Major League Baseball Collective Bargaining Agreement is Reached

In July I spent about a week in the Dallas, Texas, area and Major League Baseball's owners and players reached a five-year collective bargaining agreement during meetings in Irving, Texas.

The new agreement includes a change to the way home field advantage is determined for the World Series.

Remember the All-Star game that ended in a tie in 2002?

The next season Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig implemented the All-Star team that won would secure home field advantage for their representative.

I did some checking and the only teams that had home field advantage and did not win the World Series were the 2003 Yankees, 2006 Tigers, 2008 Tampa Bay Rays, 2015 Royals and 2016 Indians.

The pennant winner with the better regular season record will have home field advantage in the World Series. I thought that was the way it should be determined all along. Make the grueling regular season grind mean something other than securing a playoff spot.

The CBA has no change to the roster size. Teams will have 25-man rosters for the regular season, expanding to 40 in September, same as it is now.

The minimum time for a trip to the Disabled List will be reduced from 15 days to 10 days.

This is a tentative agreement, so those provisions in the agreement were reported by the Associated Press.

Beginning in 2018, the regular season will begin mid-week to create additional off days during the schedule.

According to the New York Post, incoming Major Leaguers will be banned from using smokeless tobacco, but current players will be "grandfathered in" and still be permitted.