“Get all 30 teams to compete every season”

[Moose Milligan]

2 minutes ago, NCRaven said:

When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble shooter, the fastest runner, the big league ball players, the toughest boxers.  Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser.  Americans play to win all the time.  Now, I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed.  They why Americans have never lost and will never lose.  Because the very thought of losing is hateful to Americans.  This soccer talk makes me sick. 

 

Watched that movie the other day, it's fantastic.

And if the thought of losing is hateful to Americans, the Men's National Soccer Team must absolutely loathe themselves right now.  

[DrungoHazewood]

2 minutes ago, NCRaven said:

When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble shooter, the fastest runner, the big league ball players, the toughest boxers.  Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser.  Americans play to win all the time.  Now, I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed.  They why Americans have never lost and will never lose.  Because the very thought of losing is hateful to Americans.  This soccer talk makes me sick. 

 

It's very American to look at how others have solved problems we've deemed intractable and say "yea, that'll never work here."

[DrungoHazewood]

Just now, Moose Milligan said:

Watched that movie the other day, it's fantastic.

And if the thought of losing is hateful to Americans, the Men's National Soccer Team must absolutely loathe themselves right now.  

Latest FIFA rankings we've moved up to 10th.  The horror of '18 is (hopefully) behind us.  All kinds of exciting young kids on the team, and they've beaten Mexico twice in a little over a month, including once with our C team.

[NCRaven]

1 minute ago, DrungoHazewood said:

It's very American to look at how others have solved problems we've deemed intractable and say "yea, that'll never work here."

We didn't leave Europe to be more like them!  And, I really just wanted to quote the movie "Patton" for fun.  I don't think that the owners of major league teams, with hundreds of billions invested would ever allow themselves to be relegated out of a major league.  Also, non MLB teams only exist to provide players for the MLB teams; with the exception of some independent teams that exist for local entertainment purposes.

I do like the idea of the best non-playoff team drafting first and working down from there.  That might create a major change.

[NCRaven]

6 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

Latest FIFA rankings we've moved up to 10th.  The horror of '18 is (hopefully) behind us.  All kinds of exciting young kids on the team, and they've beaten Mexico twice in a little over a month, including once with our C team.

It seems like there is little interest, at least on a nation-wide scale, in domestic soccer as a televised sport here in the States.  Seems like Americans would rather watch the top European leagues and teams than their own.  

[Moose Milligan]

3 minutes ago, NCRaven said:

 

I do like the idea of the best non-playoff team drafting first and working down from there.  That might create a major change.

I don't know.  I can see having the best non-playoff team drafting first working well...I can also see it being a big nothingburger.

In the NFL?  Absolutely.  NBA? Sure.  But not in a sport where there's like 85 rounds of drafting and then you have the whole international market to consider, too?  Ehh....

[Tony-OH]

The thing that's different about baseball is it's a pastime event. In other words, unlike every other sport, baseball is played every day throughout the summer and it's just something that many of us like to watch, even if we're doing other things. 

Meaningful baseball is a great sport to watch, but one of the problems is that it's becoming less and less likely that your team is playing meaningful baseball in August and September anymore unless you are one of the few teams competing for a playoff spot. 

Heck, even teams with big leads in September can become boring because all everyone is waiting for is the playoffs. This is why in my mind a system that allows for more excitement throughout the year and longer playoffs is better. 

Perhaps going to two 71 or 75 game schedules that ends in mid-September is a good way to start. If the season starts over after a bad first half, teams might think they have a chance to compete in the second half if their teams get hot. MLB would have to increase to 16 playoff teams, but at least most teams would have some thing interesting going on most of the year.

Maybe add two teams (Nashville and Las Vegas) and have four 4-team Divisions in each league and then have a balanced schedule across the league. Winner of each half would play each other in 5 game sets for 1st round. If same team wins, the team with best winning percentage in division would be second team.

The Divisions would be set by market share over the previous three seasons. And every three years they would be adjusted. 

 

 

 

[DrungoHazewood]

1 minute ago, NCRaven said:

It seems like there is little interest, at least on a nation-wide scale, in domestic soccer as a televised sport here in the States.  Seems like Americans would rather watch the top European leagues and teams than their own.  

There's some truth there, but it's changing.  I don't know the TV ratings situation, but in-person attendance is pretty solid.  MLB drew over 20k a game in 2019.  Several teams like Atlanta and Seattle are among the top 20 or 30 highest-attended teams in world soccer.  They're slowly building.  DC United has been a thing for 25 years, they're older than the Rays or the D'backs, they now have second generation fans.

I think many or most US fans root differently than in baseball, football, basketball.  They usually have a European team or two (or sometimes Mexican or wherever their family is from), and an MLS team, too.  And they follow the USMNT and often the USWNT.  I pretty closely follow DC United, Tottenham Hotspur, 1860 Munich and the US national teams.

[DrungoHazewood]

4 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

Perhaps going to two 71 or 75 game schedules that ends in mid-September is a good way to start. If the season starts over after a bad first half, teams might think they have a chance to compete in the second half is their teams get hot. MLB would have to increase to 16 playoff teams, but at least most teams would have some thing interesting going on most of the year.

I'm pretty sure the Mexican League has two shorter seasons a year, and a winter league. (Okay, looking it up I confused Mexican baseball and soccer - the baseball league has a 120-ish game summer league, and there's also a winter league in Mexico.  The soccer league has the Apertura and Clausura, two separate seasons each year.)

[DrungoHazewood]

16 minutes ago, NCRaven said:

We didn't leave Europe to be more like them!  And, I really just wanted to quote the movie "Patton" for fun.  I don't think that the owners of major league teams, with hundreds of billions invested would ever allow themselves to be relegated out of a major league.  Also, non MLB teams only exist to provide players for the MLB teams; with the exception of some independent teams that exist for local entertainment purposes.

I do like the idea of the best non-playoff team drafting first and working down from there.  That might create a major change.

Promotion/relegation is a non-starter in a closed league.  Owners bought into the league with the expectation that they could suck for 20 years and have no real hit to their franchise value.

[Too Tall]

I read the article and all eight pages - SO FAR - here. (It's hot, I am old, and I have air.)  Seems to me, the "bargaining season" stands to be more interesting than the actual season of competition. It will surely add extra intrigue to the "off season" for the Orioles and beyond. 

I was always taught that a basic tenet of bargaining if you are management, is you go in pre tuned with what/the extent to which you are willing to give (limits)- not what you think the other side wants. In other words, it's what you want not what they want. Also, you know ahead of time what will cause you to go "to the mat." It's to the extent the union approaches your benchmarks, a reasonable settlement lies. So, the real question is how far will ownership go before it's "mat time"?

I'd like to think they see the player's need to up their earning potential earlier and recognize this may mean a shorter window to FA. That will surely play to the rank and file. They will never in my opinion opt to just spend money on players for the sake of some artificial bench mark.  I also think a more balanced schedule would go a long way to improve competition and perhaps interest. The problem here is Oriole Ownership makes good money off Yankee and Sox fans as do the Rays. So you have to mitigate that. I think Tony hit on some ideas that are worthy for both sides!

[SteveA]

47 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

They can't.  So you need to give teams more than the World Series to play for.  Make the regular season 100 games, and then every third or fourth week you're playing a number of regional tournaments and international competitions.  Maybe you finish 40-60 in the league, but you win the Eastern Championship Cup, or the US-Japan Showdown.

LOL.   The sport is so tradition bound that there was basically one significant change in 100 years, the DH, and it is still to this day controversial.   And the recent introduction of 7 inning doubleheader games and free runners in extra innings has people up in arms.

And you are going to suggest THAT level of change?

That's funny.

[DrungoHazewood]

30 minutes ago, SteveA said:

LOL.   The sport is so tradition bound that there was basically one significant change in 100 years, the DH, and it is still to this day controversial.   And the recent introduction of 7 inning doubleheader games and free runners in extra innings has people up in arms.

And you are going to suggest THAT level of change?

That's funny.

Oh no, I fully expect half the teams to be playing for nothing from July-on for the rest of my life.  I'm just suggesting that there are better ways.

[DrungoHazewood]

43 minutes ago, Too Tall said:

I also think a more balanced schedule would go a long way to improve competition and perhaps interest. The problem here is Oriole Ownership makes good money off Yankee and Sox fans as do the Rays. So you have to mitigate that. I think Tony hit on some ideas that are worthy for both sides!

Winning will be far more lucrative than being bad and selling some tickets to Yankee and Red Sox fans.

[eddie83]

1 hour ago, DrungoHazewood said:

That's not true at all.  There are ways to incentivize winning throughout the year.  The problem is that there are 30 teams and one trophy.  Everyone is playing for one thing, and when that one thing is out of reach they pack it in and fake it the rest of the year.

You have to have other incentives.  In most soccer leagues there's promotion/relegation.  I've seen games where there are teams that go down swinging in front of 50,000 rabid fans for a game to see if they get relegated from the 2nd tier to the 3rd tier.  Obviously promotion/relegation is a non-starter in closed North American sports leagues.

You can have competitions outside the league.  For example, you could have a tournament like the WBC where the O's are way out of it in the league, but still fighting for the WBC club trophy.

You can use a reverse-order draft, as mentioned in the article, where the best team that doesn't make the playoffs gets the #1 pick in each round.  You'll probably try harder if finishing with 50 wins gets you the 18th pick in the draft.

We in the US are so used to single-trophy closed leagues that we can't imagine teams like the O's trying in August in September.  But that's just our tiny little slice of the world, and its poorly thought out structures.

This is America. I’m suppose to care if the Orioles win the Weedeater Bowl? 
 

5-7 years ago the Royals were champs, Tigers always competitive, Orioles, Pirates in playoffs. Rays had a lull then, White Sox weren’t good, Padres sucked. It goes in cycles. Nats, Cubs runs from then is over. 
 

There seems to be this idea that the same teams have won forever and the same ones have stunk forever. It’s just not true. 
 

The whole draft idea is a joke. I don’t watch the NBA anymore but Orlando missed the playoffs by a game Shaq’s rookie year then next year got the 1st pick by lottery.