Before you read the rest of this article, let me start with this: I really do love baseball.

It’s been a part of my life from the very start. I mean, the best of my chubby-cheeked baby pictures is me wearing a sideways ballcap and clutching a big yellow bat. Throughout T-ball and little league, I wore my dad’s big glove instead of a kid glove because that’s what the real ball-players did, and I wanted to be like them.

And earlier this week, I wrote about 20 reasons baseball will be awesome in 2020. I’m very excited for the upcoming season. But my sunglasses aren’t all rose-colored.

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Baseball has issues. Some are really important, the type of issues that could grind the sport to a halt if a compromise isn’t reached. Some are petty. Some are personal. Some have frustratingly easy fixes that just won’t be implemented.

So here are 20 things wrong with baseball in 2020.

1. Let’s start with a spoiler: Nobody is going to like the three-batter minimum rule. Managers were asked about the possibility during the Winter Meetings — a relief pitcher must either face a minimum of three batters or finish an inning — even before the rule was officially official. Safe to say they hated it. Like, legitimately hated it. Baseball is now messing with in-game strategy with a rule that, by some evaluations, might actually make games longer. It’s going to be a disaster, and — personal speculation alert — I would not be surprised at all to see it dropped for 2021.

2. The sign-stealing scandals aren’t done, folks. The punishment handed out by Rob Manfred to the Astros was severe — well, to everyone other than the current players — but the Astros weren’t the only team to bend rules that seemed malleable at the time. The Red Sox are already under investigation — remember, Red Sox manager Alex Cora lost his job because of his connections to the scandals in Houston and Boston — and if you think the Astros and Red Sox were the only two teams to take that approach, I have a Super Bowl-winning football franchise in Kansas to sell you.

3. The Red Sox decided it was good business to trade Mookie Betts. That, folks, is bad for baseball. This is one of the premier franchises in the sport, in a major market, with a stable of young, rising stars — Rafael Devers (Age 23 season in 2020), Andrew Benintendi (25), Xander Bogaerts (27), Eduardo Rodriguez (27), Michael Chavis (24) — and highly paid stars — J.D. Martinez, Chris Sale, Nathan Eovaldi — deciding that it’s not worth keeping one of the five best players in the game for another season. And not just a great player, but one of the best people in the sport, too. The Red Sox, with that group of players, are effectively punting on the 2020 campaign because of ownership’s desire to get under the luxury tax and create things like “future flexibility.” The ownership group, of course, is composed of insanely wealthy people who would be not at all impacted by Betts’ salary/luxury tax, but have decided they do not care about trying to give their rabid, loyal fan base a reason to expect anything this season. That’s a problem.

Oh, and it’s not just a Boston thing. The Cubs are more than willing to move Kris Bryant, the Indians could deal Francisco Lindor and the Rockies seem destined for a split with perennial MVP candidate Nolan Arenado.

4. The Collective Bargaining Agreement between MLB and the MLBPA expires after the 2021 season, and there are issues, plural. The rhetoric will be contentious as the sides attempt to reach common ground — or, y’know, bend the other side to their will — and avoid some type of work stoppage heading into the 2022 season. If MLB’s approach to its discussions with Minor League Baseball is any peek into the future, this isn’t going to be fun for baseball fans. There’s lots of money available, and very little agreement on how to split up that money.

5. The service-time debate isn’t going away. You’ve probably heard by now that Kris Bryant’s service-time grievance was denied. The Cubs kept him in the minors to start the 2015 season, calling him up to make his debut on April 17. That meant that Bryant accrued 171 days of MLB service in 2015, which doesn’t count as a full season. If they’d called him up one day earlier, he would have gotten to the magic 172 number, and been eligible for free agency after the 2020 season. But because of the one-day difference, he’s not able to hit the market until after the 2021 season. That’s absolutely the reason the Cubs kept him in the minors, despite his brilliant spring training proving he was more than ready to start in the bigs from Day One. From the Cubs' perspective, it was a no-brainer, keeping him down for a couple of weeks to guarantee another year of production — or value, if he’s traded. But as you can imagine, that type of blatant service-time manipulation doesn’t sit well with the players, and will be a consistent talking point throughout this year.

6. Minor league players are still, as a group, wildly underpaid. Forget, for a moment, about the regular-season wages, which for most average out to an hourly rate that’s well under minimum wage for any normal job. Minor league players are not paid during spring training. A paltry per diem and that’s it, for the month-and-a-half they’re in Florida/Arizona. No, really. MLB teams, which pay the salaries for their minor league players — not the minor league team owners — have insane amounts of money pouring in, and could easily — EASILY — pay players a livable wage without even registering a blip on the bottom line. But they don’t, because they don’t have to, and maybe because they like being mean. Dunno. Now, MLB is trying to act like the champion for minor league players, saying they deserve to be paid more, but to make that happen they’ll have to eliminate as many as 42 minor league teams. That’s just not true, and it’s a horrible look. There are legitimate reasons baseball could want to eliminate minor league teams, but it has nothing to do with salaries for minor league players.

7. Speaking of minor league contraction … the idea of ripping affiliated minor league baseball away from 42 communities is just horrible public relations, regardless of the bottom-line reasons behind that line of thinking. This is a fight that MLB might technically win, if 42 franchises are cut — or 15 or 30 or whatever number winds up being — but MLB has already lost this battle in the public eye. It’s just a horrible look, and it so very easily could have been avoided with the smallest amount of foresight.

8. What’s the deal with the baseballs? A mind-boggling number of home runs were hit in 2019 — 6,776, which was 671 more than the previous record — prompting a mind-boggling number of questions about the makeup of the baseball. And even if MLB’s explanations are correct — seam variance and decreased drag — they sound fishy enough that they’re not going to stop the questions. So we’ll see what happens in 2020. Will the home runs continue? Will they go back to levels we saw earlier last decade? Either way, they're questions that will not have satisfying answers.

9. There are far too many teams not trying to win in 2020. The Red Sox aren’t the only team to press — or to have pressed — the reset button on the 2020 campaign. In Boston’s division, the Orioles haven’t been competitive in several seasons, and won’t be again anytime soon. The Tigers and Royals don’t even care which team finishes last in the AL Central, and Cleveland traded Corey Kluber this offseason, while whispers that they’re willing to trade Francisco Lindor just won’t die. The Mariners won’t sniff .500, the Marlins aren't trying, the Pirates are preparing to bottom out, the Giants are gritting out their tough spot and the Rockies have somehow managed to anger their best player less than a year after giving him oodles of money. It’s exhausting.

10. Try selling the sport on TV. It’s not that baseball announcers — especially national ones — have to be rah-rah cheerleaders for the sport, but is it really so hard to have a positive approach to commenting on the game? Because the parade of “back in my day” stories that don’t add anything constructive to the conversation aren’t helpful.

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11. Maybe this is pessimism, but I’m already dreading the injuries that will keep baseball’s best players off the field. It happens every year. Christian Yelich missed most of the last month of the 2019 season with a broken kneecap. Aaron Judge has missed at least 50 games each of the past two years. Fernando Tatis Jr.’s phenomenal rookie campaign was cut short. (preemptive sigh)

12. The spring training batting practice hats are … not good. That’s really all that needs to be said. They’re not good.

13. Mike Trout will probably miss the playoffs again. Trout has as many American League MVP awards as playoff games — three each — and it’s not great for the sport that its best player has been part of the postseason only once in his eight years. Trout’s teams have rarely even been part of the postseason push, either. Through no fault of his, the Angels just haven’t been very good. They’ve made splashes, of course. They given Albert Pujols, Josh Hamilton and C.J. Wilson massive contracts that haven’t resulted in much of anything. They landed Shohei Ohtani, and just this offseason convinced World Series hero Anthony Rendon to join the squad. Will it be enough? The pitching staff still looks OK, at best, though there’s potential to surprise. If 2020 turns out to be Trout’s sixth October-free year in a row, though, there’s no way to avoid calling it another huge disappointment.

14. There are still too many issues with missed calls. Replay is far from perfect, but at least the idea — get the call right — has a solid foundation. It’s encouraging to see MLB working on the “robot” strike zone, because that absolutely is the future. A strike should be a strike and a ball should be a ball, regardless of which umpire is behind the plate. Another season of missed pitch calls and frustrating, long replay issues isn’t something we’re looking forward to.

15. Playoff games start way too late. If you know me at all, you’re probably aware of my NFL disgust (the owners/league office, not the players). But I will say this: They nailed it with the start time for the Super Bowl. The difference between starting at 6:41 pm ET and 8:10 pm ET is huge. Asking the entire Eastern Time Zone to stay up multiple hours past their normal bedtime for the full World Series and multiple playoff games is ridiculous.

16. The overall cost of attending a game is still prohibitive. Charge all you want for the premium seats and the premium games on the schedule. But for the life of me, I’ll never understand why more teams don’t designate certain sections as family-budget friendly sections. Make the tickets cheap — I’m talking $5 to $10 per seat — and charge real-world prices for hot dogs and soda — teams still make a profit at $2 each — and give families reasons to take their kids to the games, instead of making cost a barrier to entry. Get the next generation in the door.

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17. Speaking of attendance … total MLB attendance dropped below 70 million fans in 2019 — 69,625,244 — for the first time since 2003. That’s not great. A dozen years earlier, MLB attendance surpassed 79 million. A drop of 10 million fans isn’t what you want. MLB attributed some of the decline to weather-related issues, and the Blue Jays and Marlins changed how they counted handled tickets/attendance, but that doesn’t account for the entire drop, of course. Rebuilding/tanking teams — the Tigers, Orioles, Royals, Mariners and Giants — saw the biggest drops, which makes sense. Nobody wants to pay good money to see bad baseball.

18. The blackout policy is still in effect for TV games. The good folks of Iowa (caucus fiasco notwithstanding) are blacked out from seeing six different MLB teams. How in the world is MLB supposed to develop new fan bases if they’re prohibiting fans from actually watching the games? This was a bad-idea policy two decades ago, but it’s worse now, when nearly every other broadcast — sports, TV, premium services, etc. — is available on-demand.

19. Maybe this is a bit too much nostalgia, but there are a handful of recently retired players that we’re really going to miss. Adrian Beltre has played the last game of his Hall of Fame career. CC Sabathia pitched until his body just finally said no. David Freese’s big-game heroics will have to be limited to rec-league softball contests. And even though he only played two games early in 2019, we’ll always miss Ichiro. Always.

20. Baseball is making strides in terms of marketing its players — read SN’s feature! — but overall the sport is still way behind other leagues. Stars sell product. MLB needs to help create stars who are recognized by everyone, not just baseball fans.

"LeBron James has close to 59 million followers on Instagram. Odell Beckham Jr. has 14 million. No active baseball player has even crossed the 2 million threshold."



Cool to see an MLB star recognizing the league's marketing issues and attempting to do something about them. https://t.co/kvyRmbmFOf — Matt Hochberg (@Hochberg) February 6, 2020

See that? That has to be unacceptable.