Fixing What's Broken About MLB in 2025
The day may come when there is nothing to complain about regarding Major League Baseball. But it'll be in the far-off future and not, you know, tomorrow.
We know this because MLB has serious issues in 2025 that can't be fixed overnight.
We're about to go deep on five problems that have cast a cloud over the first two months of the season. One silver lining is that only two of them concern the actual gameplay of the sport, which is in a solid place after so many years of interminable games and three-true-outcomes nightmares.
The bigger issues in baseball more so concern the people at the top of each organization. More specifically, the efforts they are and aren't putting into fielding competitive teams.
In all cases, we'll naturally recommend solutions to each problem.
The Strike Zone Has Gotten Wonky
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The Problem
For anyone who missed it, there was an attention-grabbing report from Jayson Stark and Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic revealing that the strike zone is playing smaller in 2025.
We say "playing smaller" because the rules governing the actual strike zone aren't what's different. What has changed is how MLB assesses umpires' perception of the zone, resulting in them broadly being less generous with their calls.
Mind you, this "problem" is coming with all sorts of benefits, including a reduced strikeout rate and the highest frequency of balls in play since 2018.
However, we're also seeing more balls inside the zone in addition to fewer strikes outside of it, contributing to an elevated walk rate and what feels like a lot of confusion on the parts of both hitters and pitchers.
The Solution
Well, it certainly isn't bringing back Ángel Hernández.
Rather, the way forward here is straightforward thankfully. MLB is fresh off testing its Automated Ball-Strike System in spring training, and the results suggest the league will be better off once it is implemented for real in regular-season and postseason games.
All told, 52.2 percent of ball-strike challenges were successful and each one took an average of 13.8 seconds of game time. In other words, more bad calls were erased from the record and there were no Pedro Báez-tier delays.
As per Michael S. Schmidt of The New York Times, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred hopes to have the ABS in place for games next year. Since the tech is clearly ready to go, the only question is whether the MLB Players Association will agree to that.
The First Base Bag Remains a Danger Zone
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The Problem
There is no such thing as an MLB season without scary moments, and one that still sticks in memory is the collision at first base between Luis Arraez and Maricio Dubón on April 20.
The event landed Arraez on the injured list with a concussion, and it was only a couple weeks later that Romy Gonzalez also had to hit the IL after a gnarly collision at the cold corner.
Absent the data to prove as much, you're not going to hear us refer to collisions at first base as an epidemic that must be solved now. And yes, the first base bag is already bigger than it used to be, in part because all the bigger bases introduced in 2023 were meant to prevent injuries.
Even still, collisions at first base are one of those things with "preventable risk" written all over it. And in this case, there's another straightforward answer.
The Solution
There are two types of people who know where this is going: Those who play slow-pitch softball and those who follow college baseball.
Both institutions are among those that use (or can use, in the case of NCAA baseball) a double-sided first base bag. It effectively offers separate bases for the defender and baserunner, with the baseline splitting the difference between the two.
After Arraez got hurt, San Diego Padres manager Mike Schildt said he "wouldn't be opposed" to MLB adopting the double-sided first base bag. And frankly, it's hard to think of good-faith arguments against the idea.
To wit, appealing to tradition is literally a logical fallacy. The double-sided first base bag would otherwise not detract from gameplay, meaning it would obviously be worth it if it proved to be effective at preventing injuries.
Service-Time Manipulation Isn't Dead Yet
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The Problem
When MLB and the MLBPA agreed to a new collective bargaining agreement in 2022, among the major changes were the Prospect Promotion Incentives.
Because these made it possible for a team to earn an extra draft pick if one of their players won Rookie of the Year, the goal was to incentivize them to give top prospects earlier shots at stardom. And there is an argument that it has worked.
Four players have earned PPI draft picks since 2022, with Julio Rodríguez notably doing so for the Seattle Mariners after he forced his way onto the Opening Day roster in '22. They used that pick on Jonny Farmelo, who is now a top-100 prospect in his own right.
In other cases, though, teams have continued to be willing to hold their best prospects back for the sake of stretching their periods of club control from six years to seven. It happened to Paul Skenes last year, and it is, arguably, happening to Roman Anthony and Bubba Chandler this year.
The Solution
The best hope here may be that cautionary tales take root with teams that would otherwise endeavor to engage in service-time manipulation.
For example, the Pittsburgh Pirates played themselves with Skenes' timeline last year. Because he won the NL Rookie of the Year, he earned a full year of service time according to PPI rules. But because he did not serve 172 days with the Pirates, they did not get a draft pick out of his ROY win.
Yet if there is a carrot here, it could involve expanding the PPI benefits to even further incentivize teams to be less conservative with prospect promotions.
Whereas a team only gets a draft pick if a rookie wins the Rookie of the Year, there should also be draft-related bonuses for those who place in, say, the top three of the voting. If not extra picks, then perhaps extra cash for teams' draft bonus pools.
Yet Another Team Is Chasing All-Time Infamy
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The Problem
As you may have heard, the Colorado Rockies are threatening to set a new record for the most losses in a season.
Their 9-45 record is the worst ever through the first 54 games of a season, and even that somehow doesn't fully capture how bad they are. Here's Patrick Saunders of the Denver Post:
Even if the Rockies ultimately stand alone as the worst team of all time, it is a bad look for MLB that this is the third year in a row that a singular bottom-feeder has stood out from the crowd.
The Chicago White Sox just set the modern record with 121 losses last year. The year before that, the Athletics held the spot that the Rockies occupy now with a 10-44 record through 54 games.
The Solution
In an ideal world, there would be an EPL-style system of relegation and promotion to keep teams honest about competing year in and year out.
As this is not an ideal world we're living in, that is probably never going to actually happen with MLB. It is nonetheless high time excessive losing came with a cost...literally.
Whereas excessive winning benefits teams via extra money earned in the playoffs, excessive losing should make teams lose money. A system of fines could kick in at 100 losses, with each successive L adding to the offending team's tab. For this, the league could raise the bar above $5 million for its maximum fine.
Or, MLB could give repeat 100-loss offenders (i.e., the Rockies, who lost 100 games in 2023 and 2024) the same treatment it gives successive revenue-sharing recipients: No draft lottery for you!
There's a Huge Gap Between the Haves and Have-Nots
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The Problem
Rockies aside, competitive balance is actually in a good spot. No team won 100 games in 2024, and there's a real chance of that history repeating itself in 2025.
And yet, the fuss over the massive payroll disparity throughout the league is not much ado about nothing. The Los Angeles Dodgers' luxury-tax payroll is more than the bottom four teams combined. Further, half the teams in the league aren't even spending, well, half what the Dodgers are.
There's more to winning games than spending money, of course, but it does usually help.
The final four of the 2024 playoffs included the top three spenders in the league. And so far in 2025, the four biggest spenders hold four of the six best records. One of the exceptions is the Chicago Cubs, and they're not exactly poor.
The Solution
Rob Manfred's message on the Dodgers is basically to hate the game and not the player, and he would say that.
That implies it's the financial environment that needs fixing, which made it no great surprise when Alex Sherman and Lillian Rizzo of CNBC reported the league is eyeing a salary cap for the next collective bargaining agreement.
That has been and will continue to be a third rail for the MLBPA. This will likely remain the case even if the league also pushes for a salary floor, as more spending from small-market teams likely wouldn't offset spending limits on big-market teams.
It's a pickle, alright, but Maury Brown of Forbes pitched some workable notions that are worth signal-boosting. They include more revenue-sharing dollars through harsher luxury-tax penalties, more shared revenue through streaming bundles and limits on deferred compensation.
What would really help, though, is if MLB had any accountability measures for bad actors among owners. It'll probably never happen, but it would be awesome if any owner who oversees too many (say, five or 10 at the most) consecutive years with a bottom-10 payroll and a bottom-10 record could be forced to sell.
Looking at you, Bob Nutting.
