My plan to fix Major League Baseball

The Game Room
21

[QUOTE=WF Tomba]
The problem: there are too many teams that never have a chance to do anything interesting. This drives down interest in the sport and makes many games meaningless. In part, this is because there are just too many teams, period, and in part it’s because of financial inequalities between teams in the same division. The wildcard system has helped, but there are still too many teams with nothing to play for at the end of each season, and the playoffs drag on way too long.

My plan: abandon geographic divisions. Instead, form the divisions by skill level. Each league would have a High, Middle, and Low division. (For the first year, the teams would be assigned to these divisions based on their records from the previous year.) An unbalanced schedule would still be followed, so teams would play a lot of games within their divisions.

At the end of each season, the team that finished first in each division would play a seven-game series against the winner of the corresponding division in the other league. For the High divisions, this would be the World Series. For the Middle and Low divisions, winning the series would cause your team to switch places with the last-place team in the next division up.

The advantages of this system: games become more exciting and competitive, because teams play many games against opponents that match them in skill. Nearly all teams have something to play for during the regular season–the chance to move up, the danger of being moved down, or the championship. The postseason would be somewhat shorter because the lower division series could be held simultaneously.

The disadvantage of this system is that a team can’t go from the basement to the World Series in a single year. It would take three consecutive seasons of good play. But I don’t see that as a huge downside.
[/QUOTE]

In essence, you want major league baseball to adopt the British soccer model.

Problem is, your “fix” would never fly with the larger market team owners, nor would TV networks allow it.

Suppose the two New York teams fall out of the “high” division (as they’re bound to, sooner or later). They’d be playing games that every fan would regard as meaningless. That would KILL ratings and and attendance.

“No, no, no,” you say, “Not meaningless. They’d be playing for a chance to be in a better division NEXT year.” A 162 game season for a chance of maybe playing in a better division next year? That’s not going to fly with fans or with the media.

Your system would also completely preclude the possibility of Cinderella teams. Under your system, the 1969 Mets would have been playing in the lowest division, with no chance of winning the World Series, since they’d finished in 9th place the year before.

22

[QUOTE=astorian]
In essence, you want major league baseball to adopt the British soccer model.

Problem is, your “fix” would never fly with the larger market team owners, nor would TV networks allow it.

Suppose the two New York teams fall out of the “high” division (as they’re bound to, sooner or later). They’d be playing games that every fan would regard as meaningless. That would KILL ratings and and attendance.

“No, no, no,” you say, “Not meaningless. They’d be playing for a chance to be in a better division NEXT year.” A 162 game season for a chance of maybe playing in a better division next year? That’s not going to fly with fans or with the media.

Your system would also completely preclude the possibility of Cinderella teams. Under your system, the 1969 Mets would have been playing in the lowest division, with no chance of winning the World Series, since they’d finished in 9th place the year before.
[/QUOTE]
Obviously, you don’t know much about the English soccer model in action. When was the last time Man. U., Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool were all not in the top flight? :wink:

23

[QUOTE=astorian]
Problem is, your “fix” would never fly with the larger market team owners, nor would TV networks allow it.

Suppose the two New York teams fall out of the “high” division (as they’re bound to, sooner or later). They’d be playing games that every fan would regard as meaningless. That would KILL ratings and and attendance.
[/QUOTE]

Big market teams don’t have a problem selling out meaningless games. The Cubs’ games were completely meaningless for a long time. And the really rich teams would tend to stay in the High division most seasons, because money can buy a significant measure of success in baseball. They just wouldn’t be playing as many of their games against wimpy opponents.

Edit: And screw Cinderella teams.

24

[QUOTE=WF Tomba]
Big market teams don’t have a problem selling out meaningless games. The Cubs’ games were completely meaningless for a long time. And the really rich teams would tend to stay in the High division most seasons, because money can buy a significant measure of success in baseball. They just wouldn’t be playing as many of their games against wimpy opponents.

Edit: And screw Cinderella teams.
[/QUOTE]

Screw Cinderella teams? Nice.

The 1969 Mets were the best team in baseball, but screw 'em- they shouldn’t have a chance to prove that because they were lousy the year before.

The 2006 Tigers were the best team in the American League- but you’d have had them playing for championship of Division II against, I dunno, the Brewers, instead of in the World Series.

Maybe there’s somebody who likes that idea. I’m not one of them.

25

[QUOTE=astorian]
The 1969 Mets were the best team in baseball, but screw 'em- they shouldn’t have a chance to prove that because they were lousy the year before.

The 2006 Tigers were the best team in the American League- but you’d have had them playing for championship of Division II against, I dunno, the Brewers, instead of in the World Series.

Maybe there’s somebody who likes that idea. I’m not one of them.
[/QUOTE]

Playing in a lower division would have its own excitement, particularly for perenially weaker teams. If a team is usually 20 games out by the end of August, how interested could the fans be? But this same team in Division II, would probably be at the top of the league and there’d be excitement about the possibilities of next year.

As for the stronger teams, as DSYoungEsq said, it would be very rare that they’d drop below the top division. And if they do, so be it, they’d just rejoin the next year. It could be seen as a rebuilding year. Even the best teams have to go through that now and then.

As for Cinderellas, a promotion/relegation system would be more intriguing. Imagine a small market team that’s been in Division III for the past ten years, suddenly finding itself in the top division, and competiting for the playoffs?

There are pros and cons to all systems. I think the promotion/relegation system is never going to take in baseball because the model has been so successful for so long and fans wouldn’t stand for change, let alone adopting a “soccer model.”

But I’ll say this, when it comes to having a last place team fighting for its life in the last game of a season, to avoid relegation, that atmosphere sure beats that in an NFL stadium where the fans are rooting for defeat so they can get the higher pick. That’s just absurd.

ETA: Actually, I think baseball is fine the way it is. I think the NFL could (although very unlikely for the same reasons described above) adopt a promotion/relegation system because there are too many teams, too many divisions and too great of a chance now that more often than not, an 8-8 division winner will make the playoffs and an 11-5 runner-up will have to stay home. But this thread is about baseball, so I’ll stop talking.

26

[QUOTE=Tony]
Playing in a lower division would have its own excitement, particularly for perenially weaker teams.
[/QUOTE]

But for one thing, there aren’t enough “perenially weaker teams” to put together such a division. There simply aren’t that many regular losers.

Last year, on August 31, there was only one team in the entire Major Leagues that far out of the playoffs, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays; they were exactly 20 out of the wild card. And this year they’re playing great. The year before it was true of only two teams, Tampa and Kansas City. The year before, the same two teams.

How interested are fans if their teams are perenially hopeless? Not much. But for the most part, they’ve solved that problem through the amateur draft and general improvement of the business. The problem with Kansas City isn’t the system, it’s the Royals; they’ve managed their team stupidly. There just aren’t enough perennial losers to create a division of them, and if you did stick Kansas City and Pittsburgh in their own division, attendance wouldn’t go up; it’d go down, because the fans would not perceive them as being major league teams anymore.

27

[QUOTE=Hawkeyeop]
You are telling fans of 20 teams and the beginning of every season that you can’t win a championship this year. Yes, I consider that a major downside.
[/QUOTE]
This is the winner. What if the Celtics had been in a lower division this last year, unable to win a championship no matter how well they played? I hate this lower division idea.

28

[QUOTE=RickJay]
How interested are fans if their teams are perenially hopeless? Not much. But for the most part, they’ve solved that problem through the amateur draft and general improvement of the business. The problem with Kansas City isn’t the system, it’s the Royals; they’ve managed their team stupidly. There just aren’t enough perennial losers to create a division of them, and if you did stick Kansas City and Pittsburgh in their own division, attendance wouldn’t go up; it’d go down, because the fans would not perceive them as being major league teams anymore.
[/QUOTE]

These are good points and I think the system is fine. But I don’t believe the promotion/relegation is so bad as some not used to it might think. It’s just different; drastically different, that’s all.

29

They don’t have doubleheaders anymore?

It costs fifty bucks to go to the ball game?

What’s next, lights at Wrigley Field?

30

Here’s the thing; I don’t get how your solution solves the problem that you propose, which I don’t even agree is a problem. I mean:

[QUOTE=WF Tomba]
The problem: there are too many teams that never have a chance to do anything interesting.

[/quote]

Which ones? I count about three truly hopeless teams - teams that, at the moment, really can’t be competitive and probably won’t be for years to come: the Royals, the Pirates, and the Nationals. There are only four teams that have never been to a World Series: the aforementioned Nationals, the Rays - who could make the playoffs this year and will almost certainly do so in the next five years - the Mariners, who are responsible for some very interesting baseball in recent memory, and the Texas Rangers, who are admittedly a very weird franchise. So the problem isn’t really a problem.

But your solution - relegate the poorer performers to a lower division where they literally have no chance to do anything interesting - isn’t a solution at all. I mean, the Royals probably won’t be competitive in 2009, but if Alex Gordon starts hitting and Billy Butler figures it out and Luke Hochevar turns into Matt Cain and Mike Moustakas comes on early and, like, Ryan Shealy hits 30 home runs, they could be. Put them in a third division, with literally no chance to do anything but (at best) move up to the second, and even that chance evaporates. Kansas City baseball becomes a long, endless slog from April to September, without even real hope for the future. Free agents would avoid Kansas City like the plague.

In fact, the best free agents would flock to the first division teams, because no good player wants to play for a team that literally can’t win the World Series no matter what happens. The lower division owners wouldn’t be willing to pay a hundred million dollars for a team with zero chance of competing this year OR next year and only a ghost of a chance of even being eligible to compete in three years; the payrolls of the lower division teams would plunge. In places like Pittsburgh and KC, the teams would just flat out fold.

Within four years of instituting your plan, the Second Division would be pitiful, with teams cycling into the last place position in the First Division and losing 120 games there, then cycling back into the Second Division. The Third Division would become, in essence, Triple A. The number of teams with no chance to do anything interesting, which right now is three, would be increased to roughly two thirds of baseball, and the league would become about as nationally relevant as Major League Soccer.

I just… don’t agree that this is a problem. The baseball playoffs last about a month. I like baseball, so they don’t seem long to me.

The current games are exciting and competitive. I’ve seen the Royals beat the Yankees, I’ve seen ace pitchers on terrible teams throw late-season no-hitters to spoil a good team’s playoff run. One thing about baseball is how close together these teams really are. It’s not like football, where the talent disparity between two teams is usually apparent over the course of a single game; every individual game in Major League Baseball is competitive - it is only over 162 games that disparities become evident.

Other than destroying the sport?

31

Yeah, I admit my perspective is probably skewed. You see, I’m a Baltimore Orioles fan. As the song says, “I’ve grown accustomed to fourth place.”

My problem with the long playoffs is just that I don’t like to see the World Series played in late October, when the pitchers’ hands are freezing and you can see the players’ breath. It’s not the right weather for baseball.