Posted on 06/11/2011 1:57:58 PM PDT by rawhide
As Major League Baseball continues to discuss possible realignment, one idea that has come up is going to a league with 15 teams per league, reports ESPN's Buster Olney.
Currently, the National League has 16 teams and the AL 14 for scheduling purposes. Should baseball go to two 15-team leagues, that would likely require interleague play every day of the season. Given baseball likes to treat interleague play as an event, that could dilute the appeal of interleague play to the point it would no longer be a moneymaker. However, there is still real resistance to the idea which has not been presented to owners yet, although the player's union is reportedly open to it.
"I'd still say the odds of it happening are less than 50-50," the source said.
CBSSports.com's Danny Knobler says that players are open to it because they are not happy about AL West teams having a 25 percent chance of making the playoffs, the NL Central just 18 percent and the rest all at 20 percent.
To switch to a 15-team alignment, one team from the NL would have to move to the AL. According to Olney, two highly-ranked executives think the Astros could receive the call in order to tap into a rivalry with the Texas Rangers. Picking the Astros would also allow baseball to remove one team from the NL Central and slot Houston into the AL West, which would address the issue of playoff percentages.
It is far easier to attain a balanced schedule (within a division for sure) with six 5-team divisions than with two 5-team and a 4-team or two 5-team and a 6-team.
Now, should games be differentially weighted for the wild card?
The oil boom changes things. Milwaukee has a nice, baseball-only retractable domed stadium that might be a model for either Calgary or Edmonton. Rogers Center, in Toronto, while impressive, cost too much money and features too many comprises to be a multi-purpose facility. And let’s not even bring up Expo Stadium in Montreal. But, with the right backing, I think MLB would be interested in awarding another team to Canada.
Having the pitcher bat adds a strategy to the game, weak spot in the line-up, conservation of pitchers for pinch hitters, tiring of pitchers that get on base, response to bean balls and it's darn fun when your pitcher hits a home run in the World Series (Blanton).
I get the point but my suggestion was “ reluctantly offered” as a way to align the two leagues. Since the hated DH came into the AL we been watching two different games. My suggestion does the minimum violence to the greatest game on earth and gets both leagues playing by the same rules.
FWIW, the DH is an abomination. As a reluctantly offered compromise, remove the pitcher from the batting line-up in both leagues and dump the DH. no one wants to see a pitcher flail away at a fast ball and they don’t make pitchers like Babe Ruth anymore.
One thing about the DH, and your suggestion about having an 8-batter lineup, is the fact that the home team loses a built-in advantage. It is all very well to say that you have a simple, single-substitution rule in baseball which applies to both teams - but in reality, the fact that the important substitutions are generally made for offensive (pinch hitter) rather than defensive purposes means that the visiting team loses defense with its pinch hitters an inning before the home team does.If, for example, both teams pinch hit for their pitchers in the seventh inning, the visiting team's pitcher doesn't pitch in the seventh inning but the home team's pitcher does.Consequently you would expect that National League teams would do better in interleague play than the American League, because the DH rule should be more of a help to the visiting team than the home team. The DH rule presumably means that the 25th man on the roster is a DH rather than a pitcher, which would might not help the American League team at home against a National League team as much as it disadvantages it when visiting one (tho I suppose that during the regular season the National League teams could call up an extra hitter and send down a pitcher, and the American League teams could do the reverse. But that's not permissible during the World Series . . .).
Actually your 8-man lineup can in principle be reduced to a six-man one (just enough to account for a three men on base, two men out, and a batter at the plate). If the pitcher can be exclusively a defensive specialist, why not the shortstop and the center fielder?
The United States' population has grown by about 40 percent since 1960. And MLB now draws on the huge talent base in Latin America and Asia. Since the ratio of ballplayers to population is no larger than it was in the "good old days" I see no reason to think that talent is diluted.
(Not an original idea of mine - got it from Bill James).
So is beer in plastic bottles, also found at major league ball parks.
Please add aluminum bats to the list.
The difference is that San Francisco has had a baseball team since 1958, and the Giants have been part of that city’s sports tradition for more than 50 years. Now imagine a place where there hasn’t been any baseball tradition at all, where hockey and CFL football have a long-standing tradition (that’s something else to consider in Canada: the second half of the baseball season overlaps the CFL season considerably), and where “summer” is basically a construction season that lasts 6-8 weeks. You think big-league baseball is going to thrive there? LOL.
I like the way the National League game involves more strategy and requires more hands-on managing, but not if all of these late-inning considerations revolve around the basic premise that the pitchers are automatic outs in the lineup if they swing away.
There's another important difference between AL and NL rules that doesn't get a lot of attention. The AL has a curfew rule, under which an inning is not permitted to start after 1:00 AM. The NL has no such rule, which is another small reason why you're more likely to see position players pitch late in a game in the National League.
If you really want to see evidence of this, just look at Major League Baseball today and notice how few great black American players (as opposed to dark-skinned Hispanics) there are in the game today.
There's a lot of truth to your statement about Latin American and Asian talent comprising a big chunk of MLB rosters these days, but that doesn't necessarily bode well for big-league baseball. I've pointed out that this trend may very well relegate baseball to the same status as soccer among American sports fans.
Charlotte, NC
Memphis, TN
Portland, OR
New Orleans, LA
Calgary, Alberta,Canada
Las Vegas, NV
Jacksonville, FL
Pittsburgh, PA needs a team. :-)
Hartford, Ct should get one!!! Someone from Connecticut was trying to get the Expos, before they moved to DC.
the Rays play in St. Petersburg and not Tampa. The only reason why the Rays are NOT drawing is that St. Pete is not close to the population center of the bay area. Tampa is 15 miles from St Pete, the population of Hillsborough County is mostly to the east and south of Tampa. From Apollo beach/Ruskin/SunCity Center area (the South Shore), it takes about 90 minutes to get to The Trop. St. Pete is playing HARDBALL with the Rays owner, and but the people here would love to see the Rays either at the Fairgrounds area (the site of the Florida State Fair) or in downtown Tampa (near the St. Pete Times Forum, home of the Lightning).
I'd love to see the Carolina area get a team, but not the Rays!! (Going to see the Red Sox vs Rays game this week - rooting for the BoSox!!)
While I would be the first to buy season tickets if San Antonio landed a MLB team, I just don’t see a team moving to SA.
First, while we are the sixth- or seventh-largest city in the country, we are roughly the 30th largest metro area. Some of the suburbs to the north count towards Austin’s total.
Second, the AA Missions (yes, San Antonio, despite well over 1 million people, only has a AA team) only manage to draw about 6,000 on weekends, and 2,500 during the week, in spite of winning three of the last nine Texas League championships and being well on their way to a fourth in ten years this year. The ballpark isn’t in the nicest section of town, isn’t near *anything* besides a highway and an AF base, yet they still charge $5 to park. Concession prices are comparable with major league parks, and the home club (San Diego) runs specials *better* than the Missions.
Third, there is no good facility in the area that could easily be converted into a major league stadium. The Albatross-dome, I mean Alamodome was built too small for baseball. Wolff Stadium only holds about 8,000 maximum, and is not in great shape for a 15-year-old park. They could just raze the Wolff and rebuild, but I don’t see a MLB-quality park going up in an off-season.
Finally, the Round Rock Express, just north of Austin, are doing great business. They started about 10 years ago as Houston’s AA team, and were quickly promoted to AAA after attendance stayed high. They routinely draw 10k+ on weekends, they have a state-of-the-art facility, and are much more likely to draw baseball fans up from San Antonio than vice versa.
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