Posted on 06/21/2014 5:07:02 AM PDT by foreverfree
A league that was once divided between the haves and the have-nots has become the united realm of the mediocre. Twenty teams have won between 45% and 55% of their games, nearly double the number that fell within that range at this point in 2013. And if the sport's hierarchy seems clear, try waiting a week. It may change.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
hhhm...surface gain. Without a few "super" teams average sporting fan will lose interest. Baseball lost the young fan when it moved their playoff games later into the night. This continues the trend. Soccer will continue to gain ground vs baseball
Is parity in baseball (or any sport) a bad thing?
ff
T ball?
They need to speed the game up. 3-4 hours is just too long.
As a sports fan I think parity is OK — but not if it’s “legislated parity” where free agency and salary cap rules result in a revolving door of players on every team and no continuity from one year to the next. The NFL is the most absurd application of legislated parity — to the point where teams that do a poor job of drafting and signing players can still manage to succeed.
Seems to me games are a little bit quicker these days. Pitching is beating hitting - especially in the NL obviously.
It’ll probably end up like pro football where it seems like the playoffs don’t mean as much, because so many teams get in. Who knows, someday they might even have multiple Superbowls/champions. I think it’s a combination of the ‘everybody gets a trophy culture’, combined with the drive for more money. Mostly the latter. Eventually it will all be so cheapened, people will lose interest. (as we’ve seen with our government at all levels and so many other things)
——try waiting a week-—
Or, alternatively, disregard the whole thing
I dunno, I’m sitting here in my vacation rental beachfront condo watching fishing boats go by on their way to the Gulf. Considerably more interesting then watching baseball.
Could be because I’m a Rays fan though.
I suspect baseball was the testing grounds for Common Core. It's worked so well for baseball, now lets use it in the schools.
I think it’s time the Rays re-tool. I don’t know much about the prospects they have in the system, but it might be time to make some trades.
Don’t get down on Madden though. What he has done over the years is nothing short of remarkable.
I’m a Fish fan and can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Just hope it gets here quick. I like the job Redmond has done.
People have the remember that the leagues as a whole are a business. I cannot imagine why anyone would want to own a team in a small market if their destiny is only to be a whipping boy for big market teams. The fans in the those markets aren’t really big on it either.
The league as a whole (as in the owners in all regions) are better off when everyone has a shot at being competitive. That is the current state, and it is an improvement over the Yankees owning baseball for stretches at a time.
A salary cap was instituted in Hockey about a decade ago, and I believe it has done a lot for the league. Now if they could get rid of the awful officiating and sharp change in rules between regular season and playoffs, they might get somewhere.
Honestly I don’t understand why people actually think this is some kind of lefty plot to ruin the purity of competition or dumb down the sport. It is a way to make each franchise into a profitable business. Again, the league as a whole is a business, and each team is merely a franchise. Things have to be structured so that each franchise can be profitable or it hurts the business as a whole.
Do people object to McDonalds having restrictions on how their franchisees operate and in what density?
But if any team has a shot at winning a title, the same thing can happen. Fans like to see great teams. If winning a title is not too hard, that trivializes the sport as well. Personally, I like to see any sport have four or five exceptional teams for the other teams to try and emulate.
Yesterday the Blue Jays were down 8-0 but came back to win 14-9, scoring 5 runs in the 9th. The Yankees and the Padres were both trailing in the 9th inning but won by scoring 4 runs and 3 runs in the bottom of the ninth.
Madden is great, couldnt ask for someone better.
The Rays lost their starting pitching to injury and the rest of the team appears to have given up.
I got into Hockey and dont think I can go back.
Sounds like they were playing the Pirates...
The articles contention that teams were not making money 15 years ago is bogus. At that time, MLB was engaged in warfare between players and owners over the CBA. The books were cooked by the owners in order to bolster their position vs the players. Now that those issues have been resolved and labor peace reigns, the teams are more willing to show profits in order to attract more investment to the game.
Sports teams must be competitive on the field, but at the same time they have to accept limits on their freedom to do business off the field.
Once a fan understands this, a lot of the complaints you hear should diminish. My single biggest complaint is that parity has become so ingrained in the operations of major sports leagues that the sports themselves have become completely watered down. The competition becomes fabricated to a large degree, and these sports get way too close to that fine line that separates a competitive game from a staged event.
The NFL is the epitome of parity, which in my mind also makes it the worst offender in terms of diluting the product to make it more attractive to people who are far from serious fans.
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