MLB Strike Is Near?

[LookinUp]

2 minutes ago, Mendoza Line said:

NBA playoffs is pretty awful too. I mean what's the point of having the first round? When is the last time one of the lowest seeded teams even made the NBA finals? I know none have ever won. 

While your point about the lowest seeds is presumably true, playoff basketball is a much better watch than regular season basketball, for sure. 

[DrungoHazewood]

4 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

I know you love soccer but just because the MLS has the letter "M" for major and "L" for league in it doesn't make it a major league sport.  I like watching soccer too but if I'm going to tune in, it's going to be some real European stuff.  MLS is like where old European stars are put out to pasture. 

[soccer content; look away if you must] US soccer is building itself up.  If nobody watches it because it's not on the level of some of the European Leagues it'll never get there.  But it is getting there.  Salaries are going up, some teams are drawing fans like top tier European clubs.  Almost every team has a purpose-built stadium.  More good mid-career players are staying in the US.  MLS is doing well for a league that's only existed 23 years.  MLB had a 125 year head start.  [/soccer]

[DrungoHazewood]

8 minutes ago, LookinUp said:

I can't say I disagree, but at the same time I don't see the value of having a 45-117 team play the last 40 games of their season either. Essentially, I'd be fine with the leagues replacing lost regular season revenue with more playoff revenue, if the math works. I'm also pretty sure it would change the tanking nature of the game that is happening now, at least to some degree. 

Didn't the 76ers go 10-72 a couple years ago?  I don't know that having the O's play their last 40 games over six weeks is any different from having the Browns play the last 6 games of an 0-16 season over the last six weeks.

[osfan83]

7 minutes ago, Mendoza Line said:

NBA playoffs is pretty awful too. I mean what's the point of having the first round? When is the last time one of the lowest seeded teams even made the NBA finals? I know none have ever won. 

I know the 1999 Knicks were an 8th seed that made the finals, and lost to the Spurs

[Matt Bennett]

10 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

It's only an extraordinary amount of time if you're like the 17- or 23-year-old me and think you have to watch every inning of every game.  If you instead come to grips with the idea that there's usually a game today and you always have the option of watching it if you have time, I think you're better off.  

With, say, soccer I often feel like I have to rearrange my schedule to watch a game because there usually isn't another one for a week.  Which sometimes leads to prioritizing soccer over other things I should be doing.  Baseball... it's fine, there's always tomorrow.

Which is why baseball has a dedicated fan base but is still losing ground. There’s always tomorrow. There’s no urgency in any game or even any one series. 

[Moose Milligan]

2 minutes ago, Matt Bennett said:

Which is why baseball has a dedicated fan base but is still losing ground. There’s always tomorrow. There’s no urgency in any game or even any one series. 

What's the rush?  Chill out.  

[DrungoHazewood]

1 minute ago, Matt Bennett said:

Which is why baseball has a dedicated fan base but is still losing ground. There’s always tomorrow. There’s no urgency in any game or even any one series. 

Have you never watched September or October baseball?  There's just as much urgency in May as there is early in any sport's season.

[Sessh]

16 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

To me it's pretty terrible to have half the league in the playoffs, and your team is out.  The hockey playoffs last like three months, but for half the league your team just doesn't play the last three months.

Sounds like part of a plan to deter tanking in baseball. This last NHL postseason, all four top seeds were knocked out by all four wildcard teams. Three were eliminated in the second round; one in six games and the other two in seven. The other got swept in the conference finals. I'd be interested in exploring a similar system in baseball. If more teams have a chance, then more teams will opt to go for it instead of tanking.

[DrungoHazewood]

Just now, Sessh said:

Sounds like part of a plan to deter tanking in baseball. This last NHL postseason, all four top seeds were knocked out by all four wildcard teams. Three were eliminated in the second round; one in six games and the other two in seven. The other got swept in the conference finals. I'd be interested in exploring a similar system in baseball. If more teams have a chance, then more teams will opt to go for it instead of tanking.

To me all that says is that there's no benefit to finishing first.  You go all out, spend money, make trades,  you get a top seed, and you're out a week later.  Might as well just coast along, get a wildcard, and roll the dice.  The more rounds of playoffs there are, the less the regular season means.

As for tanking... again, the NBA has a million teams in the playoffs and the Sixers recently had something like a 10-72 season.

[Mendoza Line]

19 minutes ago, osfan83 said:

I know the 1999 Knicks were an 8th seed that made the finals, and lost to the Spurs

So like once in the 35 year history did the lowest seed even make the finals. And the lowest seed to ever win was a 6th, once.

I guess my point is that in the NFL and MLB, wild card teams go on to win the championship quite frequently in comparison. I think by having so many teams in the playoffs that essentially have no chance, it makes the first round relatively pointless.

[Sessh]

1 minute ago, DrungoHazewood said:

To me all that says is that there's no benefit to finishing first.  You go all out, spend money, make trades,  you get a top seed, and you're out a week later.  Might as well just coast along, get a wildcard, and roll the dice.  The more rounds of playoffs there are, the less the regular season means.

As for tanking... again, the NBA has a million teams in the playoffs and the Sixers recently had something like a 10-72 season.

Being regular season champions shouldn't mean anything after the regular season is over. Finishing first is winning a championship, not winning the regular season. That is true in baseball as well. It's nice to win the division, but in the end, so what if you lose in the playoffs? How much does the regular season mean at that point? It's all about the top prize in the end. The regular season is where you earn your right to be one of the teams playing for it.

Well, I didn't say eliminate tanking. There's some teams who are rebuilding or not doing so well. How many more NBA teams would be terrible if only 500,000 teams were allowed in instead?

[Can_of_corn]

1 hour ago, DrungoHazewood said:

Are you sure about that?

Looking at the average age of batters and pitchers on bb-ref, it looks to me like 2019 is the 73rd-youngest season for batters, and something like 105th-youngest for pitchers.

Many of the youngest seasons were from the 1800s, but (for example) an average pitcher in 1969 was 27.1, today he's 28.6.  An average batter in 1965 was 27.3, today he's 28.2.  From that data it looks like players in 2019 are older than the median MLB season.

If you look just at the NL, 2019 for batters is older than any year since 2012. And pitchers are as old as they've been since 2010.

I was quoting the article.

[orioles22]

The biggest problem, to me, is too many teams have no chance. I think the answer is a salary cap like the NFL to stop with this large-market and small-market insanity.

[Tx Oriole]

2 hours ago, Maverick Hiker said:

The players are not happy. It seems teams no longer want to pay big money for free agents in their 30's.  Also teams keeping young players in the minors longer to prevent them from leaving as free agents.

 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/1690983001

 

These players strike then the hell with them. Already make millions. If they strike I’m done with them.

[Sessh]

Just now, orioles22 said:

The biggest problem, to me, is too many teams have no chance. I think the answer is a salary cap like the NFL to stop with this large-market and small-market insanity.

Agree. This is another reason why expanding the playoffs might make the regular season better. It's not so much for the top seeds, but more for the teams battling it out for the two wild card spots in each league. There are 30 teams in baseball and 10 make the postseason, so that's 2/3rds of the league that won't make it and many of those teams won't have a chance at all. So, the question at that point is why try at all? If you know you have no chance, then you're already thinking about things like your position in next year's draft before May is over.

People may feel that expanding the playoffs makes the first round pointless, but I don't see it that way. Sometimes, teams surprise you and there are upsets or much more entertaining series' than was anticipated. How much of this "pointless" stuff are you willing to accept to make the regular season more competitive in the middle and lower middle of the league? You have to give them some kind of incentive to try to compete other than "Hey! Stop doing that!"

I dunno, maybe I'm biased. I see some things in the NHL system that I wish we could do more of in baseball. Salary cap being one. I think the NHL has raised their salary cap two straight seasons now.