Get Morgan off of TV. That would improve baseball. Then remove McCarver.
In general quiet the stadiums a little and let the crowds themselves generate the noise. Quiet the booths and let the game breath. In 90% of the cases the more the announcers chatter, the dumber they sound. In McCarver’s and Morgan’s case it is 100%.
Morgan is actually worse at baseball than Howard Cosell was. This should never have been a goal.
I agree there should be less interleague play.
I cannot even understand why the Blue Jays need to move, they do better than many teams. If anyone needs to move it is probably the Florida teams.
The hardcap would be fine, put a floor in at the same time. Phase it in over a 5 year period so the big spenders can adjust to the new rules. Though as Baseball has managed the most different Champions of the 3 big sports over the last 10 or last 30 years. In fact Basketball has only had 8 teams win it all since 1980 and baseball has had 8 since 2001.
Looks like George Steinbrenner’s in the hospital in serious condition after a (reported) serious heart attack. I know he’s been in pretty terrible health recently, so this doesn’t look great. I wish him well. Love him or hate him, love the Yankees or hate the Yankees, Steinbrenner is/was one of baseball’s biggest personalities.
A lot of times when a person is described as someone people “love to hate,” it’s kind of not true; it usually just means it’s someone people hate.
But this was not true of Steinbrenner. He was someone I genuinely loved to hate. His presence made baseball more fun even if you rooted against him, and I’m sorry to see him gone this soon.
I agree. One of the usual discussions regarding Stein was whether or not he was “good” for baseball. I don’t think he particularly was, but I also think that no one person can do any significant damage to baseball. Without Steinbrenner, there’d still be big budget big market teams. There’d still be teams that stockpile free agents (and there’d still be teams that build from within - all things that Steinbrenner did during his tenure). Throughout baseball’s history, it’s been filled with personalities that were seemingly larger than life. Steinbrenner fits that mold perfectly. Baseball just got a little less interesting today.
And I imagine George is currently trying to figure out a way to fire Billy Martin again…
Sports is helped when there is a team or an owner to focus hate on. The Yankees and Steinbrenner provided that. I hope his family keeps it up. We need someone to hate.
PS They buy championships. They hire away players that are developed and trained by other teams.
Total agreement. Hang Morgan in chains outside Cooperstown as an object lesson to other “announcers.”
Interleague can be done easily. Posit 6 IL games per team per year. Over one 3-day stretch, the NL West plays the AL West at home. Then later, they play them away. Every year, you shift down one on the list. In 15 years you will have played every team in the other league 6 times.
I would be okay with a hard floor as long as it included all baseball expenses (scouting, drafting etc…) and not just major league salaries. I’d rather the pirates spent 10 million extra on prospects (which is more or less what they are doing) than sign some overpriced mediocre veteran that will move them maybe from 63 wins to 65.
The player’s union has always been strongly against a cap and a floor though, which is a tough hurdle to pass.
They built their championship teams around a solid home-grown core of Jeter, Posada, Rivera, Pettitte and Bernie Williams. They’ve bought big-name FAs to complement them, of course, but they’ve hardly been slack in the development department.
None of those guys has been a prospect any time recently. In this decade the successful young yankees is a drastically smaller list. And of course they can afford to spend the 15-20 million a year to keep the guys they developed after they hit free agency, which is a pretty big part of the equation.
And what’s wrong with spending a lot to keep the stars you developed? And who says that player development is only successful if you have a constant turnover of prospects? I’d say 5 big stars with 15+ year careers with the team is successful development.
Well the new crop of prospects developed include Cano, Hughes, Gardner, Joba and Cervelli. This is a pretty good crop. Basically when the Yanks mix developement, trades and free agents they win. When they only try to buy the Rings they usually fail. See 80s and the Giambi years. Also a good chunk of the bullpen is from the farm.
But again, if baseball wants to put a hard cap and a hard floor into the game with a phase in period, I see no issue except the union will probably never agree. The only exception I would make is to probably allow for a states with higher taxes to spend that few percent more so it does not become a competitive disadvantage.
Well, I wouldn’t brag too much about a middle reliever with an era of 5 or a backup catcher who has generally stopped hitting, but yeah the yankess have developed some talent. So has every other team. You put Wieters, Markakis, A Jones, Tillman et al. around Arod, Teixeria, Sabathia etc.. that team is going to look pretty good too.
The Braves and Blue Jays have swapped shortstops: Alex Gonzalez with his 17 homers and .493 SLG to Atlanta; Yunel Escobar with his 0 homers and .284 SLG to Toronto. there’s some other guys involved in the trade, but i don’t know enough about them, or the two teams, to know if anyone got some good prospects.
