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

In My Humble Opinion
21

I’d like to see some changes, but I think historical continuity isn’t just important, it’s paramount.

I guess the question is, what are the problems? It’s important to not fix stuff that isn’t broken. And if there’s little agreement about what the problems are among fans of the game, then there’s probably little reason to fix them.

For instance, my main problem with baseball is the devaluation of the regular season, and the undermining of pennant races, by the wildcard. This seems to be firmly a minority view. As long as that’s so, I can hardly expect MLB to rectify it.

Here’s my list, in no particular order:

  1. The length/pacing of the games, especially in the postseason.
  2. The devaluation of regular season games by the wildcard.
  3. Too much postseason baseball at once in the Division Series.
  4. Uneven competition between large-market and small-market teams.
  5. Too few games between division rivals.
  6. MLB management that disrespects the history of the game.
  7. Too many postseason games finishing up too late at night.

Discussion:

1&7. There seems to be a consensus that the games are too long/slow. And they keep stats on such things, so it’s easy to measure. The typical game twenty years ago lasted 2.5 hours, give or take a half hour. Now, IIRC, it’s more like just under 3 hours, give or take. And the postseason games go on for-fucking-ever; 4 hours is hardly uncommon. :rolleyes:

It would be interesting (especially for the postseason) to see how much of the time is on-the-field time, and how much is commercial breaks. When I was still watching baseball regularly, I’d been thinking about timing the commercials in a few playoff games, but now that I don’t, I haven’t bothered.

For night games, of course, there’s a direct connection between long games and late-finishing games. I have to wonder why they don’t try to do more day games on weekends. The World Series abandoned the daylight hours many years ago; I’m not sure if a reason was given. Maybe they figure they’d lose out to the NFL, but are they afraid to tangle with college football on Saturdays? Sheesh.

2&3. My personal hobbyhorses here, that hardly anyone else cares about. But what the hey, there’s a solution to both. First, though, the problems, as I see them:

2: It depends on what you want, I guess. For me, pennant races were always the compelling drama that hooked me on the baseball season. If Team A finished 100-62 and Team B in its division finished 99-63, Team A went on, and Team B’s winter began. That fact gives, or used to give, meaning to all 162 of those regular-season games. Give me a chance, and I’ll talk your ear off about pennant races. But there hasn’t been one since 1993, because it doesn’t matter which team finishes with 100 wins, and which with 99.

3: Take a look at the NFL’s postseason. They have a lot of teams involved, but it works because they never have more than 2 playoff games per day. You can sit down and watch 6 hours of football.

But MLB’s Division Series, OTOH, have four five-game series going on simultaneously, with three or four games each day. Even if some of them weren’t scheduled against each other, you still couldn’t watch them all. Two MLB playoff series at once produces about as much baseball as it’s possible to watch.

Here’s my solution: go back to two divisions in each league, but keep the wildcard. Give the team with the best record in each league a first-round bye, and let the winner of the other division and the wildcard team play a 5-game series to play the team with the best record.

This gets you the same three-layered playoff structure, and probably without much loss of TV audience. The wildcard would still exist to keep more teams in the action later in the season, but winning the regular-season championship, so to speak, would mean a great deal.

Of course, this will never happen, as long as people keep going to see regular-season games, because it would mean some loss of postseason revenue. So from the ownership POV, there’s no problem. I keep hoping that’ll change. :slight_smile:

4: This has been well-discussed here and elsewhere. To the extent that it’s a problem, the natural solution is increased revenue-sharing. Apparently the union has to sign off on revenue-sharing plans, because they would affect player compensation - negatively, so they’re agin it. There comes a time for the union to not have the same shortsightedness as the owners, and the time is now.

  1. Nothing to be done here, other than possibly abandon interleague play. (Or ‘contraction’, that dirty word.) The more teams you play, the less you can play any one team.

  2. Actually, contraction that got rid of recent expansion teams wouldn’t be bad. But killing any of the original 16 AL and NL teams - as Selig is threatening to do - would be an abomination of unprecedented magnitude. They could disband the existing Florida teams, with their brief history, and move the Expos and Twins down to Florida in their place. That would be far less damaging to the continuity of the game than to kill off the Twins, or even the Expos.

22

I don’t get this one. First off, I don’t know where you get 16 original teams in each league. There are currently only 30 teams total. I assume you meant back to the original (sic) 14 teams in each league. And if you are considering contraction of recent expansion teams, why include the Marlins? The most recent expansions were the D-backs and the D-Rays.

Then there’s the question of how killing off the Marlins and D-Rays, then moving the Twins and Expos to Tampa and Miami is any different than just killing off the Twins and Expos? What’s more important - the historical continuity of the names “Twins” and “Expos” or the historical continuity of baseball in Minneapolis-St. Paul and Montreal? And would those names have any connection to their new locales? That’s how you end up with names like “Jazz” in Utah or “Lakers” in LA! I mean, even the Angels move down the road from Los Angeles to Anaheim sort of lost the connection of the name to the place.

And if you’re going to consider contraction, why only focus on contraction to the original 28 teams? What makes 28 a good number, but 30 bad? Why not contract down to the original 16 teams that played prior to the first expansion in 1960? Get rid of the Angels, the Rangers (which are really the expansion Senators, but keep the Twins which are really the original Senators), the Astros, the Mets, the Royals, the Expos, the Padres, the Brewers (which are really the expansion Seattle Pilots), the Blue Jays, the Mariners, the Rockies, the Marlins, the D-Backs, and the D-Rays. Then move the Dodgers back to Brooklyn, the Giants back to New York, the A’s back to Philadelphia (skipping Kansas City), the Braves back to Boston (skipping Milwaukee), the Orioles back to St. Louis and rename them the Browns, and the Twins back to Washington and rename them the Senators. Then baseball will be concentrated back in the Northeast and Midwest and screw the rest of the country!

Too many teams, IMHO, is not the problem. The real problem is too few teams with the financial power of the Yankees or the Braves.

23

I figure I should offer some constructive thoughts as well. I think baseball needs changes in three basic areas:

  1. Length of games. I personally feel the games are wayyyy too slow. Their being LONG isn’t a big deal, but being slow is bad. Baseball is a game of tension and anticipation; if you allow too many delays the tension bleeds off. I feel the following changes are needed:

A) Limitations on the batter’s ability to leave the box once he has taken his position there. If you haven’t broken a bat, you can’t leave to scratch yourself.
B) I believe limiting a pitcher’s pickoff attempts is a good idea and would introduce an element of strategy, as well as speeding up the game. It would also increase basestealing, which isn’t a bad thing.
C) I would like to see the time between innings reduced, although that’s improbable.

  1. The batter-pitcher balance is swinging towards the batter to a historically extreme extent. I believe this is in large part due to non-enforcement of rules, as well as the fact that hitters are just bigger and stronger than ever before.

Now: I am vehemently opposed to the recent decision to ban protective equipment for batters. Viciously, angrily opposed. The decision to prevent batters from wearing protective equipment to save themselves from injury is, IMHO, an absolutely disgusting, stupid, and completely ass-backwards approach to the problem of crowding the plate. It is a classic example of people attempting to solve one problem by creating another. IMHO, MLB is commiting what borders on a crime of negligence. I cannot believe the stupidity involved in this decision or the stupidity of those who support it.

To keep hitters from crowding the plate, the solution is ENFORCE THE GODDAMNED BATTER’S BOX. Move it back a few inches if need be. If you set up outside the box and hit the ball you’re out automatically. If you take the pitch it’s a strike no matter what, and the umpire tells you to get your damned feet back into the box. In my opinion enforcing the batter’s box would solve many, many problems. It would prevent hitters from diving over the plate and setting up too close and getting hit by pitches, and you could let them wear protective equipment again. You’d also give the pitchers an edge they pretty obviously need, and maybe reduce this ridiculous home run barrae without screwing around with the height of the mound.

I simply can’t believe this hasn’t been done already, or that they decided batters couldn’t wear pads. What idiocy.

  1. MLB needs revenue sharing, at least with respect to televised games. I am of the opinion that the appropriate seteup is for proceeds from all locally televised games to be split 50/50 between the two teams competing. Makes perfect sense to me.

A salary cap is just an owners’ scam.

  1. MLB needs a new commissioner. New leadership, fast.

Really, everything else hinges on this. Slow games or no, the fact of the matter is the MLB is led by liars and cheats. As long as Selig and his ilk run the sport they’ll continue to do stupid, destructive things. Selig has screwed up again, and again, and again. He has lied, lied, and lied some more. The sport will always be in trouble as long as he’s in charge.

24

I generally agree with furt’s comments that Major League Baseball is not suffering from any serious ailments, but there are some things I would propose tweaking (in no particular order).

  1. Revenue imbalance. I think there is a small problem here, although it is being ridiculously overhyped by the used car salesman pretending to have the game’s best interest at heart (Bud Selig). It is very difficult for a club in a small market to compete with a club in a large market. Essentially, you have to have some good luck and very intelligent executives.

It seems to me that most of the propsoed solutions regarding revenue sharing are completely wrong. It strikes me as ludicrous that the Anaheim Angels can receive revenue sharing funds from the Seattle Mariners, given the relative size of their markets. Anaheim should get more in revenue than Seattle, they’re just not as well run. Revenue sharing based on revenue punishes well-run clubs and rewards incompetence.

I would propose some sort of sharing agreement based on market size, i.e., the potential revenue stream. This will give a boost to teams in genuinely small markets without rewarding “loafers” in larger markets.

On a side note, I think that the solution to the escalation in players’ salaries is not some sort of salary cap. All a salary cap will do is guarantee more profits to the owners. It certainly won’t lower prices for fans nor is it likely to do a lot to solve whatever competitive imbalance problems may exist. Instead, the solution to capping players’ salaries (even assuming that should be a goal) is for the owners to keep their wallets in their pockets.

  1. The draft. Teams should be able to trade draft picks. That would help out teams that, for whatever reason, choose not to meet high salary demands of the most sought after draftees because those teams could trade the pick and get value in return. As the system is currently constituted, they must pass over the more “valuable” player to pick someone lesser.

Also, the draft should probably be gradually extended worldwide, although I’m not passionate about that.

  1. Length of game. The umpires should start enforcing some existing rules, as opposed to the current policy of talking about enforcing rules and not actually doing it. Make the batters get in the box quicker and keep them from getting out of it. Rushing relief pitchers, as MLB is doing this year, seems to me to be a very stupid way of speeding up games.

  2. Crowding the plate. First, don’t award first base to someone hanging out over the plate who makes no effort to avoid the pitch (or a half-hearted effort). Second, make batters actually stay in the batter’s box, as opposed to in the general vicinity. It could be that the size and location of the batters’ box should be reconsidered in light of modern game conditions, including bigger hitters.

  3. Scheduling / reorganization of leagues. I don’t think there’s a huge problem here. If I was god of all things baseball, I’d have two divisions in each league, a championship series and then the world series. However, it’s not going to happen because no one (owners or players) wants to give up the extra revenue that expanded playoffs provide.

  1. Contraction. Contraction is not a solution to any single problem in the game today. Instead, it is a threat used by the owners (1) in labor negotiations (we’ll wipe out 50 high paid jobs) and (2) to extort stadiums from taxpayers (buy us a shiny palace or we’ll wipe out the team. I find it very hard to believe that even the owners genuinely think contraction is in the best interest of the game. My personal opinion is that they will extort a stadium from Minneapolis and move the Expos to DC, selling it for $400 million or so. However, contraction will “remain an option” so as to continue extorting new stadiums in cities like Oakland, Miami, etc.

I can’t even identify a problem that contraction potentially solves, so it’s hard for me to discuss it rationally.

I noticed on preview that Rickjay just made several of the same points that I did, so I guess I’m echoing him. I also fully agree on the disgusting slime currently running the game.

25

On a second reading, I think RTF is referring to 16 total original AL and NL teams (8 per league). My mistake.

But I stand behind my assertion that baseball has been adding and moving teams throughout its history, and nobody has really complained. Well, except for that whole Dodgers/Giants move back in the 1950s.

Why was expansion to 10 AL teams in 1961 and 10 NL teams in 1962 not a problem? Why was expansion to 12 teams in each league in 1969 not a problem? Why was expansion to 14 AL teams in 1977 and 14 NL teams in 1993 not a problem? But all of a sudden, adding 2 more teams in 1998 caused baseball to go down the drain! I just don’t get it.

IMHO, baseball’s current problems have their roots in the early 80s when Ted Turner’s WTBS and Tribune’s WGN cable channels spread Braves and Cubs baseball across the US at the expense of other teams. A simplistic explanation, yes, but a valid one, I think. The real problem in baseball is that only a few teams have the financial base to be consistently competetive. Other teams just can’t buy the number of top players Steinbrenner can.

Personally, I think baseball could handle a few more teams if the playing field was leveled. I say put some teams in Charlotte, Nashville, San Antonio, and New Orleans. And spread the wealth around a little bit.

26

The game must be sped up. Several years ago I went to a game that was supposed to start at 7 pm, but there was a tremendous rainstorm that hit the ballpark right at game time. It was the visiting team’s last trip into town for the year so they had to get the game in and they waited until 10 pm to start the game. I tell you, that was the most crisply played major league game I’ve ever seen. Everyone, from the players to the umps to the ballboys, hustled. Nobody screwed around getting in and out of the batters box or standing around the pitchers’ mound checking out the blonde babe in the third row. The score was 8-6 or thereabouts and the game only took 2 and 1/2 hours, so I know it is possible to play a fast-paced ball game when everybody wants to do it. The next day’s game, however, it was back to droopy, drag it out 3 hours play.