Some Ideas on Baseball and Their Playoffs

Some Ideas on Baseball and Their Playoffs

1)  Let's have a DH in all of baseball or none of baseball.

It seems silly to think that since 1973, the AL and NL have been playing under two separate sets of rules.  

The time has come, since Commissioner Bud Selig is leaving, for the NL to adopt the DH, or for the AL to abandon it.

At this point, the best move is probably for the NL to adopt it.  

Fans look down at Forbes Field from the Cathedral of Learning, University of Pittsburgh, 1960 World Series.  Games took around Two Hours back then.  Now they take closer to Four Hours.

2)  Let's have another team in each league

It's nice that Bud Selig thought it would be a good idea to move the Houston Astros to the American League, but in the past forty years, the Milwaukee Brewers have shifted from the American League to the National League, and the Astros from the National League to the American League, so the net difference is "zero".  

The entire reason that Milwaukee moved in the first place was to keep the number of teams in each league even, so that interleague play would not be constant.  

They should simply add one expansion team to each league, making sixteen teams, and then split the teams into four divisions of four teams in each league.  Leading to the next point.

3)  Let's have more playoff teams and more playoffs

Assuming we do what we said above, we could have four division winners.  After that, it would be appropriate to have four wildcard teams in each league play as well.  

Next, the first round and every round of the playoffs should really be seven games.  Just like hockey and basketball.  

A lot of cities go years without seeing playoff baseball.  By having 1/2 the teams in the playoffs each year, the fans won't have to wait as long to get into the playoffs.  

Babe Ruth and George Herbert Walker Bush, later President of the United States (1989-1993), then a Yale First Baseman

4)  Shorten the Games

Pitchers today can't finish nine inning games anymore, leading to 12 and 13 man staffs and super specialist relievers.

A simple solution is to do what high schools do--limit the game to seven innings.  

Radical, but think about it--most baseball games today are lasting well over three hours, and with all the bullpen changes, sometimes longer.

A seven inning game means more complete games, and if the bullpen is needed, only one or two guys will be needed.

It means getting back to a ten man pitching staff and a 15 man hitting roster.  

5) Shorten the Regular Season and Lengthen the Playoffs

Obviously the season is now way, way too long.  Athletes are getting hurt, they are trying all manner of illegal substances to last the season, and it's all out of control.

The obvious answer is to cut down the regular season, and by a lot.

Baseball should shoot for a 130 game regular season, to start in mid April and end in mid-September.  The math is easy:

12 games against your 3 division foes = 36

6 games against your 12 non-division but in league foes = 72

3 games against each of 8 teams in two divisions in the other league = 24 (meaning you cycle through the other league every two years and do home and away every two years)

That makes for a very well-balanced 130 game schedule.  It's about the number of games they play in Japan.  If you add to this 8 teams in the playoffs, then you would have potentially 7-7-7-7 or as many as 28 playoff games in the post season, including the World Series.

But the entire total would only be 158 games total.  

And the ratings for the post-season would be much higher than for the regular season.  

6) Total Revenue Sharing and a Hard Salary Cap

Baseball will never be fully healthy until the owners agree to full and total revenue sharing between all of the clubs of any and tv revenues, and have all tv contracts negotiated by the league office. The MLB Network has to have control of all of this, and there should be no local advantage to being the team from LA, NY or Chicago.  All the money should go into a central pot, and the TV revenue shared equally.  

Likewise the players have to agree to a Hard Salary Cap fixed at a percentage of what the owners earn each year in the CBA.  

People like Scott Boras are making way too much money, and now people like the agents in the Caribbean representing 12 year olds, as well as Japanese baseball teams, have become free riders demanding negotiating rights, from owners who have no sense of what they are doing.

This has led to the bankruptcy of the Dodgers, to name but one team, as well as of the Mets, to name another.  

It all needs to be fixed.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Baseball needs to create a product that moves more quickly, gets done more quickly, has a shorter regular season, has more postseason, is fairer to all fans, has more opportunities for all teams to get into the postseason, does not overpay athletes or owners, and is a better product overall.

One other important notion would be for the American champion to play internationally against the winners of the Mexican and Japanese Leagues.  A shorter season would allow this, and more players would be interested in the World Baseball Classic then.