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Theoretical MLB expansion and realignment
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Post by jimed14 on Oct 21, 2017 19:55:43 GMT -5
I won't believe that they're shortening the season until I see it. And that's what is needed more than anything else. This is not 1920 anymore where they have pitchers who can throw 250 pitches in 2 days like batting practice.
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Post by philsbosoxfan on Oct 22, 2017 1:17:34 GMT -5
San Juan,PR and Mexico City,MX seem like good expansion city possibilities.
In spite of is penchant for wearing dunce hats, Ringolsby is a pretty well respected reporter.
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Post by cba82 on Oct 22, 2017 18:29:31 GMT -5
Fixing pace of play and length of games should be addressed as urgent priorities before taking up any of these proposals. I'm not sure I'd put a new superstructure on a listing ship.
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Post by jimed14 on Oct 22, 2017 18:52:39 GMT -5
Fixing pace of play and length of games should be addressed as urgent priorities before taking up any of these proposals. I'm not sure I'd put a new superstructure on a listing ship. Fixing the length of games is a terrible idea if you're talking about stupid gimmicks in extra innings.
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Post by cba82 on Oct 22, 2017 19:01:23 GMT -5
Fixing pace of play and length of games should be addressed as urgent priorities before taking up any of these proposals. I'm not sure I'd put a new superstructure on a listing ship. Fixing the length of games is a terrible idea if you're talking about stupid gimmicks in extra innings. Did I mention stupid gimmicks in extra innings? Let me check...no, it doesn't seem that I did.
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Post by soxfando on Oct 22, 2017 19:09:05 GMT -5
Fixing pace of play and length of games should be addressed as urgent priorities before taking up any of these proposals. I'm not sure I'd put a new superstructure on a listing ship. Baseball is a slow sport. Doesn't help that most replay reviews take 5 mins or that managers have 30 seconds to decide if they want to review a play. Any pitch clocks or whatever else isn't going to make that much of a difference. If they want to shorten commercial breaks though, I'd be for it.
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Post by jimed14 on Oct 22, 2017 19:22:29 GMT -5
Fixing the length of games is a terrible idea if you're talking about stupid gimmicks in extra innings. Did I mention stupid gimmicks in extra innings? Let me check...no, it doesn't seem that I did. Then I apologize. Then why is separate from changing pace of play? Since you listed length of game separately from pace of play is why I suspected that.
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Post by pedrofanforever45 on Oct 23, 2017 5:34:06 GMT -5
Fixing pace of play and length of games should be addressed as urgent priorities before taking up any of these proposals. I'm not sure I'd put a new superstructure on a listing ship. MLB is trying their best with it. Pitch clocks are going to be here by probably next season to start with. I'm really intrigued by the idea of having earpieces between the dugout, pitcher, and catcher in the games. It would take away the game calling by catchers, but it could put teams at a advantage if the pitching coach is good at calling games from the dugout. Not to mention all the time you save between mound visits and shaking off signs and laying down signs. There would be none of that with the earpieces. I doubt there would be signs from the catcher to the pitcher anymore if the earpieces work in baseball.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Oct 23, 2017 10:52:35 GMT -5
The nice thing about pace of play and expansion is that they're two different, unrelated things that human beings able to multitask can take on without having to do them in a particular order. This thread is about expansion/realignment. If anyone wants to talk about pace of play, by all means, start a thread. Two good reads on this subject: Jay Jaffe in SI: www.si.com/mlb/2017/10/19/major-league-baseball-expansion-proposal-realignmentPresents a much more realistic look at Ringolsby's proposal. Travis Sawchik in Fangraphs: www.fangraphs.com/blogs/thirty-two-is-a-magic-number-for-mlb/Sawchik takes his own stab at a 32-team realignment. I like that he keeps the leagues (not that I think they should, but in the sense I think that's more likley), but the suggestion that MLB do away with interleague play is pretty unrealistic at this point.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Oct 23, 2017 15:20:52 GMT -5
I don't understand why people don't like interleague. Does everyone just want to see the Blue Jays 58 times a season?
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Post by jimed14 on Oct 23, 2017 18:01:05 GMT -5
I don't understand why people don't like interleague. Does everyone just want to see the Blue Jays 58 times a season? What I'd really like to see is other AL teams more than 6 games a year. There are too many division games for sure. And any realignment should put all the west coast teams in the same division/league. There is no reason for there to be west coast teams in both the AL and NL.
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Post by daltonjones on Oct 23, 2017 19:39:21 GMT -5
Back in the mid 80's when I was first away from New England, there was a blurb or story in BA about minor league cities that consistently drew a million fans This got me thinking about a "new" Federal League. (I know they'd never call it that) I've worked it out in some detail a couple times since though not recently:
There is a "premiere" league generally like English Soccer. Huge cap, 40-man roster (maybe 30 in season), their playoffs put 2 teams in the Final Four.
A regular league with a somewhat smaller roster, somewhat lower and harder cap. One team in Final four. Consistently good times can move up, consistently bad Premier's can can get kicked down.
And the Federal League, small roster, very low cap, some sort of posting system, or 2 year limit on contracts. Their division winners, and the wild cards from the other leagues play a CWS style round robin for the last slot in the Final Four, with international leagues able to join the round robin in time. Possibility of moving up to regular league.
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ericmvan
Veteran
Supposed to be working on something more important
Posts: 8,925
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Post by ericmvan on Oct 23, 2017 20:41:21 GMT -5
I've given expansion and re-alignment a crazy amount of thought.
Four-team divisions for the purpose of playoff seeding are an abomination. Too many first-place teams, and you're bound to have a playoff team that wasn't good enough.
You want two leagues, each with two 8-team conferences, each split into two 4-team divisions, geographically. But playoff standings are based on conference record. Best record in each conference, best runner up, then the next two best records for the wild card.
You play 14 games against the teams in your division and 12 against the other teams in your conference. You play 6 games against teams in the other conference, which means you go to each city once, which means a single trip to any distant geographical region (e.g., West Coast). You play a single 3-game interleague series every year against each of the 4 teams in your geographically opposite division, alternating home and away each year, which thus includes all of the "traditional matchups" such as Yankees / Mets, but without grossly misbalancing the schedule. And you play an additional set of 4-game series against one of the other three divisions, rotating each year, so that the Red Sox would host the Cubs or Dodgers every six years (and they would host us in the year three years before and after).
That's 162 games. But every team plays just six 4-game series (all against division rivals) and no 2-game series. Scheduling is much easier. It's a 26-week season -- 6 weeks with 7 games (one each month, ideally), and 20 weeks with 6. You expand the first round of the playoffs to 7 games and cut a travel day from each round, as I put forth in another post.
Geekage re schedule fairness: Teams in a conference would have 7 x 12 + 8 x 6 = 132 games in common on their schedule. Each would have 6 extra games within their division, and there would be 24 interleague games that were in common within each division but completely different across them. You risk some unfairness by ignoring the 30 different games when you afford a playoff berth to the team with the best record, but it would probably only be a real concern if one division played two very tough divisions from the other league while the other played two very weak ones.
Picking the best remaining three records from both conferences to get the rest of the playing seeding has a larger shot of being unfair, if one conference were considerably stronger than the other.
But we can use historical data to estimate how often these schedule imbalances would create unfairness, and if necessary, come up with a system where individual divisions might get an adjustment to their win totals based on play outside the division.
Montreal should get a franchise. Austin or Carolina gets the other; if the Rays have to move, they both get one.
Realignment scheme next.
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Post by Guidas on Oct 24, 2017 15:44:31 GMT -5
Fixing pace of play and length of games should be addressed as urgent priorities before taking up any of these proposals. I'm not sure I'd put a new superstructure on a listing ship. Fixing the length of games is a terrible idea if you're talking about stupid gimmicks in extra innings. Best way to fix length of games without mucking with the rules. 1) Limit mound visits to one per pitcher, including pitcher catcher conferences (second visit by anyone and he has to come out). 2) Robo umps, which would standardize the strike zone based on batter's height and afford same calls on plate to lefties and righties and get rid of the gentleman's strike on 3-0.
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Post by Guidas on Oct 24, 2017 15:47:55 GMT -5
I've given expansion and re-alignment a crazy amount of thought. Four-team divisions for the purpose of playoff seeding are an abomination. Too many first-place teams, and you're bound to have a playoff team that wasn't good enough. You want two leagues, each with two 8-team conferences, each split into two 4-team divisions, geographically. But playoff standings are based on conference record. Best record in each conference, best runner up, then the next two best records for the wild card. You play 14 games against the teams in your division and 12 against the other teams in your conference. You play 6 games against teams in the other conference, which means you go to each city once, which means a single trip to any distant geographical region (e.g., West Coast). You play a single 3-game interleague series every year against each of the 4 teams in your geographically opposite division, alternating home and away each year, which thus includes all of the "traditional matchups" such as Yankees / Mets, but without grossly misbalancing the schedule. And you play an additional set of 4-game series against one of the other three divisions, rotating each year, so that the Red Sox would host the Cubs or Dodgers every six years (and they would host us in the year three years before and after). That's 162 games. But every team plays just six 4-game series (all against division rivals) and no 2-game series. Scheduling is much easier. It's a 26-week season -- 6 weeks with 7 games (one each month, ideally), and 20 weeks with 6. You expand the first round of the playoffs to 7 games and cut a travel day from each round, as I put forth in another post. Geekage re schedule fairness: Teams in a conference would have 7 x 12 + 8 x 6 = 132 games in common on their schedule. Each would have 6 extra games within their division, and there would be 24 interleague games that were in common within each division but completely different across them. You risk some unfairness by ignoring the 30 different games when you afford a playoff berth to the team with the best record, but it would probably only be a real concern if one division played two very tough divisions from the other league while the other played two very weak ones. Picking the best remaining three records from both conferences to get the rest of the playing seeding has a larger shot of being unfair, if one conference were considerably stronger than the other. But we can use historical data to estimate how often these schedule imbalances would create unfairness, and if necessary, come up with a system where individual divisions might get an adjustment to their win totals based on play outside the division. Montreal should get a franchise. Austin or Carolina gets the other; if the Rays have to move, they both get one. Realignment scheme next. Only if they get a domed stadium or retractable roof. Rays should move to Charlotte or San Antonio/Austin, and should've done it 10 years ago. I don't think the demographics support average MLB ticket prices in San Juan at the level needed to sustain an MLB franchise. Mexico City is dicey in recent years for other reasons.
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Post by Guidas on Oct 24, 2017 15:52:44 GMT -5
I don't understand why people don't like interleague. Does everyone just want to see the Blue Jays 58 times a season? I'd like it a whole lot more if the NL used the DH. Completely changing the rules based on who is the home team that day is down the street and over the hill from absurd. If they really want to be such "traditionalists" then they should make the DH optional - just any team decide whether to to use it or not at the beginning of the game (i.e they can't decide to use it from the 7th inning onward. You'll see it go away of a natural death very quickly. I hate watching pitchers hit. I hate cheap billionaires almost as much.
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Post by Guidas on Oct 24, 2017 15:54:28 GMT -5
Back to a 154 game regular season makes more sense. 7*22=154. "154 or Fight!"
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Post by pedrofanforever45 on Oct 25, 2017 22:16:56 GMT -5
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Post by Guidas on Oct 28, 2017 22:25:57 GMT -5
“Cure for common cold coming soon.” Just move em to Charlotte or Raleigh. The city/state will build them a stadium in a second.
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