There’s just no buttoning up Dandy Dan Schlossberg! As his take in the comments section show…
Gee, Phil, you let Bud Lite off easy. How about the travesty of interleague play, the distortion of league records, the idiocy of the wild-card, the multiple playoffs that make it a near-certainty the best teams don’t reach the World Series, the too-late gametimes of all the showcase events from the All-Star Game to the World Series, the ill-advised start times of weekend Games of the Week on FOX, TBS, and ESPN, the overlooking of the all-too-obvious steroids issue, the failure to impose a salary cap, the failure to keep the Yankees from operating in their own league, the travesty of the All-Star Game tie, the travesty of allowing fans to vote for All-Stars, etc. etc. Waiting til 2012 is awful too—Bud should have been fired years ago.
Perhaps a new commissioner will embrace the concept of two 15-team leagues, and schedule one interleague game every day, rather than 2 dedicated interleague periods, leaving a lone NL game on the schedule. Maybe he’ll recongize the necessity to go back to the balanced schedule, if for no other reason than to help the have-nots in the AL East have a fighting chance.
Bud will make the Hall of Fame. Of that I have no doubt. With an annual salary of $18 million, he’s likely done much better as commish than he did as Brewers’ owner, and he’s made the job a most desirable plum.
The travesty of the whole “contraction” issue - a total red herring - and the “this time it counts” nonsense surrounding the All- Star Game are just two of the strikes against Selig. Avoiding a work stoppage for 15-plus years is a genuine accomplishment.
But make no mistake about it, a change is overdue.
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1. Gamingboy Posted: November 30, 2009 at 04:14 PM (#3399039)Nixon went to China. This is roughly equiv. to Selig's internationalization efforts, such as the WBC and the outside-the-country games (Japan, Puerto Rico, etc.)
Nixon was president when man landed on the Moon, although he himself did little to nothing for it to happen. (This can be compared to Selig being commish when Ripken broke Gehrig's record, and to a lesser extent the Red Sox finally winning the WS)
Both started the "war on drugs". And both of them seemed/seem ignorant to the fact that said "war" should have been started years before.
Both were re-elected in landslides (although, to be fair, Selig only had to deal with his fellow rich people)
But both also made critical mistakes and lead to their downfall. And the TV camera isn't kind to either of them.
Nixon was a man of Shakespearian proportions. I don't know if Selig is quite that, but in the smaller universe of baseball he might be.
Okay, I was a bit overwrought with that. But....
Is the objective to find a worse commissioner?
The thought of interleague play every day is sickening. And does a balanced schedule really help the have-nots of the AL East? They still have to win more games against the haves.
Yes he's done some things I don't like (Interleague play) but that's not indicative of bad performance as much as a disagreement. MLB's online presence is terrific (much better than the NFL's in my opinion) and while he took awhile to get there I think his testing and enforcement policy on PEDs is fair and I think the revenue sharing program (yes yes Yankee Redneck, we know) has provided an opportunity for every team to compete. What I find interesting with Selig is the amount of grief he gets for things that didn't actually happen (Spider Man, contraction).
Disagree. It would only be one interleague game each day. Much easier to pretend it isn't really happening.
It would help a little, but not all that much, since even a balanced schedule would only mean a few less games against the Red Sox and Yankees per season.
It's also unclear whether Rogers (or Angelos, or the Tampa Bay owners) would be willing to give up the extra home games againt the Yankees and Red Sox.
Jerome Holtzman did.
BTW, how can you be against the wildcard and criticize long playoffs for not producing the best team as the winner at the same time?
This is a real question, and not a rhetorical one: What commissioner in the foreseeable future is NOT likely to be in the Selig mold, given the fact that he's going to be elected by, and accountable to the owners?
It's obvious that the basic conflict that many of us have with many of the trends in modern baseball is little more than a reflection of the fact that we have varying degrees of aesthetic concerns that simply don't enter into the thoughts of 30 men whose near total focus is always on the bottom line.
I can't stand the late starting times in the postseason; others hate the wild card; others hate interleague play; and nearly everyone here could probably do without Buck and McCarver. And yet since every one of those developments reflects a perceived positive incremental dollar value to those who own the game, how is it likely (in the long run, at least) that any of those decisions would ever have been made any differently, no matter who was the commissioner?
I mean I'd love to see a Bill Veeck (or even a racially reformed Landis) step up and defend the interests of someone besides the owners once in a blue moon, but it ain't gonna happen. For better or worse, another Selig is more or less inevitable.
Have a fighting chance at what? The Wild Card? Seems to me that the AL East produces the Wild Card as often as or more often than the AL West or AL Central does.
A balanced schedule will never happen again, though. The main point of going to the three-division format was to give each team as many games as possible in their home time zone. No team east of the Rockies wants to travel to the West Coast.
Didn't Fay Vincent pretty much prove that in a battle between the commissioner and the owners, the owners will win? There's no point in fighting the owners if they're just going to toss you out on your ass and do whatever they want anyway.
With rare exceptions, the Commissioner has been a mouthpiece for ownership pretty much ever since Landis kicked the bucket.
Is it really better to have one kid molested, every day, rather than having 20 kids molested non-stop for two three week periods on end?
Personally, I'd settle for a change of title. Calling the CEOs of sports leagues "commissioners" implies that they're the heads of "commissions," which in turn implies all that impartial best interests of the game crap.
I didn't say it was better. I said it was easier to ignore. Either way, I'm glad someone is thinking of the children.
Not sure it would help that much.
If you did a balanced schedule, assuming every team played 18 interleague games (as most do now), you;d have teams play 10 games against each of the other teams outside your division and 11 against the four teams in it. That's an awful lot of two-game (or five-game) series. (The AL had something similar in its first two seasons with 14 teams and two divisions; teams in one division faced teams in the other 10 or 11 times. By 1979, it was altered to 13 games against teams in your own division, 12 gainst each team in the other, even though it resulted in the White Sox playing 84 games against the East and only 78 vs. the West.)
Perhaps you could install a second wild-card team, which would meet the other wild-card in a best-of-3 series while the division champions rested and set up their pitching rotations (or have the division winners with the second- and third-best records already begin their series, with only the division winner with the best record getting the extra rest).
I tend to agree with the comment that a balanced schedule will never happen again. I think you'd sooner see geographical realignment to minimize 10:05 p.m. (Eastern) starts from Seattle and Los Angeles and, conversely, games beginning at 10 a.m. (Pacific) on Sundays from New York and Cleveland.
Or the two Wild Cards could have a single play-in game. That would be pretty exciting.
I dunno, but by god it's pretty clear that some children need to be taken away.
Didn't Fay Vincent pretty much prove that in a battle between the commissioner and the owners, the owners will win? There's no point in fighting the owners if they're just going to toss you out on your ass and do whatever they want anyway.
With rare exceptions, the Commissioner has been a mouthpiece for ownership pretty much ever since Landis kicked the bucket.
Exactly. Or to put it in the vernacular, Money Talks and Bullshit Walks.
Based on everything I have read about Selig, his style is to get in front of whatever direction he perceives an issue will go and then use his power to gather the final support necessary to get his new position accomplished. All the while raking in favors which he can use later on other issues. He's a consensus-builder, not an idea man, and I'm guessing most of what we give him credit/blame for are things that would have happened anyway with someone else in charge. If you want to give him credit personally, it should probably be for implementing things with maximum support and minimum owner infighting. Which, as much as I don't like him, is a major achievement given the egos he has to work with.
Milwaukee could move back to the AL Central and Kansas City could slide over to the AL West.
If you did a balanced schedule, assuming every team played 18 interleague games (as most do now), you;d have teams play 10 games against each of the other teams outside your division and 11 against the four teams in it. That's an awful lot of two-game (or five-game) series.
I'd go with 8 inter-division and 16 intra-division games. It's still unbalanced, but at least it's consistent. The child-molestation of inter-league play could also be converted from the current seemingly arbitrary set-up to a straightforward division vs division format (plus the one obligatory "rivalry" series -- there's no good reason to have six Dodgers/Angels, Cubs/White Sox, Giants/A's, Nationals/Orioles, Marlins/Rays, Cardinals/Royals or Mets/Yankees games every year).
Compete for the Free Money Lottery perhaps. Yes, yes, I know.
Don't forget to mention that legendary Jays/Phillies rivalry.
That, and with the WC team now being hugely disadvantaged, you'd have to have a playoff to break ties between first place teams who both qualify for the playoffs (Like 2005 AL East, and 2006 NL West).
It is shocking that I, of all people, would go with the over-the-top absurdity tactic, huh? Next thing you know I'll be using cynicism, sarcasm and snark.
Yeah, save the criminal perversion references for discussions of the DH.
That's fine. You play any necessary tie-breakers on Monday, the play-in game on Tuesday, start the playoffs on Wednesday.
Maybe I'm autistic or something. Or maybe I'm just allergic to hyberbole here. While I don't expect everyone to write here as precisely as they would were they working on a dissertation, I expect the level of discourse to be higher than it is on one of those cable news network talking head shows.
NYY
BAL
NYM
<strike>PHL</strike>
<strike>NYM</strike>
PHL
WAS
PIT
CIN
TOR
DET
MIL
CLE
CHW
CHC
STL
KC
MIN
ATL
TB
MIA
HOU
SEA
OAK
ANA
TEX
LA
ARI
SF
COL
Seven division winners go to the playoffs. The eighth playoff team would be the best record of the divisional losers (WC) whose payroll did not exceed luxury tax limits.
Seems like you contracted the Marlins.
Nah, he contracted the Padres. Renamed the Marlins to "MIA," which seems strangely appropriate.
EDIT: And Baltimore is south of Philly, so why not flip those teams?
Take this situation. 2 NL East teams tie for first with 95 wins. NL Central is won with 94 wins. NL West is won with 83 wins. The other WC teams has 84 wins. Do you really want a situation where a team which ties for the best record in baseball has to play a tiebreaker against the other top team, then an elimination game against a team with 11 fewer wins but an extra day of rest, then game 1 of the LDS on consecutive days while a team which played essentially the same schedule and won a dozen fewer gets to rest and set up its rotation merely because of geography?
If you are going to a balanced schedule, eliminate divisions and take the top 4 or 6 teams and be done with it.
I don't like interleague play either, but there hasn't been any integrity of the schedule since it ceased to be balanced.
The October schedule is just as big a concern. When you don't start molesting a child until 8:30 PM on a school night, don't be surprised when the kid falls asleep before the end.
Having the NL East runners up play against the AL East in interleague play, but then compete straight up with NL Central teams for the Wild Card absolutely impacts the integrity of the schedule. A team that has to line up against the Yanks or Boston six times shouldn't be equated with a team that gets six against KC.
I love you.
In a manly, non-homerotic way, natch.
There was nothing virtuous about the AL's balanced schedule from the late 70s through the mid 90s. Playing more games outside your division than inside your division, particularly when you're not actually competing against the teams in the other division for anything, was an absolute travesty.
Yes, exhibition games should be played to the bitter end. The biggest "travesty" of that All-Star game was that the postured angst from people who wanted to see mud on Selig's face resulted in the All-Star game determining home field advantage of the World Series.
As opposed to the calendar.
The two teams are, of course, the Marlins A Squad (led by Captain HanRam) and the Marlins B Squad (championed by Commander Cody Ross).
BOS - NYY - NYM
PHL - BAL - WAS - PIT - TOR
DET - CLE - CHW - MIL - MIN
CHC - STL - CIN - KC - TEX
ATL - TB - MIA - HOU
SEA - OAK - SD - COL
LA - ANA - ARI - SF
The final playoff spot comes via a Wild Card from any division other than the NEC (NYY/BOS/NYM). Luxury tax only applies to non-NEC teams.
By the end of his reign, Landis had been reeled in also.
The calendar was at least neutral.
Actually, Landis was a mouthpiece for the owners throughout his reign. The fiction of Landis as *independent* was just that. Like Bowie did with Charlie Finley, Landis only disciplined owners who were upsetting the apple cart in one way or another.
-- MWE
Not necessary. Just make it a winner take all comp between those two and other mega-market clubs. Or...
BOS - NYY - NYM - LA - ANA
DET - CLE - BAL - TOR
PHL - WAS - PIT - CIN
CHW - MIL - MIN - KC
CHC - STL - TEX - COL
ATL - TB - MIA - HOU
SEA - OAK - SD - ARI - SF
Straight WC comp for last playoff spot.
I think I could live with that.
Not sure how that's a selling point.
The old method had nothing going for it. The new method is slightly better. It at least awards HFA based on something. There are other ways that would be a slight improvement on that, though there is no perfect method.
Just imagine the noises that would come out of Larry Luccino.
And, I have to say, I think I'd largely agree with him.
Right -- he wasn't independent. However, in the beginning, he wasn't completely under the Lords' thumbs either (except in terms of property rights). He was a tool of the Lords -- a public mouthpiece, but also an instrument to squash political rivals amongst their own ranks. However, Landis did have one weapon to use of his own -- player control. He lost that when he lost the battle over the farm systems.
The Wild Card can suck it. Teams that play 162 games and don't finish in first place deserve nothing. They are not the best, and a few games in October won't be convincing me of anything.
It is the lesser of the current evil. The calendar is not subjective.
>>The old method had nothing going for it.<<
It did not allow randomness or subjectivity to determine home field advantage.
>>>The new method is slightly better.<<
I vehemently disagree.
>> It at least awards HFA based on something.<<<
That "something" is hardly related to the teams playing. "Something" is not always better than nothing.
How is the All-Star game method either random or subjective? There aren't figure skating judges out there weighing degree of difficulty? HFA isn't granted to the team that scores the most runs in an inning to be determined at a later date. Two teams comprised of players from each league compete in a game. The winning league's teams are awarded HFA in that year's World Series. Neither team has a meaningful structural advantage during the game. It's straightforward and fair.
Are there potentially better ways to determine HFA? Without question. But the old method wasn't one of them.
Atlantic: bos nyy nym phi tor
Southeast: bal was atl fla tb
Central: pit cle cin det
Scheduling: 12 games vs each team outside your division. Atlantic and Southeast would play either 13 or 14 games against each division opponent, Central 14 games vs. each foe.
BASEBALL WEST
Midwest: chc cws mil kc stl
Continental: min hou tex ari col
Pacific: sea sf oak lad laa sd
Scheduling: 8 games vs. each team outside your division. Midwest and Continental would play 18 or 19 against each division opponent, Pacific 16 or 17 games vs. each foe.
Kansas City and Minnesota can be switched if desired.
Two wild-cards in each league, no east-west play.
If you're a Baseball East team, you no longer have games outside your time zone. Great for TV scheduling.
That's how I feel about divisions.
edit: Damn it. I guess I owe Vaux a coke.
That doesn't make any sense at all, you can be second, third, fourth... hell you can even be fifth.
NYY, NYM, BOS, PHL, TOR, BAL, WAS, NJ
DET, CLE, CWS, CHC, CIN, MIL, MIN, PIT
ATL, HOU, TEX, STL, FLA, TB, KC, COL
LA, ANA, SD, SF, OAK, SEA, AZ, Portland
Four 8-team Leagues, no wildcard, no inter-league, 154 or 161 games.
Although I'd definitely prefer a system like that, the reason it'll never get done is because (and I'm not sure I'm paraphrasing) it's damn hard to sell a 10th or 14th place team. Although in reality the team would be just as far from a playoff spot as under the division format (in most years) psychologically speaking, there's a big difference between being in 10th place and being in 4th, even if you have the same record.
<mumble>Don't come back in a dress </mumble>
6 playoff teams--3 division winners and 3 wild cards--per league seems an all-right number. That would mean 1 additional playoff series in each league, which would mean extending the playoffs by about 10 days.
The regular season could be shortened by 6 games and started an average of 10-12 days earlier in the year, so that the whole endeavor including playoffs only takes about a week longer than it does now. The first round gate receipts could be shared among all the teams, to account for the revenue loss of shortening the regular season, but the playoff teams themselves could get a bonus from the central fund.
2009 would have had
AL
Texas vs New York
Detroit vs Boston
Minnesota vs Los Angeles
NL
Florida vs Los Angeles
San Francisco vs Philadelphia
Colorado vs St. Louis
I think the best solution is randomly drawn divisions each season, like in the UEFA Champions' League. It creates a marketable event, and gives every team not the Yankees or Red Sox the hope that they don't end up in or the fear that they will end up in a 'Group of Death' like the AL East.
Now THAT sounds like fun. But what do you do about the travel issues? You could quite easily end up with a division of NYM, TEX, CHW, SD, SEA or something that has to fly way too far way too often.
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