Time for total revamping of MLB(aseball)? I think so

In My Humble Opinion
1

Well, the 2002 Season is under way. Provided labor relationships don’t sour and lead to yet another strike, there’s a growing consensus amongst baseball fans (like myself, who’s given this some thought) that something has to be done to shore-up the sport’s waning popularity. I realize this is not a life and death topic; hence the “IMHO” forum. Here are my ideas, from most to least important. Feedback at the local pub has been for the most part positive, if I hear similar sentiments on the SMDB, perhaps I’ll CC: Mr. Selig.

1. League Reorganization: The time has come to organize the leagues into 2 leagues, 4 divisions that are geographically logical. Let’s say something like this:
[ul][li]League A: 14 Teams[/ul][/li] Northeast Division: 7 Teams; Toronto, Montreal, Boston, NY Yanks, NY Mets, Philly & Baltimore.
Southeast Central Division: 7 Teams; Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Florida & Tampa Bay.
[ul][li]League B: 16 Teams[/ul][/li] Midwest Southern Division: 8 Teams; Milwaukee, Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox, Minnesota, Kansas City, St. Louis, Texas & Houston.
Western Division: 8 Teams; Seattle, Colorado, San Francisco, Oakland, Anaheim, LA, San Diego & Arizona.

With expansion, inter-league play, etc. the days of American & National are dead. Purists cling to the current, status quo either out of nostalgia or hatred of the DH-rule.
The advantages to reorganization are boundless.[ul]
[li]Great Cross-Town rivalries: Yanks/Mets, Cubs/Sox, A’s/Giants, Dodgers/Angels to name a few.[/li][li]No more cross-country road trips: You know those unprofitable games that no one watches because they’re broadcast at 11PM-2:30AM (for night games) on the east coast and 11AM-2:30PM (for day games) on the west coast.[/ul] [/li]
2. A 136 Game Season: With reorganization leading to the elimination of those unprofitable games and the increased revenues coming from more popular cross-town rivalries, baseball will provide a whole lot more with a whole lot less. Imagine a season like this:[ul]
[li]League A plays 16 games against the other 5 teams in their division and 8 games against the 7 teams from the other division in their league. Simple scheduling: two 4-game-home and two 4-game away series with 5 teams = 80 intra-division games / one 4-game home and one 4-game away series with 7 teams = 56 intra-league games.[/li][li]League B plays 16 games against the other 6 teams in their division and 5 games against the 8 teams from the other division in their league. Simple scheduling: two 4-game-home and two 4-game away series with 6 teams = 96 intra-division games / one (alternating year) 3-game home and one 2-game away series with 8 teams = 40 intra-league games.[/ul][/li]
With 3+ weeks of regular games truncated from the end of the season, the playoffs will wrap up in early September and the World Series concluding before the 1st of October. No more stupid inter-league play, no wild-cards (can you say NHL?) which pisses off the purists anyway.

3. Speeding up the game: I personally don’t think it’s much of an issue…but everyone else seems to. Here’s a couple ideas:[ul]
[li]Optical strike zones: No more leaving it up to human error (are umpires even human?!?). Have a computer with optical sensors at the plate and dead center call the balls and strikes. This will dramatically cut down the time wasted when frustrated batters step out of the box & aggravated pitchers walk off the mound.[/li][li]Start giving a 1 strike penalty to batters and 1 ball penalty to pitchers who needlessly waste time and hold up the game adjusting jewelry, cups, etc.[/ul][/li]
Liabilities? I can only come up with three;[ul]
[li]1. “What do you do with the DH rule?” I personally don’t give a crap, let the players union vote on it. [/li][li]2. “If you go and reorganize the leagues, you’ll never have a great cross-town post series games” To that I say, we just had one in NYC. The excitement in the city wasn’t much higher than it was during other post-season face-offs (or for that matter, during the inter-league Yanks/Mets games). The odds of it happening again are slim and the benefits are overshadowed by reorganization.[/li]
3. “The players might go for it, but those moron, tight-ass owners won’t” Don’t bet on it. I can’t cite $, but I can almost guarantee Steinbrenner makes more money (ad revenue, attendance, etc.) during one 4-game stretch against the Bosox than he does on a 14-game west coast road trip. My guess is anyone in the player’s union would gladly jump at a the offer of a 5 to 8% pay reduction in exchange for playing 16% less regular series games giving them 3 weeks more time at home with the family.[/ul]

2

Looks like you accidentally posted in GQ, so I’ll send this over to IMHO.

3

I don’t wish to be rude, but you start with an awful premise, which is …

Have you bothered to look into the actual attendance figures at MLB games? Because you might be surprised. And I have not heard of any such consensus. Yes we all agree that the labor situation is screwed up, but nothing you have suggested addresses that.

This would make them stay away in droves. Look, when it comes to baseball, nostalgia is what sells. The attendence boom of the last couple of decades has largely been driven by the new ballparks, whose outstanding feature is their “quaint” look and feel. Call them “purists” or whatever you want, but one of the things people like about baseball is it’s historical continuity.

The last time the leagues went on a modernizing kick was the 60’s and 70’s. Astroturf, indoor games, contemporary-looking uniforms, expansion, the DH rule. And attendence dropped or stagnated for years.

Which is not to say all the changes were all bad; but the point is that “jazzing things up” is not what is needed nor what is wanted.

Those interleague games have not been a raging success outside of the obvious NY and Chicago matchups, and your plan only has more of these manufactured “rivalries.” You said you were only nmaing a few; in reality you named just about the only new matchups that would generate much passion. Philly/Baltimore, Florida/Tampa, St.Louis/KC, all have in point of fact not drawn huge crowds.

You say that:

Maybe so … but the Yankees draw well, and get good TV ratings; thus the west coast owners would be loath to give them up.

Do you really think the owners are going to just lop off 16% of their ticket revenue and TV money? For what? So we can end the season before football gets really underway? Even if this were a good idea, it would never happen.

This is needed; whatever it’s merits, I don’t think a computerized strike zone would make a difference in game time. A limit on timeouts, as you suggest, would help, as would a limit on throws to first base when holding runners. The latter would also encourage those fun-to-watch stolen bases.
The game is fine. The game has always been fine. The labor situation is a mess. The labor situation has always been a mess, back to the 1880’s. The current problems are something like the flu; and you don’t perform surgery for that.

4

Y’don’t think? At least for the ones you mentioned there?

And a computerized strike zone seems hideous to me. It sets a precedent that could whittle away at the very foundation of sport in general. Plus, called third strikes are responsible for probably half of umpire/manager screaming fits and player ejections. Not to mention, the obvious (perfectly-legitamate) labor issue of eliminating an entire profession.

Gah! You can’t computerize baseball! [weeps in a corner]

Sorry, it’s Opening Day here in San Francisco and I’m feeling quite passionate about my game.

5

I don’t know about the rest of ya, but I want a chance to see ALL teams here at Dodger Stadium. I’m excited about the Red Sox coming here this year.

If they want to change the league configuration, that’s OK. But I still think every team should play every other team.

This statement will not help your credibility as a baseball fan…:smiley:

6

Who knew - Selig on the SDMB.

Haven’t they been in Anaheim every year? Isn’t that close enough?

I’m one of the people they would lose if radical realignment ever happens. I still haven’t gone to one of those interleague travesties and I refuse to do so. In fact, I’m still not quite pleased over the addition of the wildcard to the playoffs. I like the tradition, the nostalgia mentioned in earlier posts. So, if the bizarre regional thing ever happens, I’m gone. (I live in Seattle - who is the cross-town rival? & IIRC, haven’t the stats shown that after the first year of interleague, when it was a novelty, the attendance was not noticeably different than it had been before?) If the season is slashed down to 136 games, I’m gone. & no, I don’t think I’ll be alone. Some of the speeding up of the game suggestions I’ve read are fine and might be good ideas. Some tamper far too much with the game, and if they’re added, I’m gone.
(There’s always minor league ball…)

7

Anahiem is, at minimum, an hour and a half drive, one way, away. I make it down there a couple of times a year (I’m going in 2 weeks:D :smiley: :smiley: ), but I cannot get there regularly.

8

As have others, I must point out that baseball attendance is up, and goes up almost every year. That said:

League Reorganization. I can’t agree with you here for two reasons:

i) It will accomplish nothing. What did the NHL’s reorganization accomplish? Diddlysquat, aside from making another Leafs-Habs Stanley Cup an impossibility. There’s no gain in popularity to be made here.

ii) If anything, it will hurt the sport - maybe not much, but a little. I will disagree with other posters who have said baseball sells nostalgia; what baseball sells, as do other sports, is LEGITIMACY. To make people care about the results of the sport there must be some sense of permanence and consistency, that this year’s World Series will be compared to a World Series played under essentially equivalent conditions in 2058, just as we can compare this year’s Series to the one in 1935. Getting rid of the National/American League structure for no particular reason removes one small brick in that wall of legitimacy. If there was a good reason to do it I might believe it was worth it… but there isn’t.

I simply do not believe that cross-town and regional rivalries have anywhere near the significance people think they do on the bottom line.

136 Game Season - Again, totally impossible.

  1. Reducing the season from 162 games to 136 reduces revenue by almost 20%. No frickin’ way anyone involved will want this, and I can’t blame them. Why would they want to sell less product and make less money? You’re insanely overestimating the impact of cross-town rivalries, which A) don’t make nearly as much money as you think and B) would be far less interesting anyway if you scheduled a whole bunch of them.

Think about it; how many extra tickets are sold based on the visiting team? Very, very few. I go to 20-25 games a year and I almost never base it on who’s playing; like most people, I just go when I can and when I have money. The vast majority of ticket revnues are coming from season’s ticket holders and suite rentals, which obviously are not affected by crosstown rivalries, and from casual buyers who just go to a game when their schedules allow. The number of ticket buyers who are NOT season ticket holders but ARE going to enough games and live close enough to the stadium to make decisions between attending different games based on the opponent is very small.

  1. Again, you are simply underestimating the critical importance of consistency and LEGITIMACY. If there was a good reason to change the season from 162 games to 156, i’d say go for it. changing it to 136 games is a drastic, drastic step can completely changes the statistical standards of the sport - and in baseball, statistical standards are everything. By going to 136 games you’ve just eliminated almost all 20-game winners and 200-hit seasons and you’ve put every season record hopelessly out of reach. No single season record will ever be broken again, except for percentage records. So now we need two record books. The transition from 154 games to 162 was bad enough. Going to 136 would be horrible.

Personally, I like the idea of getting rid of the wild card, although three rounds of playoffs is okay by me.

Speeding up the game - I think this is a good idea. I agree with Bill James; the problem is not the LENGTH of the game, the problem is the PACE. It doesn’t really matter if the game goes 2 hours 30 minutes or 2 hours 50; what matters is that MLB is allowing the game’s pace to slow to a crawl. There are delays, delays, delays.

  1. I think mechanized strike zone calling is a good idea - when it’s easily implemented. So far, however, there’s no one good way to do it. It’s years away yet.

  2. Having umpires speed up the game is a good idea, too. They used to; they can do it again, and if calling penalty strikes and balls is necessary, why not?

  3. I would STRONGLY suggest that batters be prohibited from leaving the batter’s box once they step in, unless their bat breaks or they’re legitimately distracted.

9

Reported attendance goes up every year, but that doesn’t mean all of those butts are hitting the seats. Even then, it’s not like we are seeing attendance grow by leaps and bounds. The difference between 2000 and 2001 is a grand total of 136,312. Over the span of 2,413 home games that means attendance grew by an astonishing 56 people per game.

The better metric to use would be revenue generated, but with baseball that number could be anything.

My only hope is that Bud Selig gets lost on the way to the office and fades into the foggy reaches of the past.

10

As an aside, I vote for raising the mound back to 13".

11

have 3 innings of 9 outs each-- allows for some action to get going
no more “pitcher plays catch with first baseman”-- get on with the game, dammit!
batter stays in the damn box, like mentioned above
shorten the base lines! lets get some dudes on base once in a while!
$2 tickets

not radical enough? try these to really spice up the ol’ ball game!

you can throw the batter out by beaning him with the ball (after he hits it, while he is running)
the basemen’s job is to prevent the runner from reaching the bag- BUT- the batter gets to take his bat with him! (will need smaller bats i think!)
cheerleaders seem like an obvious addition and the crappy organist seems like an obvious deletetion

12

I like a shorter season, but it’s not as bad as the NBA. 3 balls 2 strikes would speed it up. Or 3 balls 3 strikes and have fouls count as strikes.

13

So if you hit a foul ball on what would be the third strike, you’re out? Doesn’t that defeat the whole purpose of the batter trying to have a good at-bat? I think fighting off pitches is a crucial part of the game, you can’t take that away.

Some of these ideas to revamp baseball are extreme. I’ll just say that the length of the game is less important than the difference in the team’s salaries.

14

You really want to revamp MLB? How about making all the minor league teams independent, massing all the MLB teams into one big division (calling it, I don’t know, “The Baseball Premier League”), putting AAA, AA and A teams into Divisions 1, 2 and 3, and introducing promotion and relegation. Works for European soccer, doesn’t it?

15

I just wanted to add one thing about the OP: JohnBckWLD, you say the AL/NL distinction is ‘dead,’ but you essentially preserve it in your configuration. And as such, putting the crosstown teams in the same league is untenable.

Also,

I don’t know if you’re basing this on some statistics I haven’t seen or what, but I can tell you from my personal experience that this is false. Here in Oakland in the last two years, a Yankee game is the best guarantee of a near-sellout. The stadium is always packed when the Red Sox come to town (I know because I’ve been at every Boston/Oakland game in the last 2 seasons), which is rarely true otherwise. Looks to me like many people come to games based on the visiting team.

16

Interesting ideas.

  1. League reorganization: I’d be in favor of rearranging the divisions within the NL and AL. Getting rid of the NL and AL would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

  2. Shorter season: I don’t see how this would help anything. If I had my druthers, I’d shorten the playoffs instead. Eliminate wildcards. Eliminate that first round. Make only 2 divisions per league (see above) Have one series to determine the NL and AL champs and then have the World Series. By doing this, you’d make the 162 games in the regular season count more (you need to be #1 in your division to get to the league championship) and thus be more interesting.

  3. Pace of the game: Computerized strike zone? No way! Changing the rules for balls/strikes/outs? Forget it! Some other suggestions, like the batters box thing, would really help. And limiting the amount of time that Andy Pettitte is allowed to stare at the batter with those freaky eyes of his would help, too.

RickJay makes a good point about the consistency of the game. We can maintain that while still making positive changes.

17

JJTM, can you expand on this? Personally, I’ve always thought that some sort of optical/computer sensor system would be a better way to call strikes, so I’m curious as to why you seem to be so passionately against the idea.

I don’t think there’s a consensus that using the Cyclops has particularly harmed tennis. And fencers have been using an electronic scoring box to determine which fencer touched first for decades now, haven’t they?

There are lots of judgement calls in every sport that could never be mechanized, but what’s wrong with giving referees and umpires some technological help in those areas where it’s possible?

18

Neither the Yankees nor the Red Sox are regional or crosstown opponents of the A’s, so how does realignments help here? If there is an attendance jump (and with all due respect I don’t think it’s as large as you believe; certainly, the A’s do not pack the stadium for every Red Sox game) it’s transitional, based on who the good teams are right now. Did the A’s draw more fans in 1991 when the Yankees stank like last week’s salmon?

19

Would the electronic eye actually be feasible though? In tennis, the lines don’t move, but in baseball (based on the rule book) it’s depends on the height/bodily dimension of the batter.

Also, would there be issues considering that a strike can occur on a 3 dimensional plane while in tennis it is 2 dimensional.

20

I don’t know. The missile defence proponents are claiming it’s possible to reliably target an incoming warhead traveling through three dimensions at hypersonic velocities, so I guess anything’s feasible with enough budget…

But let’s assume it is possible for a reasonably-priced machine to accurately determine if a ball passed through a particular batter’s strike zone. I’m guessing that there are lots of baseball fans like JJTM who would hate the idea of electronically-called strikes. I’m not sure why, though, and I’d like to hear their opinions.