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Baseball Primer Newsblog — The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand Tuesday, January 31, 2023MLB expansion: Nashville group led by Dave Stewart makes a pitch for Music City [$]Sub required.
RoyalsRetro (AG#1F)
Posted: January 31, 2023 at 10:17 AM | 46 comment(s)
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1. Der-K's no Kliph Nesteroff. Posted: January 31, 2023 at 10:36 AM (#6115262)West: SEA, OAK, SFG, LAA, LAD, SDP, ARI, COL
South: TEX, HOU, TBR, MIA, ATL, KCR, STL, San Antonio or Charlotte
Midwest: MIN, MIL, CIN, CLE, DET, PIT, CHC, CWS
East: TOR, NYY, NYM, BOS, PHI, BAL, WSN, Montreal
Top spot in each division gets a buy. First round of playoffs includes highest ranked 2 vs lowest ranked 3, and lowest 2 vs highest 3. Second round is seeded based on record.
Starship does not approve of the plan.
Naah. More likely you'll get 8 divisions of 4 teams, like the NFL.
It is a good idea to have all the teams in a division in the same time zone so the TV show is on at the same time every night.
With Charlotte instead of SA above, you could do that for every division except the four-teamer Colorado plays in.
Oakland would like a major-league team.
I have mostly pooh-poohed this grand ideas of ballpark complex development. But something about those "Vegas-style residencies" has my brain wondering: I think we all kinda know the old, traditional sports model is on its last legs. Cable/TV are disappearing, gambling is the revenue source now, league revenues are increasingly about national broadcasts and the playoffs, the actual Vegas seems a viable market now. If every team gets $230 M in revenue then local revenue becomes less important anyway. And of course, in terms of popularity and cultural nous, baseball lags behind football and even basketball now and it's an old fuddy-duddy sport.
So maybe the future of baseball entertainment is to be a "Vegas-style residency" for the blue-haired tourist. Are the Oak Ridge Boys still alive?
EDIT: And the God-fearing All-American family tourists of course.
You don't have to care about who wins or loses to enjoy watching a baseball game. I've 94% given up on having a favorite team, but still enjoy a well-executed curve ball, or a close play at second. It can be an aesthetic experience as much as a fandom one.
The NHL does have four of 8 each.
But I doubt baseball would be able to agree on that. Who else is going to sign up to be in an 8-team East with NYY, NYM, BOS? It would be much easier to create two new 4-team divisions by luring them out of existing ones, which is essentially how the NFL went from 6 to 8.
I'm sure the aesthetic experience is a large part of the reason his interest is waning.
Part of the problem is the aesthetics of the product sucked. If this was 1980s baseball with 2:30 game times, .260 league BA, 5 K/9 and 0.8 HR/9 I could enjoy the game for the sake of the game. I don't like the modern game as baseball.
TTO is a fine winning strategy. It even lets you use oafs at 2B. But, its not as fun to watch as 70/80s MLB.
Part of MLB's problem is being less well run than the NFL. Part of the problem is that the NFL is built for TV and MLB was built for radio. But, part of the problem is MLB has become less aesthetically pleasing to watch.
I didn't even mention game length here. Length is irrelevant if people enjoy what they're watching.
Baseball is best if played every day, which means you (ideally) have fans in the stands every day. Who have jobs and families and cannot stay out until 11:30 or midnight (accounting for traveling home) for a game that started at 7. But with 3:30 game times it can happen. So people have to leave early, reducing their enjoyment, which makes them question whether to attend a subsequent game.
All of the above.
Which sooner or later is inevitably going to turn sports into WWE-style "sports-entertainment" with predetermined outcomes. With this much money at stake, it's inescapable.
That doesn't seem remotely likely, let alone inescapable.
Naah. More likely you'll get 8 divisions of 4 teams, like the NFL.
The NHL does have four of 8 each.
Baseball has tried to be like the NFL since at least the 70s, whereas they've tried to be like the NHL since never.
OK, let's move the A's to Vegas and give new teams to Nashville and Montreal, just for fun:
AL East: NYY, TOR, BAL, BOS
AL Central: TBR, NAS, CLE, DET
AL Midwest: CWS, MIN, KCR, HOU
AL West: TEX, SEA, LAA, LVA
NL East: NYM, PHI, MON, PIT
NL South: MIA, ATL, WAS, CIN
NL Central: CHC, STL, MIL, COL
NL West: LAD, SDP, SFG, ARZ
Well, that's...pretty awful, actually. Never mind. (At least the Mets and the Pirates are in the same division again!)
AL North: CLE, DET, CHW, MIN
AL West: SEA, LAA, OAK, Las Vegas (expansion) (can move Oakland to Portland if needed)
AL South: HOU, TEX, KCR, COL
NL East: NYM, PHI, WAS, PIT
NL North: CHC, STL, MIL, TOR
NL West: SFG, LAD, SDP, ARI
NL South: FLA, ATL, CIN, Nashville (expansion)
You would need to get Toronto and Colorado to agree to switch leagues, but I think this could work.
That's nice and tight. Could also switch Toronto and Minnesota, the perk being that then all NL North teams are in the same time zone, and the AL North teams would then only have one team outside CST (instead of two CST and two EST).
North East: NYY, Bos, NYM, Phi (aka nuclear division)
South East: Miami, TB, Atlanta, Charlotte-Nashville (whichever gets a team)
Great Lakes: Toronto, Detroit, Cleveland, Milwaukee
Central East: Washington, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati
Mid-West 1: Cubs, ChiSox, KC, St Louis
Mid-West 2: Twins, Rockies, Rangers, Houston
South-West: Arizona, SD, LAD, LAA
North-West: Oakland-Vegas, SF, Seattle, Portland (expansion)
The Mid-West 2 is a mess but Minnesota and Colorado are always headaches with this. St Louis and the Cubs would insist on being in the same division.
AL East (7): Bos, NYY, NYM, Tor, Phi, Atl, Mia
AL West (7): Sea, SF, Oak, LAD, LAA, SD, Ari
NL East (8): Bal, Was, TBR, Pit, Cin, Det, Mil, Cle
NL "West" (8): StL, CHC, CHW, Min, Hou, Tex, KC, Col
This would essentially regionalize the divisions, esp the NL. Further, it groups larger markets together, though markets are fluid, and this would be difficult for the Marlins, D-backs and Royals. (Miami should stop heaving like a small market.) Of course, this is a pretty radical realignment. AL teams play interdivisional teams 7 times, intra-divisional teams roughly 18 times. NL teams play interdivisional teams 6 times each, and intra-divisional foes 16 times.
EASTERN CONFERENCE
East
Boston Red Sox
New York Mets
New York Yankees
Philadelphia Phillies
North
Cincinnati Reds
Cleveland Guardians
Detroit Tigers
Toronto Blue Jays
Mid-Atlantic
Baltimore Orioles
Charlotte expansion team
Pittsburgh Pirates
Washington Nationals
Southeast
Atlanta Braves
Miami Marlins
Nashville expansion team
Tampa Bay Rays
WESTERN CONFERENCE
Midwest
Chicago Cubs
Chicago White Sox
Milwaukee Brewers
Minnesota Twins
Southwest
Houston Astros
Kansas City Royals
St. Louis Cardinals
Texas Rangers
Pacific Coast
Colorado Rockies
Oakland/Las Vegas A’s
Seattle Mariners
San Francisco Giants
West
Arizona Diamondbacks
Los Angeles Angels
Los Angeles Dodgers
San Diego Padres
I don't know if it's going to be *likely* in the sense that pro sports will all degenerate into WWE-type scenarios, but given pro sports' open embrace of gambling over the last few years, I do think it's only a matter of time before one or more of the major leagues gets rocked by a game-fixing scandal.
At that point, the question becomes where we go from there. If the response is "we need to crack down upon and stop this kind of thing", as baseball did in 1920, then good, competitive sports will survive. But it's equally likely that the reaction will be "we need to hide this kind of thing better".
You're darn right it's a thing. Country music is mostly distinguishable from pop just by the song topic.
Expansion should mostly be about opening up new markets for television. Each new pair of teams is 162 television episodes.
Possibly, but widespread gambling and WWE-style outcomes that are scripted are inherently at odds.
Now, will MLB and other sports incorporate other elements of sports entertainment? Sure.
Which is one reason why the third team in New York push has always seemed pretty silly to me.
That's a fair point DL. Maybe that makes the 8 division solution more probable.
There's really no reason this has to be true, or at least no reason that it has to be a terrible thing. Baseball may be past its peak from a revenue standpoint, but it still brings in way more money than did a decade or two ago. If revenues decline a bit there will be less money to pay players and less money to support big debt-supported team acquisitions by billionaires, but there's no reason that baseball can't survive with a smaller economic pie. You might lose some talent to other sports if salaries don't keep pace with the NFL/NBA, but I think that would have a pretty marginal effect on the quality of MLB overall.
I'd love to see them go back to over the air broadcasts locally with streaming as the other option. Maximize the audience and the ad revenue. I'm tired of baseball playing to a decreasing number of old, rich people. Having a high dollar barrier to entry just makes it more likely people will pirate the broadcast. Accessibility will make baseball more popular. It's a better TV program than the ubiquitous talent shows and game shows.
Sure. More power to them, it it works. I do wonder if it will as far as teams and tepid attendance, but I'm not all up in the economic weeds. Maybe whatever mostly empty stadiums that exist for the regular season just aren't an issue?
Scripted outcomes fronted by the illusion of honest competition is the gambling industry's nirvana.
Cardinals games last year were drawing 200,000 households out of 1.2M available or 1/6 of the market. Viewership of a Cardinals game on cable is 10x higher than an over the air national broadcast game that doesn't involve the Cardinals and 20x-30x a game on cable not involving the Cardinals. Sports consistently gets the best ad rates because people are more likely to watch in real time.
MLB can go to the networks and say "Which TV market do you want me to increase baseball viewership by 10x (or more) by expanding?"
I suppose, if they have access to the scrips.
I just know the awful woman who is ordering me to Make it Rain hasn't caught on to this bounty yet, because on the list of SportsBook odds at FanDuel, there's nothing for WWE.
can you elaborate, because it seems I'm not the only one who is lost here....
I guess I should have said "fixed" instead of "scripted".
The WWE is scripted, but it doesn't claim to be otherwise. It's not a competitive sport, and nobody perceives it as such. It's just a show. So, obviously, there are no betting lines, just as there aren't any on Broadway productions.
Pro sports leagues with fixed outcomes, but which *do* pretend to be featuring legitimate competition, are free money for the gambling industry.
And the idea that there's this wall of separation between pro sports and gambling interests is naive at best, unless one believes that the weekly NFL injury reports are For Entertainment Only.
I'm not saying any of the major league pro leagues are fixed. Not at this point. But their all-in embrace of gambling interests doesn't inspire confidence that it will remain that way.
Future Hall of Famer Rob Manfred, no doubt, is certainly considering it.
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