MLB Should Look At Expanding Rosters For Month of April

It seems like it would do more good than harm if MLB just decided to expand rosters for the first month of the 2021 season.

By the end of the 2021 MLB season, everything just might be back to normal.

The start, however, is another matter entirely. As such, MLB needs to take a long look at bumping league roster size back up to 28 players for the month of April.

Overcautious? Certainly. Over this pandemic? You bet. Overdoing it by expanding? Absolutely not.

Especially when you consider the fact that MLB very much wanted to delay the start of the season until May, and that the only reason that isn’t happening is because if the league asked the MLBPA to add 2 + 2, the players union would defiantly answer with 5. Tony Clark wouldn’t spit on Rob Manfred if he was on fire at this point in the relationship. True, that desire had as much to do with fan attendance as it did player safety. Nevertheless, giving up on a measure that could make it easier for MLB teams to navigate a difficult month seems rather shortsighted.

However, the potential for Covid-19 to actively impact the 2021 MLB season is only part of the reason expanding the rosters for a month makes sense. Of much greater import is how Covid-19 impacted the 2020 season.

Roster expansion for the first month would give all thirty MLB teams thirty more days to ramp up their pitchers’ workloads, freeing them up to either employ six-man rotations or run starting pitchers out there for shorter starts initially. If MLB really wanted, they could even insist the extra roster spots be allocated to pitchers, to best ensure this kid gloves approach happens.

Then again, there are no minor leagues for the first month, just as there were none at all last season. Typically, MLB teams don’t want their young players sitting on a bench, when they could be getting regular reps at the lower levels. Yet, does this same philosophy apply when the lower level hasn’t started? Some GMs just might value four to eight games in the field and a month’s worth of batting practice with the regulars over alternate training site scrimmages with other rookies and journeymen.

Bottom-line, there is no downside to roster expansion. It helps teams more readily adjust to a very real health concern in Covid-19. It helps teams manage workloads and decrease the very real risk of injury facing their players this season. And it helps some players gain valuable experience that they can’t even come close to simulating until May.

Whichever way you look at it, it’s well worth MLB implementing. If nothing else, it might help start smoothing things over heading into those CBA talks this winter.