I agree about the DH. That’s really the only “purist” view I hold on baseball. I would love MLB to get rid of it permanently. I am against the DH, in favor of replay and in favor of interleague play.
But what you propose would never work in the NFL…waaay too many injuries would occur and play would suffer due to fatigue. I know they used to play both ways back in the day, and I know a scant few players do some of that today, but by and large the NFL is too specialized position-wise any more. And its too valuable a product to take on that kind of an injury risk.
This is off-topic for this thread, but I’ll just mention that other threads have mentioned that the NFL is going to have to radically change the game in the near future because of the head-injury issue. I think change is going to have to come. They’re going to have to find a way to play the game in which there is much less chance of injury.
I’ve been an Astros fan ever since the days of the original Colt 45s. I’m not a diehard type of fan, but we go to at least one live ball game a year.
First we had the debacle with the Astrodome. Now we’ve got the shift to the American League, which doesn’t play real baseball but something that kinda looks like it. I dunno - it’s gonna be hard for me to find the enthusiasm to even drag my ass down to the ballpark once a year from now on.
And speaking as a Chicago fan, I’m actually sick to death of all the Cubs/White Sox games every year. The novelty has worn off and six games a season is far too many, especially when it’s at the expense of, say, getting to see the Red Sox at Wrigley.
Supposedly they’re going to cut it from 6 games a year to 3, at alternating parks, but I’d be perfectly happy if they just balanced it out by rotating divisions, and let the “rivalry” games happen every 3 years. Then they might become special again.
Given a divisional structure, the balance that really matters is within each division, not across each league.
In the old days (1905-1968, for this context), there was the National and the American, and the twain did not meet until the Series. There was no postseason other than the Series. The Series teams had each played an exactly equivalent schedule to each of their in-league competitors, and had conclusively shown themselves to be the best of the bunch. The Series tested them against the best of the opposite league. That made sense, because as the two leagues had not played through the season, there was no way to know which league champion was better until they met. The 1959 Dodgers (88-68) had every right to meet the White Sox (94-60), and their victory meant something.
The divisional system, at first, was bad for this logic. Now there’s another round of postseason play, preceding the Series. The contestants here are the champions of (roughly) geographic divisions–but the league teams are still all playing each other about equally. Look at the 1973 NL, for example. The Reds were demonstrably the best team over the long season. They had played all the same teams as everyone else, and they were more than three games ahead of anyone else. Why should they have to play the Mets to be eligible for the Series? Beyond that, why was it the Mets that had that opportunity, when the Dodgers were, even more clearly, better than the Mets? It had become rather arbitrary.
The unbalanced schedules of the Selig era, while flawed by the wild cards,* actually represent a partial restoration of the pre-divisional logic. The division winners have to play each other to establish a league champion because regular season records between divisions are not comparable. In 2001 the Astros and Cardinals had each won 93 games to the Braves’ 88 and the Diamondbacks’ 92, but this did not mean that they had shown themselves to be better teams. If you were watching, you might have guessed that the Central teams were the cream of a weaker division and schedule than what either of the others faced, but the two rounds of playoffs to get to the Series made sense to demonstrate this.
Now, with six divisions all the same size, we have the opportunity for truly symmetric unbalanced divisional scheduling, as Costas had proposed. That means no two divisions among the six have the same set of opponents (playoffs are necessary to test the respective division champions against each other) but within each division, each team plays exactly equivalent schedule (the division champion is unambiguous). For it to be perfect, the interleague schedules have to be identical for each team in a given division in a given year; that means that if the Yankees are playing the Mets, every other AL East team has to play the Mets too–and every NL East team plays the Yankees that same year, and so on. The only way that works is if interleague schedules rotate: each division matches up against each of the opposite league’s divisions just once every three years.
The addition of a second wild card per league, with a one-game playoff between the two, represents an improvement. Winning the divisions outright is now, if not strictly essential as it once was, much more important than in 1995-2011.
Feh. We’re on a path to deciding the championship by vote, like in old college football. I’d prefer they realigned into three or four leagues that, like pre-1969, never met each other until the post-season.
Agreed. I don’t care if I never see the D-Backs play at Petco again. They seem to be there every time we’re in San Diego and want to catch a game. I’d much rather watch the Padres lose to somebody different.
We’ll have to see how the schedules work out, but from what I’ve seen of the commentary (after having poked around for the last few minutes) it seems like the new interleague scheduling policies make a lot of sense (if you’re not against the idea in and of itself). It’s only going to be a few more interleague games a year, and the “rivalries” (which I think are cool, but you understand why Mets fans grumble – we get to play the O’s, who mostly suck) will be reduced to three or four games from six.
I still wonder whether having interleague play on a more regular basis (although I’ve read that it will be minimized in April and September) will lead to a blending of the rosters and the game between the leagues, even though the number of interleague games won’t change much. I prefer the Senior Circuit game, but I don’t mind the alternative – I think the game is healthier when a fan can choose whichever style he likes best. (I don’t get people who prefer the DH, but live and let live, that’s my motto.)
I certainly do hope they keep the unbalanced schedule in terms of playing more teams against your division. As was confirmed this weekend in the wacky Braves at Nats four-game series, when a game is worth twice as much in the standings (because both halves in the standings are decided in one game), it’s twice as exciting. At least when you’re in a pennant race.
As an Astros fan, I hate the move. I blame Bud Selig. The Brewers were a long standing AL team, and I think it makes more sense to move them back to the AL rather than the Astros. But of course Selig wouldn’t want to inflict that fate on his precious Brewers. As a longstanding Astros fan, I would say that the teams I used to hate were the Mets ('86 NLCS), Braves (several playoff losses), Reds, Dodgers, etc. From now on, the team that I hate the most is the Brewers, since I blame them and Selig for my Astros now being consigned to the AL.
There’s no way he can make it happen. There were also discussions about moving Arizona to the AL, but since Houston was being sold, there was a way to actually get them to agree. Under most circumstances, a team probably would not agree to switch leagues.
Probably not. There isn’t really anyone pushing to get a new team, not that I’ve heard. MLB doesn’t expand the way McDonald’s or Tim Horton’s does, scouting prime locations and selling franchises; they historically have waited for the rich people to make it known they were willing to start a new ballclub. Since getting taxpayers to pay for a stadium is a big part of their business model, that just makes sense.
Right now I am unaware of any prospective ownership group in a big, untapped market who’s talking up the local government on building a ballpark. Most of the unspoiled territory is pretty marginal, anyway. In the US/Canada the biggest metro area with no ballclub is Montreal, which is an obvious no-go. After that it’s Portland (or San Antonio, depending what numbers you believe) which is pretty small by MLB standards, has no ballpark, and no ownership group in the wings. You’d also have opposition from Seattle, which I believe holds local broadcasting rights to Portland.
If they could find someone to start teams in Portland and, say, the Jersey side or Manhattan or something, then obviously you’d have the opportunity for a four-division-four-team deal. That has its drawbacks, though.
Personally I don’t mind the interleage part of interleague play. But like others, I really dislike unbalanced schedules. In the soon-to-be 15-15 format I cannot think of a good way to draw up a schedule with interleague play. It’s very easy to draw one up without it, though.
One of the arguments for moving the Brewers at the time was that Milwaukee purportedly “thought of itself as a National League town,” because of the Braves and the '57 Series (check out John McCutcheon’s song about it).
That could be great, but I doubt anything like that’s going to happen, barring massive economic shifts. Everybody wants, or thinks they want, to have the biggest names come to town. If you want to see mystery teams at the end of the year, the best you can hope for is something like what Bobby Valentine proposed, with Japan Series champions somehow being incorporated. Not very likely either, for the time being.
On the other hand, with respect to MLB itself, I think the new format really is a couple steps in the right direction. Add in expanded replay and an expanded WBC in the spring? 2013 is gonna be a great year of baseball. Of course we get the first sudden-death postseason games this October.
1st, note to self,“Stay off BobLibDem’s and kaylasdad99’s lawns.”
More serioulsy, I wish Arizona or Colorado was sent to the AL with Houston sent to the NL West.
3rd-Is Charlotte a viable expansion market?
Charlotte is about the size of Kansas City, so it is at the absolute low end of the market size necessary to sustain a major league team. It’s certainly possible.
What I don’t know at all, but which would be critically important to know, is how Charlotte fans would embrace an MLB team and how ownership would implement it. I used to be of the mind that X people, at least in North America, would result in Y support in a predictable fashion. I was, it’s quite obvious, wrong. The Miami Marlins’ attendance in their shiny new park is alarmingly less than expected and the Rays, for all their park sucks, draw terribly. Conversely, St. Louis, in a small and unimpressive market, draws great, win or lose. Some markets are different from others, and that’s just the way it is; some are Miami and are always apathetic, and some are St. Louis and are always enthusiastic. Some are like the Cubs or Red Sox and have little variance based on winning or losing; some are like the Yankees or Blue Jays and show extreme variance based on winning and losing. What are fans in Charlotte like? I have no idea.
I suspect that the Florida baseball teams see some of the same issues that the Florida hockey teams see – fans of the sport, who aren’t necessarily fans of the local team.
IIRC, at least part of the reasoning for putting franchises in Tampa Bay (technically, St. Petersburg) and Miami was that there were already many baseball fans in those markets.
However, many of those pre-existing baseball fans are retirees, who moved to Florida from somewhere else, and brought their longstanding team loyalties with them. A lifelong Red Sox fan from suburban Boston who moves to West Palm Beach probably isn’t going to suddenly become a Marlins fan just because he’s now in the Marlins’ market.
I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, what this does is essentially randomize two of the playoff spots. A seven game series already suffers from a sample-size problem; a single game playoff (unless it’s a 163rd game between tied teams) is ridiculous. Especially if one team has a significantly better record than the other over a long season but then gets bounced out for a single loss.
On the other hand, you’re right that it would force teams to focus more on winning the division if you can basically have your season coin-flipped away otherwise.
I think I ultimately come down on the side of not liking the 1-game playoff idea.
I love the one-game playoff, although I understand there’s a lot of diversity of opinion on the issue. In my mind, you want to avoid it? Win your division. Before, winning a division didn’t much matter because you weren’t disadvantaged by being the wild card.
