Saving Baseball?

I think it's doing fine. One thing that would help is to put the DH in the NL. Another thing is there are too many pitching changes and the games tend to drag out. They need to find a way to speed up the game a little. I hate all the pitching changes. Of course, that's easy to say when your team has such an awful bullpen. :laugh:

 

I would be in favor of shortening the season down to 150 games, get rid of IL play, make the first round of the playoffs 7 games, and have the W.S. completed by October 15th. You could accomplish this by playing more doubleheaders. Make these millionaires work a little.

 

Shucks! I thought you'd say blow up the Metrodome.

Ed

 

I hate to say it, but salary caps & revenue sharing have done a lot to improve football.

I think most fans would like to see better drug testing & enforcement.

 

1. Get rid of DH.

2. Speed up games by speeding up pitching, limiting batter's shenanigans in the box (stepping out, calling time at the last second, etc.). Speed up pitcher's delivery by calling balks on excessive time between pitches. Limit pick off moves during an at bat to perhaps four (just like balls). More than four pick off throws is a balk.

3. Shorten the season to 140-150 games.

4. Lessen the number of days off during a season. 150 game seasons should be played in 160 days.

5. Shorten time between innings.

 

True revenue sharing with hard salary caps - NYY and boston dont need all the best players every year.

Dump the DH altogether (and I am an AL fan)

Get rid of at least two teams - the talent pool is too shalow - of course my team is a minor league team this year anyway!

get real tough on steroids - get the folks that test for the tour de france in every club house for every game if it takes that. Extend major testing to the minor leagues (and high school and college for that matter) Texas passed steroid testing for HS kids next year - we will see if it does any good.

Have each major league team donate a significant amount of money to build ballclubs/parks/eqipment and coaches for innercity kids. a few million for each city those teams play in would dramatically improve the talent in a few years and build interest

I like the length of the season - baseball is too tradition driven with its records etc to shorten the season

 

Shortening the season would not be a high priority for me, though I mentioned it. I forgot to mention getting tough on drugs. Ban Bonds now and excise him from the record books. Institute tough drug testing.

 

Here's my rememdy for baseball. It's very drastic.

1. Get rid of the DH completly. Baseball was played for just about 100 years without it and it was fine. Why the AL had to go and try to "fix" what wasn't broken, I have no idea. So what if it lengthens careers and gets a ton more runs scored, I believe it dillutes what the game is supposed to be.

2. Make the All-Star Game what it originally was. A game showcasing the best guys in baseball that year, with no home field advantage in the playoffs at stake. Besides, in reality, it will only help one team. Let's say one year, the Braves go and win 107 games, and are the best team in baseball by 10 or 12 games, they get denied home field advantage because the AL won the All-Star game when let's say the Red Sox won only 95 games. it should be decided by regular season performance, whoever wins the most games should have home field advantage, because they were the best during the regular season.

3. Get rid of the Wild Card. It's yet another way teams that weren't good enough in thier division can get hot for a 5 or 7 game series and beat a better team. In 1993, the San Francisco Gaints won 103 games, and after the last day of the season, the Braves had won 104 and the Giants went home. No playoffs or anything. If you're not the best through the regular season, you shouldn't be in the playoffs. This goes into my next points...

4. Back to only 2 divisions. Yep! Get rid of the Central Division, from 1969 to 1993 that's the way it was, and it was fine! To equal out both leagues, move some teams in the NL to the AL. Give an NL West team to the AL West, and just split the rest of the Central between the East and West. Now that there are two less playoff spots, teams have to play better if they want to get into the playoffs. Then we would actually get to see the better teams in, instead of teams like thethe 83 win Cardinals of last year. It's a lotless complicated, and more fair to the teams who strived to be as best as they could during the regular season.

 

Tom, I generally agree. Divisional play was first created in 1969 because expansion had grown the number of teams that it was silly to have straight leagues with 10-12 teams each. Well, we kept expanding to the point that we had enough teams for 3 divisions. But the problem is, they are not all equal in number, so it creates unbalanced schedules, which I don't like. If MLB contracted down to 28 teams, then going back to 2 divisions of 7 would be nice. A division of 8 is just too big, however.

But the more I think about it, the more I might agree with Dustin on this. If you are going to have a regular season of 162 games then make it mean something. Having more teams in the playoffs dilutes the meaning of the regular season.

 

I would only be in favor of 2 divisions if they take the top 2 teams in each division into the playoffs.

 

I like the wildcard, and I also like the all-star game winner getting homefield advantage.

Salary caps & a revenue sharing. That's what I want.

 

What was "broken" was that pitching had taken over the game too much, especially in the American League which had a .230 league batting average in 1968. Expansion in '69 and lowering the pitcher's mound raised run production a little, but the argument continued to try the DH until the AL finally did in 1973, as an experiment for 3 years. But the very first year upped run production and, more importantly, attendance, that it was made permanent by the end of '73. [And this doesn't even get into how pitchers are not evaluated at all on their hitting ability, completely by their ability to pitch.] Other sports have done similar things to put more offense in the games resulting in more fans in the stands. The average score in an NBA games has not always been 100-95 (that's a guess), and decades ago 500 yards was a good season for an NFL halfback.

Nothing to say about your #2.

Then why have playoffs? If the winner of the East was 2 games better than the winner of the West, why not declare the East champion the league champion? Indeed, why have a "World Series;" instead just declare the team with the best record in either league the "World Champions" [I will not blow the scope of this thread by blasting that term as a misnomer]? I wouldn't care, however, if we did get rid of interleague play; the Series is automatically justified if the 2 teams which came out on top play each other from 2 independent leagues which did not otherwise authorize play against each other in official games.

Regardless of how that's divided up, East and West, this way you are going to have an unbalanced number of teams, such as 7 in one division and 8 in the other (since there are 30 MLB teams). So if you want only 2 playoff contenders, in one division a team has to beat out 7 other teams; in the other division a team has to beat out 6 others. You could, of course, se the number at 84 for games against your own division-- meaning in an 8-team div. you play each div. opponent 12 times, and in a 7-team div. you play each div. opponent 14 times. But the other 78 games would not be exactly equal in playing which team how many games...unlike it was when there were 2 division of 6 teams, and a team played each div. opponent 18 times and each opposite div. opponent 12 times.

Besides that, why do you just throw out "Give an NL West team to the AL West?" I'm sure the Dodgers would go willingly; arent' you? If not, how about Arizona, which whined its way into the NL in the first place because they wanted to develop a rivalry with the Dodgers; thus, Tampa Bay got in with the Yankees and RedSox. If you really want to try make any team change leagues, you better find one that agrees to it, or else there will be long expensive lawsuits. Milwalukee would probably resent being asked to be the one to change again, and I wouldn't disagree; they did it once when they weren't that eager, but they also didn't have a really firm foundation, unlike the Dodgers, Giants, Cardinals, et al.

I have gradually succumbed to having 4 teams vie for the league championship, or 8 teams in playoffs; but I don't think I want 16, or even 12. If MLB expands to 32 teams, that may solve some of the divisional balance problems.. but I have to oppose that, right now, because expansion has diluted some of the quality of play. Especially pitching, which is why the game now arguably has too much offense; the opposite of 35-40 years ago.

I guess with that statement I have rounded your 4 bases and am now safe at home.

 

I guess my reason for wanting less divisions and no Wild Card, is I personally think it would make playoff spots mean more. As far as putting MORE spots in the playoffs, I'm against it, there are already more than enough as it is.

Having the DH in the NL would just be criminal. Some pitchers CAN hit, pitchers SHOULD hit. It just wouldn't be right.

The All-Star Game deal going on now is just a ploy to try and get people to watch it. It serves no other purpose, except for ruining what the game is supposed to be.

I guess I shoulda been around in the '50's and '60's. No DH, no Wild Card, no 1 division too many.

I'm just old-school, I guess.

 

I would support going back to two division, with only division winners getting into the playoffs. That would eliminate a round of games. As for teams winning more games in a stronger division but finishing second, that's life. Win more games than the team ahead of you. That's the name of the game.