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1. McCoy Posted: March 19, 2009 at 03:29 AM (#3108059)Billion dollar company and they are asking taxpayers to pony up money for their own profits. I guess monkey see monkey do.
Mesa is poor, anyway, and in this wintry economic climate I can't see the Cubs getting much more than maybe a new clubhouse.
Maybe it's... SHOVEL-READY!
Seriously, Mesa could very well call the bluff: "OK, where you gonna go?"
Same here (I swear). I'm making the coffee now. I imagined Jose Mesa with a petulant spoiled brat face sitting in a corner. I need more sleep.
Sounds like negotiations have taken a turn for the worse.
And why should anyone ever listen to a guy whose first and last names so clearly got reversed on his birth certificate? Everytime I hear that name on the radio, I think it must be some kind of joke.
Not to mention that the Royals and Indians also train in Arizona. In the AL Central, it's just the Tigers and Twins in Florida now.
The Cactus League is almost the same size as the Grapefruit League now, isn't it?
That might change now that the Dodgers are there.
Which might explain why the Cubs are suddenly making more noise to upgrade their facility.
Yes, 16-14 Grapefruit at the moment.
It'll be 15 a piece when the Reds move after this year, right?
Won't they have to find someone to move with them? You can't have a league with an odd number of teams, can you?
In Spring Training you can. Since you're not playing series, teams can take single days off. Plus, you've got split squad games to cover the difference if every team wants a game on a particular day.
There are three ways they can change this -
1) Expansion
2) Contraction
3) Doing away with the "league" structure entirely, and going with an NBA/NHL-style schedule, where there are interleague games every day.
All three of those present bigger problems than just keeping the 16/14 format does.
You really don't see the difference. To implement a 15-15 league split, Major league baseball would have to go to split squad games, have two teams sit out entire series at a time, every series, or God forbid, offer us interleague baseball every damn day of the season. If none of those appeal to you, then there is no fix to the current split, save contraction or expansion.
And why is this an issue now? The major leagues had a 14-12 split from 1977 to 1993, and I can't remember anyone ever complaining about the ridiculous unfairness problem.
No it's not. See post #22. Try getting 30 teams to agree to each take a couple of weekends off per season. It's not like the odd team out can play on friday and Sunday but not Saturday.
Yeah, I know, interleague. But interleague is a far worse abomination that 16/14, so if I have to pick my battles, that is priority 1
The unfairness that existed then was the AL balanced schedule, where teams played more games against the other division than within their own.
There are three ways they can change this -
1) Expansion
2) Contraction
3) Doing away with the "league" structure entirely, and going with an NBA/NHL-style schedule, where there are interleague games every day.
If interleague play is here, it's here. I'd rather not have it, but we have it. I not only don't understand the problem with having one active IL series at a time throughout most of the season, I think it's a stupidly huge revenue giveaway to not do it that way. Cleveland/Florida isn't interesting or special when there are 14 other IL matchups going on. But. Every night on the MLB network, play the IL game for the night, black it out in home markets (double home markets, whatever, if teams want to #####) and sit back. It would murder. And, it would fill the void of TBS and WGN by having baseball on every night (ESPN nights excepted, of course.) Different baseball. Different teams. All the teams, with no bias towards the Yankees or Red Sox. Expanding the fanbase every single night, while also giving your new network a flagship banner product, and balancing the fairness issue.
Cleveland/Florida isn't interesting or special no matter how you slice it.
Really, the only "interesting" matchups are matchups between division rivals.
That was infuriating.
Maybe not, but I'd sure as #### watch it over being in Austin, getting the Rangers maybe 25 nights a year on FoxSW, the Astros probably 100, and now I've lost my nightly Braves/Cubs choices. I would *love* to watch three game series that rotate teams, the DH rule... See every player in both leagues. You prefer NL ball or AL ball? Guess what, it's a 50/50 split. You hate the fact that the national coverage deals are one-two games a week starting in June? Guess what, every night. You hate that when the national coverage *is* showing something, it weighs way too heavily for 3-4 teams? Guess what, you're basically guaranteed even splits.
EDIT: Not that I have anything against spreading interleague play throughout the season... what I am against is MORE interleague play. I'm too lazy to do the math - how much would you have to expand interleague play to cover a 15-15 split between leagues?
And MLB Network can do all of that, but actually show division games between AL Central or NL West teams. There's nothing that adding a season filled with interleague games on the air that can't be delivered by intraleague or intradivision games, with the added bonus that those teams are competing with one another for a season-long prize.
1) The point of this is not interleague play or anything else. The point is to have six 5-team divisions. My biggest problem is that one division (thankfully with my team) has 4 teams, 4 have 5, and one has 6.
2) You're speaking as yourself. The point is that this would be a much easier sell to the average to casual to very casual fan, and it would.
How so? You haven't quite explained this.
and the Lions....and the Pistons....
(why did I leave NY?)
Do you need to sell a plan like this to casual fans? They will probably be oblivious. It doesn't really make a difference in their viewing lives.
I don't think it would have to be expanded. Teams typically play about 50 series a year, including 5 IL series. Unless I'm going about this the wrong way, teams under a new format would have to play IL every 15th series, or 3-4 in a season.
OK, the season is 26 weeks long, so 52 series. Divided by 15 team pairs, that's an average of 3.4 per team, the same number I came up with in #38 using a different method.
If it actually decreases the number of interleague games, I'd be all for it.
Week 1. 2 series. A vs a and B vs b
Week 2. C and D vs c and d
.
.
.
Week 8. O and A vs o and b
.
.
.
Week 15. N and O vs o and a
Week 15 ends on Jul 19 this year. The season is more than half over and each team has played 2 series.
I fear it would open the door to more interleague games. Bud would decide to keep the three-week break for the midseason exhibition schedule, but then add extra IL games on top.
Additionally, a 15-15 league split would make it that much harder for the MLB braintrust, upon waking up and realizing what an atrocity interleague is, to get rid of it. Sure, it's probably a pipedream, but it's mine.
One Gracie? Is the other team involved in a threesome?
And nobody takes off Fri,Sat,Sun, or Wed either I believe, and nobody takes off three in a row.
This might have happened, were it not for the "rivalry" series.
Mets-Yankees and White Sox-Cubs are pretty much singlehandedly keeping interleague play alive.
Most seasons there are no Friday-Saturday-Sunday days off for any team, particularly since there are few multipurpose stadia any longer. And of course, it has more to do with the fact that teams play series, rather than single games. The NBA, NHL and, even for a couple of seasons, the NFL could get away with an odd number of teams because of the fact the schedule doesn't contain series. Baseball could, but it would require 3 or 4-day breaks.
I count twohandedly.
That would be fine.
"offer us interleague baseball every damn day of the season"
That would also be fine.
"expansion"
And that would be fine as well.
Pick one and make it happen. Now.
That would be fine.
That would be painful. I hate the frigging day off between Opening Day and Game 2, and the day after the All-Star Game. Random 3-or-4 day breaks every 15 series all season would be miserable.
That would also be fine.
Not if it paves the way to expansion of interleague baseball.
And that would be fine as well.
I'm OK with this one, though I don't see it anytime soon.
If there were no wildcard, I would get on board the objections to the 5-5-4, 5-6-5 formats. But with a backdoor route into the playoffs for all non-division winners, the unfairness seems muted to me.
Well, it's patently unfair that the teams in the AL West only have to compete with three other teams for a playoff spot, while the teams of the NL Central have to get through five. There's no way to rationalize it, but unless you root for one of the teams getting the shaft, it's not something that'd occur to you.
Is it harder for a team in the NL Central to compete for a playoff spot than a team in the AL East that isn't NY or Boston?
If that's the problem, there's another solution -
Split the leagues into two divisions each, with eight teams in each NL division and seven teams in each AL division.
Questions for you:
1) Do you root for one of the teams in the NL Central that gets screwed by the current setup?
2) If your answer to #1 was "no", then who gives a #### about your validation of the current setup?
Yes, it's the divisional setup that has kept the Pirates down.
That's a jackass way to set it up. Instead, why not use the dead time for scheduling the two idle teams' cross-country road trips, since they'd already have that time eaten up by travel days anyway? On Day 1, the Dodgers and Mariners are idle, traveling to series scheduled to start on Day 2 against the Mets and Yankees, respectively. On Day 2, the Dodgers and Mariners play their games, and the Red Sox and Marlins are idle, traveling to Day 3 games against the Rockies and Rangers. Etc.
It'd make things harder for the guy who builds the schedule, but if it's his happiness or that of every baseball fan on the planet, it's a pretty easy call.
No, it's not. But I'd like to know that if they eventually ARE good in 2012, they don't get screwed out of a playoff spot so that the path for the Angels can be a little bit easier.
While the theory that it should be harder to compete for a playoff in a 6-team division, has that really happened in practice. Does it typically take more wins to claim the NL Central? Going off memory, that doesn't seem to be the case. And again, with the wildcard fallback helps mitigate the systemic unfairness.
Still seems the Jays and O's, slotted in with two big market behemoths, have a tougher road to a postseason berth than any NL Central clubs.
And for your system in 57 to work would require much more cross-country travel and more short series.
Of course a non-NY/Bos AL team just made the World Series last year. It's harder to win the Wild Card in the NL than in the AL because the NL has more teams. You're getting hung up on looking at specific teams and current situations - the Red Sox are a juggernaut against whom nobody can compete, the Pirates are a laughingstock, etc.
The probability of a team from the NL Central making the playoffs is 23.1% - (1/6) to win division, (5/6)*(1/13) to win wild card. The probability of a team from the AL West making the playoffs is 31.8% - (1/4) to win division, (3/4)*(1/11) to win wild card. I'd think that statistics-based baseball fans might appreciate the inherent unfairness in 23.1% vs. 31.8% (or, expressed as batting averages, that's a difference of 0.231 vs. 0.318).
For a second, before I got to the Pistons part, I was wondering where the hell you were that the TV schedule was dominated by Detroit Tigers and Seibu Lions coverage.
If the Pirates are good and so are the Cubs, Cards, Brewers, and Astros then yeah it makes it harder for a team to go to the playoffs. In the last 7 years the Astros have finished 2nd 5 times and have gone to the playoffs twice. If they were in an unbalanced 4 team division that did not have the Cards and Cubs in it then they would be going to the playoffs all of the time. Same goes for the Cubs and Cards. Unless you remove the two bottom teams removing even one of the top teams and another team makes it significantly easier for a team to win enough games to go to the playoffs.
Furthermore good teams require other teams to spend more or at least to gobble up more resources whether that be at the scouting level, developmental level, or at the major league level. Sure the Pirates can develop a good young core but as they get older and more expensive the Pirates will be faced with competition that is willing to spend at least twice as much as they do for that talent.
Yup. Good for them. Doesn't change the fact that the division has two of baseball's biggest revenue generators/spenders in the game, year-in, year-out, and competing against them for a playoff spot is difficult.
First, I don't really see why the Pirates chances to make the playoffs should necessarily be compared to the Angels'. They're not competing against each other in any meaningful way. And, as noted above, the AL teams had a reduced chance of making the playoffs from 1977-93 compared to their NL brethren, and I can honestly say I never heard a word about this unfairness.
Second, I understand that on a pure, mathematical sense, an NL Central team has a reduced chance of making the playoffs. But that hasn't been manifest in real life, in large part because the Central is where only one true large revenue club resides, with several small market clubs. Most years, it hasn't taken greatness to win the NL Central.
If and when the situation arises when NL Central teams seem to be genuinely handicapped in their efforts to reach baseball's postseason due to the divisional disparity, I'll be happy to revisit the argument. But to me, the revenue differences seem like a far bigger example of unfairness than the uneven number of teams.
And what's wrong with fixing problems before they become disasters? Haven't you ever heard of preventative maintenance?
Of course it has. You just don't notice it because you write off the Pirates and Reds as lost causes. Since the introduction of the Wild Card, the NL Central has produced 14 division winners and 5 wild cards - that's 3.17 playoff appearances per team. The AL West has produced 14 division winners and 3 wild cards - that's 4.25 playoff appearances per team. That's an extra playoff appearance per team every 13 or 14 years. It's not huge, but it's real. Individual NL Central teams will make fewer playoff appearances, on average, than teams in other divisions; it's a mathematical certainty.
It may not be as big a deal as revenue disparity, and, honestly, it's not something that I spend a lot of time obsessing over. But it is real, it does exist, and there's really no way to argue otherwise.
Again, I don't see the relevance of comparing the Pirates to the A's. They aren't competing for the same spots. So the A's have a better chance of grabbing one of the two available AL playoff berths than the Pirates have of grabbing one of the two NL berths. How is that different than the 77-93 period, when NL teams had a better chance than their AL counterparts? Where was the handwringing then?
Sure, and my argument is, has the actual path to the playoffs for any individual team in the NL Central been more difficult than say, the path to the playoffs for the Blue Jays? Or to keep it in the NL, more difficult than it is for an NL East team. Has the required level of play for playoff entry been higher? It seems hard to argue that it has.
If and when the time comes that the existence of six teams in the division is consistently creating an unfair competency burden to qualify for the playoffs, the objections to me remain theoretical, not genuine. And considering that three of the teams are among the smallest revenue clubs in baseball, and two others are no more than middle of the pack, I don't think that day will come.
They're competing for the same goal - winning the World Series. And the A's have an easier path.
It's not, except that the difference between a (1/7) and (1/6) playoff chance is less than the difference between (1/6) and (1/5) or (1/5) and (1/4). I suspect if this site existed between those years, it would have come up.
The three worst AL East teams (BAL, TOR, TB) have made 3 playoff appearances since the introduction of the Wild Card - Baltimore in '96 and '97, and Tampa last year. The three worst NL Central teams (MIL, CIN, PIT) have made 2 playoff appearances - Milwaukee last year and Cincy in '95 (Cincy also lost a game 163 in 1999). These aren't huge differences, and I'm not at all saying that the Pirates or Reds would have made multiple playoff appearances but for the 6-team division they're stuck in.
In order for Toronto to win their division they need to be better than 4 other teams. In order for the Pirates to win their division they need to be better than 5 other teams. Again, you're getting too caught up in the identities of the specific teams. There's no guarantee that the Red Sox will be a dominant behemoth forever or that the Pirates and Reds will be pathetic losers from now to the end of time.
I don't understand why you don't understand that the issue is whether it will be a problem in the future, rather than whether it was a problem in the past. As teams alternate between good and bad, cheap and flush, the relative strengths of divisions will change, but the inequity will remain.
I'm not getting caught up in the identities. I'm caught up in the very real revenue disparities that exist within the divisions.
And yes there's no guarantee the Red Sox will be a dominant behemoth, but the chances are good that the Red Sox will retain a significant revenue advantage over every team in the NL Central, save one. And they will never be the largest revenue team in the AL East.
The fact is, if you swapped the third-best team in the NL Central with the third-best team in the AL East any year over the 14 years of the wild card system, the AL East's team's chances of making the playoffs would have been enhanced and the chances of the displaced NL team's would be reduced virtually every year. Hell, it's probably true of the second-best team in the NL Central. And that's because the structural disadvantage of playing in a six-team division is not as meaningful as the structural disadvantage of playing in a division with two of the sport's revenue powerhouses.
And I think your bottom 3 vs. bottom 3 is misleading, because it ignores the fact that Houston or Chicago, the third-best team in the NL Central in that time span (Toronto's equal), have both made multiple playoff appearances.
And I'm not writing off Pittsburgh or Cincinnati. There's no reason either of those teams can't be competitive at points in the future, particularly because they happen to have the good fortune of playing in a division with three other teams that aren't huge revenue generators.
That's why I say I'll wait until it actually becomes a hindrance to playoff participation before this argument resonates strongly with me - I don't think it's going to happen.
But, if you must even it up, then I'm all for JRE's suggestion of two divisions in each league. And if it makes you happy, you can shift two NL teams over to the AL, because I never thought it was a problem with the old system, even in the days when the AL East had six teams as good as any in the AL West.
Fair enough, but I think it's self-explanatory. Or rather, it's intuitive, and I don't get any spidey-sense tingling that the intuition is wrong. A casual fan is just that. I'm not going to treat them like ESPN does and imply that all they want is home runs and slam dunks, but what brings them is the unique, the interesting, and the spectacular. Sure, to you or me a game between divisional rivals battling for first in late July is a key series. We know the storylines, we know most of the players from any team, we can find our thread of enjoyment in any number of things in any MLB game. The casual fan knows stars, he knows novelty. You can present him with new intrigue every 3 nights.
Because of the correlation that exists between revenue and success, it's likely that, at any given time in the future, more of Boston, New York, Baltimore, and Toronto will be good at the same time than of Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, St. Louis, and Houston.
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