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How would you fix baseball?
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Post by patford on Sept 25, 2019 20:57:47 GMT -5
1. (and only) Electronic strike zone. It could be as complicated as a rectangular cuboid which adjusts to each batter or as simple as a rigid rectangle which remains the same for all batters.
There are many judgement calls in sports which could never be called by a device. Football is full of such interpretive calls (holding, interference, etc.) but the strike zone is one that should be easy to implement.
I'm convinced that even the simplest system would be a vast improvement over what we now have. And I'd love to see the front office discussion if it was being seriously considered by MLB.
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Post by pedrofanforever45 on Sept 25, 2019 21:00:11 GMT -5
I'm all for the automated strike zones, no time outs, and whatever. MLB has got to do something with extra innings and make it end at a certain point. Ohh and the games last too long. The pitch clock will help, but not much I think. The best idea I've seen to make games go shorter, is to not change anything, but the count. 3 balls take a walk. 2 strikes and you're out. It tells the batter to be more aggresive because he has fewer mistakes to make. It increases the action of the game. It would also allow starting pitching to be more relevant. All of a sudden, starters can go longer because they're throwing fewer pitches. This also leads to less pitching changes and such. It's the only fair thing that I can come up with that doesn't change anything but the count of the batter. I don't care about game length, and I don't think most people do either, if there's stuff going on. It's the dead time that makes baseball unbearable to watch. Like, a 13-12 game is going to be naturally long. There's nothing you can really do about it. A 3-2 game shouldn't last 4 hours. I don't think you can mess with balls and strike counts. It's too fundamentally changing and it's culturally ingrained. In fact, so much that our legal system uses it; ergo, "Three Strikes" Sentencing Laws. Ties suck too. Maybe after 12 innings they should put a runner on 2B or even 3B. It just kind of becomes hokey like the shootout in hockey. Though the equivalent would be to end the game on a home run derby. Lol at the above quote saying I won't let them have a opinion. You can say whatever you want, doesn't mean I have to agree with it. I'm glad I'm not the only one who sees what I see on here. Anyways, moving on. RedSoxfan2, I think this is the perfect rule change to shorten up the games for good. Shortening the count would simply make the games shorter and make the game flow better. This would increase the action of the game, without interfering with any statistics. The only thing that would happen is that the strikeouts and walks would become depressed in value compared to today's baseball. I'm perfectly okay with that considering strikeouts are already depressed considering every batters' approach of swinging for the fences on 2 strikes now. The time of game does matter. Red Sox games are almost 3 and a half hours long these days. A regular MLB game is almost at 3 hours and 15 minutes. This is a serious problem and one that is turning TVs off. It could cause baseball to become more of a regional sport like hockey soon; we could be already there actually. Maybe you don't see it as a problem, but it is a big problem. I'm all for the pitch clocks on top of shaving the counts. Make baseball as close to a 2 and a half hour game as possible, so kids can go to bed and watch a full game. So people can go to sleep with a full night's rest and seeing the whole game, instead of turning the game off and seeing the results the next day. I can't tell you how many batters are taking first pitch strikes with no desire to swing a bat. In fact, countless at bats I see are being wasted by looking at 2 or 3 pitches before deciding to swing the bat. Like that's 2 minutes each at bat just watching a batter letting pitches go by. It drives me insane. Swing the bat, be aggresive. Man, I loved Nomar Garciaparra because he would look for that first strike everytime and almost always swing on the first pitch. Baseball needs to go back to this and shaving the counts would enforce it or they'll be out. Shaving the counts of each batter would improve these things- -Increase action sooner -Help with injuries and durability (less pitches being thrown) -Less pitching changes -Force hitters to be more aggresive changing the approach in baseball, maybe putting more balls in play. You're not getting rid of commercials these days. You're not getting rid of pitchers warming up. You're not getting rid of foul balls and shouldn't punish a batter for fighting a pitch off. This is the best idea I can come up with to make the game more fluid. |
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Post by beasleyrockah on Sept 25, 2019 21:04:46 GMT -5
I'll focus on other aspects: make the game presentation, both on TV and in-stadium, appealing to 18-40 year olds instead of focusing solely on children and senior citizens.
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on Sept 26, 2019 11:45:29 GMT -5
1. Pitching clock. I think this is an obvious one. 2. Batters aren't allowed to call time (or maybe get one timeout) - I think 1 and 2 are redundant, or at least if you implement 1 you don't need 2. Most of the annoying timeouts batters call are because pitchers take a long time to pitch and hitters' timing gets disrupted. I don't want to ban hitter timeouts because they should be allowed to call it if there's something that genuinely started nagging at them.3. End the juice ball era. I want to see hitters not try to crank home runs every at bat and just turning the game into a HR derby. Christian Vazquez should not have 22 HR. 4. Shrink the strike zone a bit to keep the ball in play more often than not. - Yeah, no. The umps are bad enough, let's not fundamentally alter their entire job by making them call a new zone. This would be an entire nightmare.5. End the shift. I want more balls in play and this increases a hitters aptitude to not worry about launch angles as much. - James already tackled this one.5. Go back to 4 pitch IBB. This is a small one, but this isn't a time saver and I like seeing the odd instance of a pitcher screwing up and throwing the ball away. - This isn't as bad as some of the first ideas you proposed but this also isn't something that would "fix" baseball. I'm not going to all of a sudden start buying tickets because pitchers have to throw intentional walks.6. bullpen arms need to face a minimal of 3 hitters. If they leave the game via injury, they're not eligible to pitch for the next day or two. - This is just a reach, because what if someone actually does tweak something? They shouldn't be punished for feeling pain. I understand the concept behind a minimum (not minimal) number of batters for a pitcher, but the idea of taking eligibility away is not logical at all.7. End inter-league play happening whenever. Go back to making it a unique thing where it happens for 2-3 weeks out of the year at the same time or just end it entirely. It'll improve the All-Star game and the mystique of the World Series. - Again, this doesn't fix baseball. In fact, I'm not sure it would really help at all. I mean, if you're a Red Sox fan in St. Louis who only has summers off I guess having summer-only interleague play is cool because it guarantees when the Sox come you can go, but that's such a niche and anecdotal reason, I'm not sure the widespread change would actually have any effect.8. Homer-esque Red Sox take - Extend the trade deadline 2 weeks if you're going to have 2 Wild Card teams. - Very homer take, doesn't really make any sense.9. Create punishments that result in loss of draft picks for teams that lose x amount of games. There's no reason why a team who tries to put out a competitive product should lose 100+ games a season. That, or just go with an equal lottery system for all non-playoff teams. This opens a slippery slope of teams trying to take themselves out of playoff contention if they don't believe in their team. - This might be your worst one, this would make baseball actively worse.1&2 - Not necessarily redundant. A hitter could easily screw up a pitcher's rhythm by stepping out and calling for time. They're being rushed to get the pitch off and then would need to go through the motions again after the hitter calls time. There might be less hitters calling time, but I could see them stepping out to cause the pitcher to get out of rhythm. 3 - I see we're in agreement here. 4 - That's a fair argument. I don't think these ump are really good at their jobs. The idea is to force the pitchers into throwing the ball in the zone more and tightening the window a bit to make it easier on the hitter. I'd rather a walk than a strike out to get the excitement of runners on. I don't want a scenario where hitters are going up there to specifically look for walks so it's a tight rope to say the least. Expanding the zone like I've heard suggested will make it harder on the hitters. 5 - I'm still not sure I'm completely sold. I get the idea that this increases the value of pure power hitters, but if the ball isn't juiced the faux power hitters will go back to hitting doubles and line drives. I want to see more base hits. If the shift didn't matter, teams wouldn't do it. They have data on each hitter and align their positional fielders accordingly. It might not force them to change their approaches, but they'll get a few more hits out of it. 6 - I wouldn't expect this to save baseball at all. I just like the odd, brain fart that costs a team. It gives something to talk about. 7 - If they tweak something then they're likely not going to play tomorrow or the day after either. How else would you propose stopping teams from just faking injuries just to get better situational matchups? Yes. They should be sat down if they have to leave the game for a tweak or something. One to two games isn't a stretch. 8 - I've lost all interest in the All-Star game because of how often the two divisions play each other. I used to at least find the scheduled month or so that Bud had set up to be kind of fun. Now, it's just any other game. That's why I like the separation, to build the mystique. If you're a Sox fan in St. Louis it's not like you're seeing them play all that often anyways. 9 - How does it not make any sense? Really? That's flabbergasting to me. If you have more playoff spots then more teams are going to be in contention. If more teams are in contention then less teams are going to sell. Look at the Red Sox this year; the deadline being moved up 2-3 weeks would have drastically changed how they operated. They were still in tight contention and then lost 9 straight. If the WC2 never existed then they would have been pretty much dead in the water anyways and would have likely sold on July 31st. The second WC2 screwed them in that they would/could have sold pieces rather than standing pat and seeing what happens. 10 - Oh yes, baseball is at its best when you have 4-5 teams losing 100 games in a single season. Edit: I stand corrected. I just looked up the standings and noticed the following: Blue Jays - 94 losses Orioles - 106 losses Royals - 100 losses Tigers - 110 losses Mariners - 91 losses Marlins - 102 losses Pirates - 91 losses 90 losses is simply embarrassing for a franchise, but you have 7 teams (with a few more joining in) and one team that has 110 losses? How is that a good product? Nevermind the records of other teams who were kind of in contention and then gave up in the second half. Pre / Post: White Sox: 42-44 / 26-44 Red Sox: 49-41 / 33-34 Angels: 45-46 / 26-40 Rangers: 48-42 / 27-40 Phillies: 47-43 / 32-35 Pirates: 44-45 / 22-46 Rockies: 44-45 / 24-44 Padres: 45-45 / 25-42 edit: double posted |
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on Sept 26, 2019 11:51:14 GMT -5
1&2 - Not necessarily redundant. A hitter could easily screw up a pitcher's rhythm by stepping out and calling for time. They're being rushed to get the pitch off and then would need to go through the motions again after the hitter calls time. There might be less hitters calling time, but I could see them stepping out to cause the pitcher to get out of rhythm. 3 - I see we're in agreement here. 4 - That's a fair argument. I don't think these ump are really good at their jobs. The idea is to force the pitchers into throwing the ball in the zone more and tightening the window a bit to make it easier on the hitter. I'd rather a walk than a strike out to get the excitement of runners on. I don't want a scenario where hitters are going up there to specifically look for walks so it's a tight rope to say the least. Expanding the zone like I've heard suggested will make it harder on the hitters. 5 - I'm still not sure I'm completely sold. I get the idea that this increases the value of pure power hitters, but if the ball isn't juiced the faux power hitters will go back to hitting doubles and line drives. I want to see more base hits. If the shift didn't matter, teams wouldn't do it. They have data on each hitter and align their positional fielders accordingly. It might not force them to change their approaches, but they'll get a few more hits out of it. 6 - I wouldn't expect this to save baseball at all. I just like the odd, brain fart that costs a team. It gives something to talk about. 7 - If they tweak something then they're likely not going to play tomorrow or the day after either. How else would you propose stopping teams from just faking injuries just to get better situational matchups? Yes. They should be sat down if they have to leave the game for a tweak or something. One to two games isn't a stretch. 8 - I've lost all interest in the All-Star game because of how often the two divisions play each other. I used to at least find the scheduled month or so that Bud had set up to be kind of fun. Now, it's just any other game. That's why I like the separation, to build the mystique. If you're a Sox fan in St. Louis it's not like you're seeing them play all that often anyways. 9 - How does it not make any sense? Really? That's flabbergasting to me. If you have more playoff spots then more teams are going to be in contention. If more teams are in contention then less teams are going to sell. Look at the Red Sox this year; the deadline being moved up 2-3 weeks would have drastically changed how they operated. They were still in tight contention and then lost 9 straight. If the WC2 never existed then they would have been pretty much dead in the water anyways and would have likely sold on July 31st. The second WC2 screwed them in that they would/could have sold pieces rather than standing pat and seeing what happens. 10 - Oh yes, baseball is at its best when you have 4-5 teams losing 100 games in a single season. Edit: I stand corrected. I just looked up the standings and noticed the following: Blue Jays - 94 losses Orioles - 106 losses Royals - 100 losses Tigers - 110 losses Mariners - 91 losses Marlins - 102 losses Pirates - 91 losses 90 losses is simply embarrassing for a franchise, but you have 7 teams (with a few more joining in) and one team that has 110 losses? How is that a good product? Nevermind the records of other teams who were kind of in contention and then gave up in the second half. Pre / Post: White Sox: 42-44 / 26-44 Red Sox: 49-41 / 33-34 Angels: 45-46 / 26-40 Rangers: 48-42 / 27-40 Phillies: 47-43 / 32-35 Pirates: 44-45 / 22-46 Rockies: 44-45 / 24-44 Padres: 45-45 / 25-42 My argument wasn't that I like seeing bad teams, I just don't think those penalties would do anything to make it better. First of all, if you're going to have really good teams like the Astros, Dodgers, and Yankees, then really bad teams are logically also going to exist. There will always be bad baseball teams. Is a league where there are no teams that lose more than 90 games but no teams that win more than 90 games really a better overall product? Parity is cool but baseball on a game-to-game basis is a pretty random sport by nature and there is enough evidence to prove that elite teams drive market interest. There's also the fact that establishing these penalties wouldn't make things all that much better. Maybe one or two teams from that list gets a little more competitive but again there are always going to be teams that lose 90-100 games because that's just how math works. You are in no position to say "there's no way a team can try to be competitive and be 'x' degrees of bad". There are only a certain number of replacement level guys in the world, there are naturally going to be teams that don't have enough of them on a given year. Establishing arbitrary punishments for teams who may be trying to be competitive but are just incredibly limited in terms of talent and resources is such a terrible look. There are subjective ways of analyzing it, of course. For example, obviously the Marlins are trying to be actively terrible, they've gutted their entire team, including trading away two of the best outfielders in baseball for little to nothing (Stanton has had a weird season but he's historically been very good). But that's incredibly subjective and so tricky to apply. You can't just have some arbitrary number of losses and say okay if you're that bad you HAVE to be tanking. That doesn't make any sense when you consider that baseball teams are constructed by a series of real world decisions that are not only complex but layered. This isn't fantasy baseball or a video game. Another, much shorter, point is that the MLB draft is not really worth tanking for, so a better punishment would be monetary fines rather than loss of draft picks. It's not like the NBA or NFL where the first overall pick is going to contribute right away. It's usually going to be two or three years, at least, until a draft pick contributes and even then it's nowhere close to a guarantee you'll get a legitimate contribution. Cases like the Astros and the Royals are so rare that I don't think the punishments would really be that effective. Finally, let's talk about what happens if these penalties were implemented. Let's say you lose your first three draft picks if you lose 100 games or more. Cool. So those four teams that have lost that many games, what they're hearing is this. "Hey, you guys were really bad this year, and we want to encourage you to put a better product on the field, so we are going to restrict your access to acquiring talented players. But it's so you'll be better!" Even if the MLB draft is not a sure thing, that still makes absolutely no sense. Competitive balance would be absolutely destroyed because the teams that are bad whenever these punishments are first implemented would be significantly more likely to be stuck being bad. Just everything about this idea sucks lol. I'm indifferent on a lottery because I love chaos but at the same time it's not going to motivate bad teams to be better because even if the Mariners could've won 80 games this year as opposed to 66 if it's not going to affect their line of thinking because all the odds are the same, so rebuilding would still take precedent. |
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Post by umassgrad2005 on Sept 26, 2019 12:10:55 GMT -5
My argument wasn't that I like seeing bad teams, I just don't think those penalties would do anything to make it better. First of all, if you're going to have really good teams like the Astros, Dodgers, and Yankees, then really bad teams are logically also going to exist. There will always be bad baseball teams. Is a league where there are no teams that lose more than 90 games but no teams that win more than 90 games really a better overall product? Parity is cool but baseball on a game-to-game basis is a pretty random sport by nature and there is enough evidence to prove that elite teams drive market interest. There's also the fact that establishing these penalties wouldn't make things all that much better. Maybe one or two teams from that list gets a little more competitive but again there are always going to be teams that lose 90-100 games because that's just how math works. You are in no position to say "there's no way a team can try to be competitive and be 'x' degrees of bad". There are only a certain number of replacement level guys in the world, there are naturally going to be teams that don't have enough of them on a given year. Establishing arbitrary punishments for teams who may be trying to be competitive but are just incredibly limited in terms of talent and resources is such a terrible look. There are subjective ways of analyzing it, of course. For example, obviously the Marlins are trying to be actively terrible, they've gutted their entire team, including trading away two of the best outfielders in baseball for little to nothing (Stanton has had a weird season but he's historically been very good). But that's incredibly subjective and so tricky to apply. You can't just have some arbitrary number of losses and say okay if you're that bad you HAVE to be tanking. That doesn't make any sense when you consider that baseball teams are constructed by a series of real world decisions that are not only complex but layered. This isn't fantasy baseball or a video game. Another, much shorter, point is that the MLB draft is not really worth tanking for, so a better punishment would be monetary fines rather than loss of draft picks. It's not like the NBA or NFL where the first overall pick is going to contribute right away. It's usually going to be two or three years, at least, until a draft pick contributes and even then it's nowhere close to a guarantee you'll get a legitimate contribution. Cases like the Astros and the Royals are so rare that I don't think the punishments would really be that effective. Finally, let's talk about what happens if these penalties were implemented. Let's say you lose your first three draft picks if you lose 100 games or more. Cool. So those four teams that have lost that many games, what they're hearing is this. "Hey, you guys were really bad this year, and we want to encourage you to put a better product on the field, so we are going to restrict your access to acquiring talented players. But it's so you'll be better!" Even if the MLB draft is not a sure thing, that still makes absolutely no sense. Competitive balance would be absolutely destroyed because the teams that are bad whenever these punishments are first implemented would be significantly more likely to be stuck being bad. Just everything about this idea sucks lol. I'm indifferent on a lottery because I love chaos but at the same time it's not going to motivate bad teams to be better because even if the Mariners could've won 80 games this year as opposed to 66 if it's not going to affect their line of thinking because all the odds are the same, so rebuilding would still take precedent. Just one thing, the reason we so many 100 win teams the last few years is because how bad some teams are. Not that the Yankees, Dodgers, and Astros aren't very good teams. Yet they play so many cupcake teams it makes it a lot easier. The bad teams aren't a result of so many good teams. The bad teams are bad because they are tanking and not trying to win. Now a few teams doing it doesn't really matter, yet when a bunch do it sucks for Baseball. Not an easy fix, but the huge advantage in draft pools is one place to start and also getting teams to spend money. |
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Post by redsox04071318champs on Sept 26, 2019 12:32:08 GMT -5
I don't care about game length, and I don't think most people do either, if there's stuff going on. It's the dead time that makes baseball unbearable to watch. Like, a 13-12 game is going to be naturally long. There's nothing you can really do about it. A 3-2 game shouldn't last 4 hours. I don't think you can mess with balls and strike counts. It's too fundamentally changing and it's culturally ingrained. In fact, so much that our legal system uses it; ergo, "Three Strikes" Sentencing Laws. Ties suck too. Maybe after 12 innings they should put a runner on 2B or even 3B. It just kind of becomes hokey like the shootout in hockey. Though the equivalent would be to end the game on a home run derby. Lol at the above quote saying I won't let them have a opinion. You can say whatever you want, doesn't mean I have to agree with it. I'm glad I'm not the only one who sees what I see on here. Anyways, moving on. RedSoxfan2, I think this is the perfect rule change to shorten up the games for good. Shortening the count would simply make the games shorter and make the game flow better. This would increase the action of the game, without interfering with any statistics. The only thing that would happen is that the strikeouts and walks would become depressed in value compared to today's baseball. I'm perfectly okay with that considering strikeouts are already depressed considering every batters' approach of swinging for the fences on 2 strikes now. The time of game does matter. Red Sox games are almost 3 and a half hours long these days. A regular MLB game is almost at 3 hours and 15 minutes. This is a serious problem and one that is turning TVs off. It could cause baseball to become more of a regional sport like hockey soon; we could be already there actually. Maybe you don't see it as a problem, but it is a big problem. I'm all for the pitch clocks on top of shaving the counts. Make baseball as close to a 2 and a half hour game as possible, so kids can go to bed and watch a full game. So people can go to sleep with a full night's rest and seeing the whole game, instead of turning the game off and seeing the results the next day. I can't tell you how many batters are taking first pitch strikes with no desire to swing a bat. In fact, countless at bats I see are being wasted by looking at 2 or 3 pitches before deciding to swing the bat. Like that's 2 minutes each at bat just watching a batter letting pitches go by. It drives me insane. Swing the bat, be aggresive. Man, I loved Nomar Garciaparra because he would look for that first strike everytime and almost always swing on the first pitch. Baseball needs to go back to this and shaving the counts would enforce it or they'll be out. Shaving the counts of each batter would improve these things- -Increase action sooner -Help with injuries and durability (less pitches being thrown) -Less pitching changes -Force hitters to be more aggresive changing the approach in baseball, maybe putting more balls in play. You're not getting rid of commercials these days. You're not getting rid of pitchers warming up. You're not getting rid of foul balls and shouldn't punish a batter for fighting a pitch off. This is the best idea I can come up with to make the game more fluid. Pedro, can't agree with the 3 balls is a walk and 2 strikes is a strikeout idea. I just think the game would devolve further into the 3 true outcome scenario. I'm of the mind that it's not necessary the length of game as it is the pace of play, which can be tedious, with all the step-outs, the ten years between pitches, the century it takes for instant replay calls to get resolved. Although this is contrary to what I'm saying, I agree with RedSoxfan2 that intentional walks should not be an automatic zip down to 1b for the runner. To me that's like saying if a guy hits a routine grounder to SS, he's automatically out, even though there's always the chance for human error. I think intentional walks have the chance for human error, and I don't think that intentional walks occur often enough to really impact the time of game. Beyond that I'd like to see DHs in both leagues and no more pitchers batting unless they can hit like Ohtani or Lorenzen. I also can do without interleague play, as much as the Red Sox have benefitted from it, as well. |
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Sept 26, 2019 13:16:12 GMT -5
1. (and only) Electronic strike zone. It could be as complicated as a rectangular cuboid which adjusts to each batter or as simple as a rigid rectangle which remains the same for all batters. There are many judgement calls in sports which could never be called by a device. Football is full of such interpretive calls (holding, interference, etc.) but the strike zone is one that should be easy to implement. I'm convinced that even the simplest system would be a vast improvement over what we now have. And I'd love to see the front office discussion if it was being seriously considered by MLB. I hope you all love chest-high curveballs called for strikes. |
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Post by umassgrad2005 on Sept 26, 2019 13:30:50 GMT -5
Does anyone track umps based on the percentage of strikes and balls they get correct? Set a standard and if they can't meet it, then you replace them. Some Umps are really good and some are crazy bad. Nothing more frustrating than seeing strikes and balls called wrong when you can tell 100% at home.
A more consistent strike zone means pitchers don't need to try and figure out the zone every game like they do now.
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on Sept 26, 2019 13:52:50 GMT -5
Just one thing, the reason we so many 100 win teams the last few years is because how bad some teams are. Not that the Yankees, Dodgers, and Astros aren't very good teams. Yet they play so many cupcake teams it makes it a lot easier. The bad teams aren't a result of so many good teams. The bad teams are bad because they are tanking and not trying to win. Now a few teams doing it doesn't really matter, yet when a bunch do it sucks for Baseball. Not an easy fix, but the huge advantage in draft pools is one place to start and also getting teams to spend money. Your first point is pretty fair, regarding the math of 100 win teams. But there aren't a "bunch" of teams who are tanking. Tanking and rebuilding are not the same thing. There are two, maybe three teams that are actively tanking right now? The rest are just bad teams. And having a larger draft pool isn't as big of an advantage as you think, not with the way the MLB draft just is. If you want to argue for a salary floor too, that's fine. That has nothing to do with my argument. My only argument is that the penalty structure of taking away draft picks for teams losing a certain amount of games is terrible. |
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Post by pedrofanforever45 on Sept 26, 2019 15:00:41 GMT -5
Pedro, can't agree with the 3 balls is a walk and 2 strikes is a strikeout idea. I just think the game would devolve further into the 3 true outcome scenario. I'm of the mind that it's not necessary the length of game as it is the pace of play, which can be tedious, with all the step-outs, the ten years between pitches, the century it takes for instant replay calls to get resolved. Although this is contrary to what I'm saying, I agree with RedSoxfan2 that intentional walks should not be an automatic zip down to 1b for the runner. To me that's like saying if a guy hits a routine grounder to SS, he's automatically out, even though there's always the chance for human error. I think intentional walks have the chance for human error, and I don't think that intentional walks occur often enough to really impact the time of game. Beyond that I'd like to see DHs in both leagues and no more pitchers batting unless they can hit like Ohtani or Lorenzen. I also can do without interleague play, as much as the Red Sox have benefitted from it, as well. It might result in more of the three true outcomes. I would be interested in seeing it. There's really no way to shorten these games beyond shortening the innings from 9 to 7. Limiting the pitching changes might help. The pitch clock will help the slowest pitchers speed up. These games will still be close to 3 hours every night because of the commercials, foul balls, the running up of the counts each at bat. It's a serious problem. Baseball is becoming more of a grind than a form of entertainment over 162 games. That's a lot of hours and time when you add the context of how long these games are played. |
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on Sept 26, 2019 15:29:43 GMT -5
This might be a hot take, but I'm not sure baseball is really "fixable", or at least I don't think there's any way we could get everyone to agree on what fixing baseball really means. Reverting baseball back to how the older crowd, the "baseball purists" want it to be would satisfy that crowd but would not do anything to attract the younger audience, the next wave of baseball consumers. If you try to make baseball exciting and let some of the elements of sports that aren't strictly related to the outcome of the game, like bat flips, social media, trade drama, letting the players have personality, that kind of stuff, take precedent like you see in the NFL and particularly the NBA, you'd certainly make the league more popular. But, at the same time, every time you have a baseball player showing some kind of emotion or anything that isn't under the umbrella of baseball norms or unwritten rules, you have a whole subsection of older fans talking about having "respect for the game" or whatever. I think baseball is hard to fix because the people entrenched in baseball culture are so unwilling to let things evolve. I don't see it ever reclaiming mainstream popularity that basketball and football have a stranglehold on right now, which is a bit unfortunate, but just may be the way it is.
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Post by umassgrad2005 on Sept 26, 2019 16:32:14 GMT -5
Just one thing, the reason we so many 100 win teams the last few years is because how bad some teams are. Not that the Yankees, Dodgers, and Astros aren't very good teams. Yet they play so many cupcake teams it makes it a lot easier. The bad teams aren't a result of so many good teams. The bad teams are bad because they are tanking and not trying to win. Now a few teams doing it doesn't really matter, yet when a bunch do it sucks for Baseball. Not an easy fix, but the huge advantage in draft pools is one place to start and also getting teams to spend money. Your first point is pretty fair, regarding the math of 100 win teams. But there aren't a "bunch" of teams who are tanking. Tanking and rebuilding are not the same thing. There are two, maybe three teams that are actively tanking right now? The rest are just bad teams. And having a larger draft pool isn't as big of an advantage as you think, not with the way the MLB draft just is. If you want to argue for a salary floor too, that's fine. That has nothing to do with my argument. My only argument is that the penalty structure of taking away draft picks for teams losing a certain amount of games is terrible. Not sure how you don't think those seven teams listed above aren't tanking and that is waaay too many. I don't agree about the draft penalty, but it's a big issue that is hurting the game. I totally disagree about draft pools, it's one of the biggest advantages in the game to have a massive pool compared to a small pool. The draft is a crap shoot, that big pool allows you to bring in a bunch more highly rated guys. The Red Sox can only buy a few guys per draft now, other teams can get a lot more. That with already having the advantage of having high picks |
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Post by incandenza on Sept 26, 2019 16:41:50 GMT -5
1. (and only) Electronic strike zone. It could be as complicated as a rectangular cuboid which adjusts to each batter or as simple as a rigid rectangle which remains the same for all batters. There are many judgement calls in sports which could never be called by a device. Football is full of such interpretive calls (holding, interference, etc.) but the strike zone is one that should be easy to implement. I'm convinced that even the simplest system would be a vast improvement over what we now have. And I'd love to see the front office discussion if it was being seriously considered by MLB. I hope you all love chest-high curveballs called for strikes. I get the point you're making, and it's a strong argument but... I think I might love chest-high curveballs? It would be kind of a cool tool for a pitcher to sort of splash one into the top of the zone. Especially if it was balanced out by pitchers no longer getting strikes on balls 3 inches off the plate to every single lefty. |
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Post by soxfaninnj on Sept 26, 2019 22:14:51 GMT -5
Get rid of the Yankees!
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Post by sparkygian on Sept 27, 2019 3:32:59 GMT -5
My beef with this sport, and pretty much all major sports nowadays, is the extreme player movement that there is now compared to in the past, when homegrown players more often played their careers out with the team they were brought up with. So there wasn't that many instances of players jumping from their home team, than playing for the rival team because money rules, whether it's the player being callous and caring more about their large paychecks more than the image of the sport, or it's because their home team can't afford to keep them with the salary cap and penalty taxes.
I still say that teams should be allowed to include homegrown players in their team salary without it being taxed if they've gone over the cap. Only the team's contracts of free-agents is taxed if they go over the cap. In my mind it creates a little more incentive for teams to keep their own players because those contracts never will be taxed, making them potentially cheaper by not being taxable if the team payroll ever exceeds the cap.
The issue with the slow games is in my mind very much a result of all the statistics and computer analysis data that bogs players minds down, both the hitters and the pitchers. Watching at bats has always had the potential to be silly looking as batters step out of the batters box between every pitch and do some sort of routine with adjusting their batting gloves, and helmets, etc., or doing their batters windup, as I like to call it with all the practice swings and twirling of the bat. It seems that batters nowadays are more focused than ever on the statistics, video, and data that tells them what they need to work on, so every pitch is only faced once a batter has gone through all the data swirling in their heads (of course it's not every batter, and every pitch, just most, imo.) So the batters definitely contribute to the slowdown in the game.
The pitchers definitely contribute to the slowdown, obviously, and this is also vastly enhanced by all the data and information swirling in their heads, too. Pitchers receive an automatic ball if they aren't ready to go into a windup between pitches, after a reasonable amount of time, if the team's pitchers have exceeded a certain limit during a game.
What to do about it has been gone over a million times. I kinda like the idea of timing each teams hitter's time spent in the batters box, and their pitcher's time between windups (slow windups shouldn't be penalized). The slowest three at-bats per inning are added together, and then if that total exceeds some determined limit, then the rest of the hitters throughout the rest of the game will be penalized a strike if they step out of the batters box for more than a reasonable amount. Same thing goes for the pitchers. I know it's impossible to separate the accountability of each from each other, as obviously the more time the hitter is out of the batters box will affect the time between windups for the pitchers, and vice-versa, but I suspect that each will still be an accurate reflection of the team's true pace of play.
Lastly, if the season were reduced back to a certain amount, like 154 games, or maybe even a few less, then maybe pitcher's arms won't breakdown so frequently, and the season goes back to being a summer sport.
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Post by redsoxfan2 on Sept 27, 2019 8:13:39 GMT -5
I don't care about game length, and I don't think most people do either, if there's stuff going on. It's the dead time that makes baseball unbearable to watch. Like, a 13-12 game is going to be naturally long. There's nothing you can really do about it. A 3-2 game shouldn't last 4 hours. I don't think you can mess with balls and strike counts. It's too fundamentally changing and it's culturally ingrained. In fact, so much that our legal system uses it; ergo, "Three Strikes" Sentencing Laws. Ties suck too. Maybe after 12 innings they should put a runner on 2B or even 3B. It just kind of becomes hokey like the shootout in hockey. Though the equivalent would be to end the game on a home run derby. Lol at the above quote saying I won't let them have a opinion. You can say whatever you want, doesn't mean I have to agree with it. I'm glad I'm not the only one who sees what I see on here. Anyways, moving on. RedSoxfan2, I think this is the perfect rule change to shorten up the games for good. Shortening the count would simply make the games shorter and make the game flow better. This would increase the action of the game, without interfering with any statistics. The only thing that would happen is that the strikeouts and walks would become depressed in value compared to today's baseball. I'm perfectly okay with that considering strikeouts are already depressed considering every batters' approach of swinging for the fences on 2 strikes now. The time of game does matter. Red Sox games are almost 3 and a half hours long these days. A regular MLB game is almost at 3 hours and 15 minutes. This is a serious problem and one that is turning TVs off. It could cause baseball to become more of a regional sport like hockey soon; we could be already there actually. Maybe you don't see it as a problem, but it is a big problem. I'm all for the pitch clocks on top of shaving the counts. Make baseball as close to a 2 and a half hour game as possible, so kids can go to bed and watch a full game. So people can go to sleep with a full night's rest and seeing the whole game, instead of turning the game off and seeing the results the next day. I can't tell you how many batters are taking first pitch strikes with no desire to swing a bat. In fact, countless at bats I see are being wasted by looking at 2 or 3 pitches before deciding to swing the bat. Like that's 2 minutes each at bat just watching a batter letting pitches go by. It drives me insane. Swing the bat, be aggresive. Man, I loved Nomar Garciaparra because he would look for that first strike everytime and almost always swing on the first pitch. Baseball needs to go back to this and shaving the counts would enforce it or they'll be out. Shaving the counts of each batter would improve these things- -Increase action sooner -Help with injuries and durability (less pitches being thrown) -Less pitching changes -Force hitters to be more aggresive changing the approach in baseball, maybe putting more balls in play. You're not getting rid of commercials these days. You're not getting rid of pitchers warming up. You're not getting rid of foul balls and shouldn't punish a batter for fighting a pitch off. This is the best idea I can come up with to make the game more fluid. I think this is an idea that is good in theory, but the downside is that the game becomes too fundamentally different and you end up losing purists without gaining new fans. I know you didn't mean time of game as to when it starts, but I think that's another massive problem for MLB. Playoff games start way too late for the east coast. Kids have school in the morning. I have work. Start it earlier. I'd like to just eliminate the dead time first before experimenting on changing on the overall flow of the game to speed it up. I think in more recent years batters started swinging a bit more at the first pitch because grinding and working counts to get to bullpens isn't as effective as it used to be. One of the downsides of bullpen minimal hitters is that we're going to see more grinding to get starters out of the game because LOOGY and ROOGY and pitchers entering for pure matchups won't be a thing anymore and it'll expose some weaknesses. My argument wasn't that I like seeing bad teams, I just don't think those penalties would do anything to make it better. First of all, if you're going to have really good teams like the Astros, Dodgers, and Yankees, then really bad teams are logically also going to exist. There will always be bad baseball teams. Is a league where there are no teams that lose more than 90 games but no teams that win more than 90 games really a better overall product? Parity is cool but baseball on a game-to-game basis is a pretty random sport by nature and there is enough evidence to prove that elite teams drive market interest. There's also the fact that establishing these penalties wouldn't make things all that much better. Maybe one or two teams from that list gets a little more competitive but again there are always going to be teams that lose 90-100 games because that's just how math works. You are in no position to say "there's no way a team can try to be competitive and be 'x' degrees of bad". There are only a certain number of replacement level guys in the world, there are naturally going to be teams that don't have enough of them on a given year. Establishing arbitrary punishments for teams who may be trying to be competitive but are just incredibly limited in terms of talent and resources is such a terrible look. There are subjective ways of analyzing it, of course. For example, obviously the Marlins are trying to be actively terrible, they've gutted their entire team, including trading away two of the best outfielders in baseball for little to nothing (Stanton has had a weird season but he's historically been very good). But that's incredibly subjective and so tricky to apply. You can't just have some arbitrary number of losses and say okay if you're that bad you HAVE to be tanking. That doesn't make any sense when you consider that baseball teams are constructed by a series of real world decisions that are not only complex but layered. This isn't fantasy baseball or a video game. Another, much shorter, point is that the MLB draft is not really worth tanking for, so a better punishment would be monetary fines rather than loss of draft picks. It's not like the NBA or NFL where the first overall pick is going to contribute right away. It's usually going to be two or three years, at least, until a draft pick contributes and even then it's nowhere close to a guarantee you'll get a legitimate contribution. Cases like the Astros and the Royals are so rare that I don't think the punishments would really be that effective. Finally, let's talk about what happens if these penalties were implemented. Let's say you lose your first three draft picks if you lose 100 games or more. Cool. So those four teams that have lost that many games, what they're hearing is this. "Hey, you guys were really bad this year, and we want to encourage you to put a better product on the field, so we are going to restrict your access to acquiring talented players. But it's so you'll be better!" Even if the MLB draft is not a sure thing, that still makes absolutely no sense. Competitive balance would be absolutely destroyed because the teams that are bad whenever these punishments are first implemented would be significantly more likely to be stuck being bad. Just everything about this idea sucks lol. I'm indifferent on a lottery because I love chaos but at the same time it's not going to motivate bad teams to be better because even if the Mariners could've won 80 games this year as opposed to 66 if it's not going to affect their line of thinking because all the odds are the same, so rebuilding would still take precedent. The Astro's, Yankees, Dodgers, Twins (99), and Braves (97, 3 left) are good teams, but their 100+ wins are also a byproduct because so many teams are dreadful. Stanton was an odd case because the team handed him a contract they had no business in handing him out, couldn't afford him, but also he had a full no-trade. He was traded to the Cardinals, but he said no. Then again, why is it that the Marlins couldn't afford 1 superstar player and accepted peanuts in return? If they can't take on Stanton then maybe Miami shouldn't have a baseball team. All you have to do to not lose 100 games is to try out of the gate and then peel away. 2013 - 2 100 loss teams 2014 - 0 100 loss teams 2015 - 0 100 loss teams 2016 - 1 100 loss teams 2017 - 0 100 loss teams 2018 - 2 100 loss teams 2019 - 4 100 loss teams Having the threat of penalties will help some of these "90 loss teams" also perform a bit better for fear of being penalized. Maybe next year the Tigers won't start the season with the Arby's staff for their starting lineup. Demanding teams not lose 100 games and starting there is very fair. Just one thing, the reason we so many 100 win teams the last few years is because how bad some teams are. Not that the Yankees, Dodgers, and Astros aren't very good teams. Yet they play so many cupcake teams it makes it a lot easier. The bad teams aren't a result of so many good teams. The bad teams are bad because they are tanking and not trying to win. Now a few teams doing it doesn't really matter, yet when a bunch do it sucks for Baseball. Not an easy fix, but the huge advantage in draft pools is one place to start and also getting teams to spend money. Your first point is pretty fair, regarding the math of 100 win teams. But there aren't a "bunch" of teams who are tanking. Tanking and rebuilding are not the same thing. There are two, maybe three teams that are actively tanking right now? The rest are just bad teams. And having a larger draft pool isn't as big of an advantage as you think, not with the way the MLB draft just is. If you want to argue for a salary floor too, that's fine. That has nothing to do with my argument. My only argument is that the penalty structure of taking away draft picks for teams losing a certain amount of games is terrible. 7 teams tanking right out of the gate is 23.3% of the league. That's a problem when nearly 1/4 of baseball is starting the season not trying to win any games. You can call it whatever you want, but if you lose 95-100+ games in a season I don't believe there was any effort to put forth a competitive product. After the ASG, it became nearly half of the teams in baseball became unwatchable. It's hard for teams to play catch-up when 47% of teams aren't trying. A salary floor helps put a competitive product on the field and could help alleviate the value of bad contracts to help teams meet said floor. Still, you need to de-incentivise losing games. If I'm Miami I'll just find the most injury prone players on the planet and lock them up to deals to secure the salary floor and then lose out. That, or maybe trade for someone like Miguel Cabrera who is an absolute albatross just to reach the floor. See, there's ways around this too. So long as teams have reason to tank, they will. |
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Post by pedrofanforever45 on Sept 27, 2019 8:30:20 GMT -5
Baseball does need a big fundamental change if they can't manage to ever end it's games. Start with the pitch clocks, then the pitching changes and limit those in a inning.
You can't shorten the games to 7 innings. That completely discredits the stats, even if the stats were discreted at the beginning of the steriod era.
I would love to hear someone else's suggestion on shortening the games, because I can only come up with the shaving of the counts one. Maybe people here like watching 3 and a half hour Red Sox games constantly. I find it tough myself, and I'm a junkie for it. If I had interests outside of baseball that would be close to my interest in baseball, I would be turning off the game too.
I would love to see a faster paced baseball game with fewer strikes and balls myself. Innings would be ending so quickly or rallies would be happening so quickly. I'm constantly playing with my phone during a at bat these days, because the at bats are just taking too long.
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Post by manfred on Sept 27, 2019 10:45:28 GMT -5
How much of pace of play is a product of television? What if the time between innings was shortened, and advertisers used different methods? I’d be cool with EPL style jersey sponsors in exchange for automatically shaving 10 minutes by saying to pitchers get your throws and go.
Same with reliever changes. There are too many changes, but they take sooo long. What if there was a clock to be ready? If first pitch is not thrown within x time, a ball is called. Or better... a balk if runners are on.
Maybe institute a delay of game penalty that can be called on egregious slowdowns.
I guess I feel like the game itself doesn’t need changing — there is a long history of quicker games. But the pace could return to the get-it-throw-it days.
Obviously style is a problem that might be unfixable. Look at pitchers even as recent as the 1980s: they were not striking so many guys out. There were just fewer long, boring, eventless at bats. Watching a guy K 200 times a year in the hopes of catching the 40 times in 160 days he hits a homer is not all that much fun.
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Post by thegoodthebadthesox on Sept 27, 2019 11:00:59 GMT -5
Lol at the above quote saying I won't let them have a opinion. You can say whatever you want, doesn't mean I have to agree with it. I'm glad I'm not the only one who sees what I see on here. Anyways, moving on. RedSoxfan2, I think this is the perfect rule change to shorten up the games for good. Shortening the count would simply make the games shorter and make the game flow better. This would increase the action of the game, without interfering with any statistics. The only thing that would happen is that the strikeouts and walks would become depressed in value compared to today's baseball. I'm perfectly okay with that considering strikeouts are already depressed considering every batters' approach of swinging for the fences on 2 strikes now. The time of game does matter. Red Sox games are almost 3 and a half hours long these days. A regular MLB game is almost at 3 hours and 15 minutes. This is a serious problem and one that is turning TVs off. It could cause baseball to become more of a regional sport like hockey soon; we could be already there actually. Maybe you don't see it as a problem, but it is a big problem. I'm all for the pitch clocks on top of shaving the counts. Make baseball as close to a 2 and a half hour game as possible, so kids can go to bed and watch a full game. So people can go to sleep with a full night's rest and seeing the whole game, instead of turning the game off and seeing the results the next day. I can't tell you how many batters are taking first pitch strikes with no desire to swing a bat. In fact, countless at bats I see are being wasted by looking at 2 or 3 pitches before deciding to swing the bat. Like that's 2 minutes each at bat just watching a batter letting pitches go by. It drives me insane. Swing the bat, be aggresive. Man, I loved Nomar Garciaparra because he would look for that first strike everytime and almost always swing on the first pitch. Baseball needs to go back to this and shaving the counts would enforce it or they'll be out. Shaving the counts of each batter would improve these things- -Increase action sooner -Help with injuries and durability (less pitches being thrown) -Less pitching changes -Force hitters to be more aggresive changing the approach in baseball, maybe putting more balls in play. You're not getting rid of commercials these days. You're not getting rid of pitchers warming up. You're not getting rid of foul balls and shouldn't punish a batter for fighting a pitch off. This is the best idea I can come up with to make the game more fluid. I think this is an idea that is good in theory, but the downside is that the game becomes too fundamentally different and you end up losing purists without gaining new fans. I know you didn't mean time of game as to when it starts, but I think that's another massive problem for MLB. Playoff games start way too late for the east coast. Kids have school in the morning. I have work. Start it earlier. I'd like to just eliminate the dead time first before experimenting on changing on the overall flow of the game to speed it up. I think in more recent years batters started swinging a bit more at the first pitch because grinding and working counts to get to bullpens isn't as effective as it used to be. One of the downsides of bullpen minimal hitters is that we're going to see more grinding to get starters out of the game because LOOGY and ROOGY and pitchers entering for pure matchups won't be a thing anymore and it'll expose some weaknesses. The Astro's, Yankees, Dodgers, Twins (99), and Braves (97, 3 left) are good teams, but their 100+ wins are also a byproduct because so many teams are dreadful. Stanton was an odd case because the team handed him a contract they had no business in handing him out, couldn't afford him, but also he had a full no-trade. He was traded to the Cardinals, but he said no. Then again, why is it that the Marlins couldn't afford 1 superstar player and accepted peanuts in return? If they can't take on Stanton then maybe Miami shouldn't have a baseball team. All you have to do to not lose 100 games is to try out of the gate and then peel away. 2013 - 2 100 loss teams 2014 - 0 100 loss teams 2015 - 0 100 loss teams 2016 - 1 100 loss teams 2017 - 0 100 loss teams 2018 - 2 100 loss teams 2019 - 4 100 loss teams Having the threat of penalties will help some of these "90 loss teams" also perform a bit better for fear of being penalized. Maybe next year the Tigers won't start the season with the Arby's staff for their starting lineup. Demanding teams not lose 100 games and starting there is very fair. Your first point is pretty fair, regarding the math of 100 win teams. But there aren't a "bunch" of teams who are tanking. Tanking and rebuilding are not the same thing. There are two, maybe three teams that are actively tanking right now? The rest are just bad teams. And having a larger draft pool isn't as big of an advantage as you think, not with the way the MLB draft just is. If you want to argue for a salary floor too, that's fine. That has nothing to do with my argument. My only argument is that the penalty structure of taking away draft picks for teams losing a certain amount of games is terrible. 7 teams tanking right out of the gate is 23.3% of the league. That's a problem when nearly 1/4 of baseball is starting the season not trying to win any games. You can call it whatever you want, but if you lose 95-100+ games in a season I don't believe there was any effort to put forth a competitive product. After the ASG, it became nearly half of the teams in baseball became unwatchable. It's hard for teams to play catch-up when 47% of teams aren't trying. A salary floor helps put a competitive product on the field and could help alleviate the value of bad contracts to help teams meet said floor. Still, you need to de-incentivise losing games. If I'm Miami I'll just find the most injury prone players on the planet and lock them up to deals to secure the salary floor and then lose out. That, or maybe trade for someone like Miguel Cabrera who is an absolute albatross just to reach the floor. See, there's ways around this too. So long as teams have reason to tank, they will. I don't think you really understand what tanking means if you think all seven of those teams are actively tanking as opposed to being bad. You posted the information about how there's a spike in 100 loss teams this year, did you even stop to consider for a second that might just be an outlier? No team would purposefully go out and sign bad or injured players for exuberant amounts of money just to meet the salary floor, that's so illogical. The whole point of tanking is you're not spending money. All of those terrible teams are in the bottom 10 in baseball except for the Mariners, and I don't think the Mariners are tanking. If you impose a salary floor that's 25% higher than those terrible teams' payrolls and then the teams spend it on guys who are going to either negatively contribute or not contribute at all, they're going to be less profitable. So a salary floor would incentivize them to make better use of that money in order to make it back. Draft pools are great and all but at the end of the day it's a business and the goal is to make money. If you force teams to spend more money there's going to be a lot more effort to put out a more profitable product. A salary floor would be way more effective than any scenario where teams would lose draft picks for losing a certain amount of games, but that's a pretty low bar to clear. I'm not saying I like tanking teams, but you're drastically overstating the amount of tanking that's actually going on right now. Because again I really don't think you get the difference between outright tanking and allocating resources to open your competitive window a year or two down the line. There will always be bad teams. Even if they lose less games, you will always have teams that are relatively way worse than others. And if there comes a day where that is not the case, and every team wins 78-84 games, then that will be BAD FOR BASEBALL. Parity is way more interesting in theory than in practice. So putting arbitrary soft caps on how bad teams can be is ignoring just so much. |
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Post by umassgrad2005 on Sept 27, 2019 13:35:24 GMT -5
thegoodthebadthesox- What does tanking mean for you? How aren't the Blue Jay's, Orioles, Royals, Tigers, Mariners, Marlins, and Pirates not tanking? The one team for me that is so so is the Pirates, yet they dropped 20 million in salary down to 73 million this year and their big free agent signing was 34 year old Melky Cabrera.
For me the difference between rebuilding and tanking is trying to win games. The Pirates with already one of the lowest payrolls in Baseball drop 20 million more and now are being out spent by Oakland the lowest revenue team by a big margin.
You're making the case they tried, yet were just bad, yet I don't see that with those teams.
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Post by redsoxfan2 on Sept 27, 2019 17:23:06 GMT -5
I think this is an idea that is good in theory, but the downside is that the game becomes too fundamentally different and you end up losing purists without gaining new fans. I know you didn't mean time of game as to when it starts, but I think that's another massive problem for MLB. Playoff games start way too late for the east coast. Kids have school in the morning. I have work. Start it earlier. I'd like to just eliminate the dead time first before experimenting on changing on the overall flow of the game to speed it up. I think in more recent years batters started swinging a bit more at the first pitch because grinding and working counts to get to bullpens isn't as effective as it used to be. One of the downsides of bullpen minimal hitters is that we're going to see more grinding to get starters out of the game because LOOGY and ROOGY and pitchers entering for pure matchups won't be a thing anymore and it'll expose some weaknesses. The Astro's, Yankees, Dodgers, Twins (99), and Braves (97, 3 left) are good teams, but their 100+ wins are also a byproduct because so many teams are dreadful. Stanton was an odd case because the team handed him a contract they had no business in handing him out, couldn't afford him, but also he had a full no-trade. He was traded to the Cardinals, but he said no. Then again, why is it that the Marlins couldn't afford 1 superstar player and accepted peanuts in return? If they can't take on Stanton then maybe Miami shouldn't have a baseball team. All you have to do to not lose 100 games is to try out of the gate and then peel away. 2013 - 2 100 loss teams 2014 - 0 100 loss teams 2015 - 0 100 loss teams 2016 - 1 100 loss teams 2017 - 0 100 loss teams 2018 - 2 100 loss teams 2019 - 4 100 loss teams Having the threat of penalties will help some of these "90 loss teams" also perform a bit better for fear of being penalized. Maybe next year the Tigers won't start the season with the Arby's staff for their starting lineup. Demanding teams not lose 100 games and starting there is very fair. 7 teams tanking right out of the gate is 23.3% of the league. That's a problem when nearly 1/4 of baseball is starting the season not trying to win any games. You can call it whatever you want, but if you lose 95-100+ games in a season I don't believe there was any effort to put forth a competitive product. After the ASG, it became nearly half of the teams in baseball became unwatchable. It's hard for teams to play catch-up when 47% of teams aren't trying. A salary floor helps put a competitive product on the field and could help alleviate the value of bad contracts to help teams meet said floor. Still, you need to de-incentivise losing games. If I'm Miami I'll just find the most injury prone players on the planet and lock them up to deals to secure the salary floor and then lose out. That, or maybe trade for someone like Miguel Cabrera who is an absolute albatross just to reach the floor. See, there's ways around this too. So long as teams have reason to tank, they will. I don't think you really understand what tanking means if you think all seven of those teams are actively tanking as opposed to being bad. You posted the information about how there's a spike in 100 loss teams this year, did you even stop to consider for a second that might just be an outlier? No team would purposefully go out and sign bad or injured players for exuberant amounts of money just to meet the salary floor, that's so illogical. The whole point of tanking is you're not spending money. All of those terrible teams are in the bottom 10 in baseball except for the Mariners, and I don't think the Mariners are tanking. If you impose a salary floor that's 25% higher than those terrible teams' payrolls and then the teams spend it on guys who are going to either negatively contribute or not contribute at all, they're going to be less profitable. So a salary floor would incentivize them to make better use of that money in order to make it back. Draft pools are great and all but at the end of the day it's a business and the goal is to make money. If you force teams to spend more money there's going to be a lot more effort to put out a more profitable product. A salary floor would be way more effective than any scenario where teams would lose draft picks for losing a certain amount of games, but that's a pretty low bar to clear. I'm not saying I like tanking teams, but you're drastically overstating the amount of tanking that's actually going on right now. Because again I really don't think you get the difference between outright tanking and allocating resources to open your competitive window a year or two down the line. There will always be bad teams. Even if they lose less games, you will always have teams that are relatively way worse than others. And if there comes a day where that is not the case, and every team wins 78-84 games, then that will be BAD FOR BASEBALL. Parity is way more interesting in theory than in practice. So putting arbitrary soft caps on how bad teams can be is ignoring just so much. I'm pretty sure it happens in the NHL that has a floor. If you have to spend x-amount and you do not anticipate being good then you acquire a bad contract with 1-2 years remaining to meet the floor so you can continue to lose. If you're the Mariners (who should be 100 game losers but had a very hot start to the season) and you HAVE to spend x-amount, let's call it 75 million, do you think they're signing quality bench pieces to reach that number with their current roster OR are they looking at their current situation and thinking, "we're not going to win, let's get the worst guys on a 1-year lucrative deal and reach the floor". Jordan Zimmermann suddenly has value, though probably after next season unless someone really wants to suck for 2 years straight. Just get 1 bad contract and fill out the team with cost-controlled kids and see if any pan out or add value. The Pirates I was on the fence on, but Umass already made the argument for them. |
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Post by grandsalami on Sept 27, 2019 18:05:38 GMT -5
For as long as baseball has been around it was a sport without salary caps. With the last CBA it seems like there is a hard salary cap for both domestic and international drafts as well as payroll. Literally every team is treating these caps as “hard caps” including big money teams like the Yankees and the Sox. It’s even more apparently when we see marquee FA sitting unsigned thru spring training, when that never happened in past CBA’s.
The MLBPA must be kicking themselves for what they agreed to. And I bet negotiations for the next CBA will be even uglier as players realize they are screwed.
I guess I should enjoy baseball while I can since it seems we are headed for a long strike.
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Post by beavertontim on Sept 27, 2019 23:40:38 GMT -5
A two tier max salary structure giving the team that has the player under contract the best opportunity to retain the player.
A hard salary cap and a minimum percentage of the gross to the players. This should prevent teams from under spending, and if they do the players would still get the money.
Maximum contract length of 6 years.
A voluntary option contract. Would allow AAAA players out of options to get called up during the season more readily without the team fearing losing the player when the player needs to get sent back down
Expand the big league roster to 26. This should cut down on demotions to rest players
Expand the 40 man roster to 44. Creates more space to manage the roster without minor trades and allows for better flexibility when there are injuries.
The draft order for all teams not in the playoffs is determined by draw and not by record.
Eliminate all differences in amateur signing pools. The last two points take away most reasons for tanking.
Raise all minor league pay scales from AA down by 100%. In exchange all players signing under age 20 would get one more year before becoming rule 5 eligible.
Expand AAA and AA rosters to 26. This helps accommodate the 44 man roster and helps facilitate development of players without overuse
Bonuses related to getting certain honors would be capped but would not count toward the team's salary cap. Honors would include Cy Young, MVP, Batting Champ, All Star Game (only if the player actually plays) etc.
Attack away
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Sept 28, 2019 10:43:17 GMT -5
Raise all minor league pay scales from AA down by 100%. In exchange all players signing under age 20 would get one more year before becoming rule 5 eligible. I'm glad you brought up minor league salaries, because it's a real problem (unlike, say, defensive shifts) and fixing it could potentially have a significant and positive effect on the future of the sport, not to mention the actual lives of human beings (again, unlike the shift). But as long as we're just making up solutions, let's go big: Radical expansion. Eliminate the minor leagues. Have something like 90-120 independent pro teams and a relegation system. Minor league compensation solved, but wait, there's more. All the stuff we're talking about with banning the shift, automating the zone... that stuff all just represents slightly better maintenance of a slowly declining empire. You can prop it up for a good long while on the momentum it has, but if you really want baseball to flourish and grow in the future, I think you need to radically rethink the whole enterprise. The world now is personalized media and individually targeted advertisements, so don't fear regionalization, lean into it. Local identity still has a pull that baseball in the abstract doesn't no matter what kind of ball they're using or how fast the pace of play is. |
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