ten would be even better.
I know there are now generations who've lived with half of baseball
having a DH and now it's in the inter-league play (not a big fan of that
either) but I would really have trouble adopting it full time for my team
and league and it would take a lot of air out of my baseball balloon.

[MFS62]

Edgy MD wrote: Manfred says "No change for the foreseeable future."

That was thrown in just before the closing credits on SNY's Geico sports show last night, almost like an afterthought. When I heard it I broke into my happy dance.

And it makes sense. The reason I had read for not getting rid of the rule was that the Union would complain about "loss of jobs" (yeah, I know. They're usually higher paying jobs). But I think MLB took some wind out of those sails by expanding the rosters, adding more jobs.
If I had my druthers, I'd keep the expanded rosters and eliminate the DH (it pains me to have to type that aberration) over time ...at all levels of baseball. Any rule that made Joe Torre look smart could not be a good thing.

Later

[Guest d'Kong76]

Some more ice cream with those waffles...

AP wrote: "I think the status quo on the DH has served the industry the well," he said. "I think it serves an important purpose in terms of defining the difference between the American League and the National League, and that league definition is important to us from a competitive perspective."

[Edgy MD]

I'm not sure what MFS62 means about MLB expanding rosters. Roster size has been set at 25 since 1914, hasn't it?

[MFS62]

Edgy MD wrote: I'm not sure what MFS62 means about MLB expanding rosters. Roster size has been set at 25 since 1914, hasn't it?

Wasn't there something under discussion about making the rosters 28 players for part of the year? I was suggesting that if this were extended to the full year, it would placate the union and allow MLB to let the players who are still in the majors under that silly rule slowly fade away into the sunset.

BTW, I remember the rosters being more than 25 players for the first few weeks of the season. Then, when minor league seasons started, the rosters dropped back to 25 players. This gave the major league teams more chances to evaluate fringe players and prospects in real game situations. This was probably necessitated by the old option rules that had a limit of three options/ recalls - period. NOT as many options as necessary during three years. So teams had to be more judicious with the number of times they would option a player, and they felt the extra games they could see a player in action were necessary.

But the commissioner has now said he wants to keep the leagues different. So it looks like roster expansion would have nothing to do with the elimination of that rule.

Later

[Benjamin Grimm]

That's the deal I would like. A year-round 27-man roster and the total elimination of the DH.

I don't know that it's ever been proposed by the people who have the actual power to make things happen, but it has been kicked around by fans and sportswriters at least a little bit.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

27 sounds like a lot of pitching changes to me. 26 would be better, 25 best.

[Guest d'Kong76]

I don't know why, but I thought some time in my lifetime there was
a 24-man roster in baseball.

[Benjamin Grimm]

In 1986 (and maybe a year or two before or after that) teams had the option to carry only 24 men, and every team did it for the entire season, including the postseason.

[Guest d'Kong76]

Well, color me clueless... no idea, as Edgemeister said, it's been
25 since 2014. I guess I was partially remembering the 24 number
for whatever reason.

[Edgy MD]

It wasn't so much a change to the roster size, as roster limits were still fixed at 25, but teams had long had the option of carrying 24 players, but only ever did for brief periods of transition, between transactions.

During a period of labor hardball (1985-ish-through-1987-ish), the teams agreed with each other to carry 24 players only. Newspapers mocked them, saying that a team would cave and add a player as soon as one was needed, especially in the post-season. But the Mets marched in lockstep, carrying only 24 through the 1986 post season.

This widely understood unofficial agreement was cited in the collusion lawsuits that followed.

Peter Ueberroth was looking to be the commissioner that rode in on a white horse and saved baseball from itself, but his short tenure led to the owners ultimately losing three straight collusion suits.

Now, as a rule, 25 guys get paid for the day, even if only 22 are in the dugout.

[Benjamin Grimm]

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: 27 sounds like a lot of pitching changes to me. 26 would be better, 25 best.

Yeah, you're probably right that that's how it would play out. I'd like to see those two additional roster spots go to position players, and maybe they would, at first, but inevitably it would probably lead to a 14-man pitching staff. UGH!

[batmagadanleadoff]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: 27 sounds like a lot of pitching changes to me. 26 would be better, 25 best. Yeah, you're probably right that that's how it would play out. I'd like to see those two additional roster spots go to position players, and maybe they would, at first, but inevitably it would probably lead to a 14-man pitching staff. UGH!

Since we're fantasizing anyway, why not tweak the rule so that rosters expand to 27, but a team may not carry more than, say, 13 players that are eligible to pitch? Then carve out an exception for blow-outs, so that if a team trails by x runs after y innings, a position player may pitch.

[batmagadanleadoff]

AP wrote: "I think the status quo on the DH has served the industry the well," he said. "I think it serves an important purpose in terms of defining the difference between the American League and the National League, and that league definition is important to us from a competitive perspective."

I don't agree here. I like variety, but I think it's a dumb idea for the leagues to have materially different rules and that a team that is constructed under one rule should have to play meaningful games, maybe even World Series games, under the other rule.

If I had the magic wand, I'd abolish interleague play and the DH, and contract back to 24 teams.

In my dreams.

[Frayed Knot]

batmagadanleadoff wrote: Since we're fantasizing anyway, why not tweak the rule so that rosters expand to 27, but a team may not carry more than, say, 13 players that are eligible to pitch? Then carve out an exception for blow-outs, so that if a team trails by x runs after y innings, a position player may pitch.

That's the logical alternative: to adopt an NHL style rule of a larger (28?) roster but have only 25 active for any given game.
The only problem is that you'd need some fairly complicated set of conditions in order to have teams not simply put the most recent three starting pitchers on the inactive list each time allowing them to carry 16 in the bullpen.

I'd prefer to stick with 25, but if it'll take going to 26, or to a 27/25 type of situation (above), to get rid of the DH then I'd back roster expansion.