Rob Manfred Expresses Potential Ideas Focused On Improving MLB

Rob Manfred, who is in his first season as the commissioner of the MLB, has made more than a few changes since the beginning of the season.

However, Manfred is not yet done with his changes, stating that replay review could see more changes via Bill Shalkin of the LA Times:

Manfred says he expects additional plays to be subject to replay in future, technology upgrades to make reviews faster.

— Bill Shaikin (@BillShaikin) July 14, 2015

While this new advancement is expected to happen soon, reviewing balls and strikes will remain non-reviewable:

Manfred : "We are a ways away from the technology to call balls and strikes."

— Bill Shaikin (@BillShaikin) July 14, 2015

This season, Manfred implemented a clock between innings to speed up the warm-ups and also put a limit on how long a team has to officially challenge a call, which has sped up the game quite a bit:

Manfred says average time of game down 9 minutes from last year, would be largest year-to-year decrease since '65.

— Bill Shaikin (@BillShaikin) July 14, 2015

This time decrease is from last years average of 3:02 which means games average about 2:53. These rule changes have been attempts to clean up the dead time in the game as well as gaining more viewers in a now fast-paced world.

However, Manfred has bigger ideas to make the season more competitive, via Bob Nightengale of USA Today:

Manfred likes the current playoff format, but if #MLB shortens the schedule to 154 games, it would be revisited to make up for revenue loss

— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) July 14, 2015

This revision could perhaps indicate a change in either the Wild Card and/or Divisional Series. Being that playoffs can give teams an extra 20%+ of revenue, according to TheFieldsofGreen.com, this would make up for less regular season games.

Although these ideas can benefit the game of baseball, it may be more than a few years before they are implemented.