“Get all 30 teams to compete every season”

[eddie83]

1 hour ago, Tony-OH said:

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. 

 

 

 

How was it pre Wild Card? The defending Champ Orioles season was over in 84 by May due to the Tigers. 

[eddie83]

Corns favorite topic, service time is one issue that would help. If bad teams were incentivized to call up young players early and it doesn’t harm that. 

[DrungoHazewood]

45 minutes ago, eddie83 said:

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

Nah, I guess you're right.  Let's keep doing things exactly the same way and have half the teams going through the motions 100 games a year and try to keep a straight face when you attempt to get people to take it seriously and pay good money for it.

In other places you watch the Champions League or the FA cup or the League Cup or Europa League or your national team when your club team is in 11th place, but you're still watching your favorite sport.  In America we go watch Scrubs reruns and for God knows what reason the NFL until spring training starts in nine months. It would be a terrible tragedy if we gave Oriole fans a reason to come to the ballpark that doesn't involve pretending to beat the Yanks and the Red Sox for 162 games every single year when you know it's not happening in April.

[maybenxtyr]

5 hours ago, wildcard said:

Tampa is currently leading the AL East by 5 games.   They have figured out how to have  a magical pipeline and have one of the lower payrolls.  But 4 years to FA will hurt them as much or more than the O's.

Tampa would have to trade a big chunk for their team at 3 years of service.   That includes Glasnow, Lowe, Margot, Yarbrough, Wendle, Kittredge, Diaz,  Anderson, Phillips, Meadows and more.

The O's could potentially get in that position, but it would take years.

[foxfield]

Lets start with the article.  It was an ESPN propaganda piece designed for the players union.  The article makes no attempt to present the sides or shape the solution.  It dresses up the important parts from the players side.

 

In general unless all revenues are shared, I do not see how you can effectively tie teams to a salary floor.  The Yankees can suck and they make 500 plus million by existing.  A salary cap forces them to be careful how they spend.  Take it off and salaries for FA explode.

The fix should be to be fairer on the front end and the minor leagues.  Of course that isn't sexy so the players won't care about that.  But you want development to be better and faster?  Minor leaguers in A make $100K Min  AA Players make $250K min AAA make $500K Min and ML make $1 Million.  Then index those numbers and reduce the ML Cap to 150 Million.

The game will be better long term.  The incentive to cheat to get the huge FA contract would not go away, but could be tempered by more rigorous testing in the Minor leagues.

I am not saying any of this would work.  I am merely saying the OP suggesting that the players just want 30 teams competing is utter bull crap.  What they want is 30 teams paying over 100 Million and they want more money for the 30 and over crowd.  The elephant in the room is that analytics suggest those guys aren't worth the money.  But those young guys might be.  Any honest discussion has to look at the Yankees AND the Rays and Mike Trout and Logan Michaels.  We should all want that... 

 

Edit to add.....No one but Oriole fans screamed at the 2018 team that lost 115 games.  But those guys were paid 148 Million.  But lose 100 and spend 59 million.  That's a crime.  See?  That's what they mean by compete.

[Just Regular]

3 hours 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.

There might be tanking to avoid the playoffs then!

I think it would have to be tiered as some here have mentioned.   Picks 1-6 for the 5th place teams might be good, then we'd be chasing the Marlins and Royals.   That would create odd incentives for teams in situations like the Twins and Royals this year though.   Three team tiers might be better as teams like us are way worse than the last place AL Central teams, who would benefit from their weak division there.    Maybe NBA ping pong balls make better sense than they seem to.

I feel sure the players will grant the owners more playoffs this CBA in exchange for whatever, and just waiting to see if it is 12, or 16 like last year.

Just looking back at last year's 16 playoff team experiment, in the AL the 29-31 Astros were Last In and the 27-33 Mariners were First Out.   NL, the 29-31 Brewers got a tiebreak over the 29-31 Giants to earn the opening round 1-8 Dodgers matchup.   

I do feel like there could be shenanigans (at least in the rooting hearts of the GM's, if not the players on the field in Game 162) if the scenario became Door #1 you get a short series with some juggernaut, and Door #2 you get Elijah Greene, or whatever Strasburg/Harper/Rutschman might be there that following draft.

 

 

[LookinUp]

8 hours ago, Sports Guy said:

Maybe they set it up like the NBA, where you get more money if you stay with your team vs leaving via FA. 

 

1 hour ago, foxfield said:

In general unless all revenues are shared, I do not see how you can effectively tie teams to a salary floor.  

After reading the article and this thread, I have a two thoughts.

1. Ideas like Drungo's are radical for MLB, but would give additional reason to root and compete in-season. That should be a win-win.

2. One idea I think would make sense is a combination of toying with the draft order based on finish and tying revenue sharing to spending. For the latter, imagine the Orioles would typically get $25 million/year in revenue sharing. In a new system, they'd only be guaranteed say $10 million and the other $15 million would only be paid out if they met some goal of resigning players or signing free agents. That goal would have to be designed. For example, it could be a $ threshold, like $40 million, at which they get $3 million, at $50 million they get another $3 million, and so on. That would be a way to support a salary floor without making it a hard floor. Basically the opposite of a soft cap. When pared with other incentives (e.g., changes to the draft or more innovative things like Drungo's saying), you might align incentives toward more winning and less tanking.

[eddie83]

2 hours ago, DrungoHazewood said:

Nah, I guess you're right.  Let's keep doing things exactly the same way and have half the teams going through the motions 100 games a year and try to keep a straight face when you attempt to get people to take it seriously and pay good money for it.

In other places you watch the Champions League or the FA cup or the League Cup or Europa League or your national team when your club team is in 11th place, but you're still watching your favorite sport.  In America we go watch Scrubs reruns and for God knows what reason the NFL until spring training starts in nine months. It would be a terrible tragedy if we gave Oriole fans a reason to come to the ballpark that doesn't involve pretending to beat the Yanks and the Red Sox for 162 games every single year when you know it's not happening in April.

Half the teams? Exaggerate much? 
 

What are soccer ratings in America compared to MLB? If you love baseball then you can watch other teams as well if the local team is struggling.  

[sevastras]

I’d like to hear from @Frobbyhow the Expos and MLB pulled off moving into the market and then were able to kind of win the MASN revenue share ordeal. Seems to me that MLB gave some sort of assurance and went back on that screwing the Os revenue stream.  Kind of like you have a franchise agreement for a pizza joint and then they come back later and let one move in down the street but say don’t worry we will take care of you. 
That to me, seems like it may be a bigger deal in spending than the Davis contract. As far as all 30 teams competing every year, pay every player the same and every December have a fantasy football style draft snake draft. Tatis Jr plays for the Padres this year but next year he is Twin and gets paid the same as Pedro Severiano. 

[OriolesMagic83]

3 hours ago, sevastras said:

I’d like to hear from @Frobbyhow the Expos and MLB pulled off moving into the market and then were able to kind of win the MASN revenue share ordeal. Seems to me that MLB gave some sort of assurance and went back on that screwing the Os revenue stream.  Kind of like you have a franchise agreement for a pizza joint and then they come back later and let one move in down the street but say don’t worry we will take care of you. 
That to me, seems like it may be a bigger deal in spending than the Davis contract. As far as all 30 teams competing every year, pay every player the same and every December have a fantasy football style draft snake draft. Tatis Jr plays for the Padres this year but next year he is Twin and gets paid the same as Pedro Severiano. 

You could have free agency every year, where every player with more than 4 years of service time is a free agent.  Absolute freedom for the players.  Also there could be a Bird exemption where the home team could exceed the max value for a free agent to resign him.  Extra money would come from revenue sharing.  If a player's max value was $20 million, home team could pay $25 mill and extra $5 mill would come from revenue sharing-just an idea.  It will be funny if owners come with 4 years of arbitration and then make players free agents every year.  Would love to see the players response to that. 

[DrungoHazewood]

Baseball owners are overwhelmingly very conservative (not politically, financially) in that they made a large investment and they want that to appreciate without substantial risk.  They're not coming to the table with proposals to completely upend the current system.  They're not going to offer open free agency for everyone after four years, it's a non-starter.  I'll be astonished if both sides' proposals are not closer to tweaks than overhauls.

[eddie83]

2 hours ago, DrungoHazewood said:

Baseball owners are overwhelmingly very conservative (not politically, financially) in that they made a large investment and they want that to appreciate without substantial risk.  They're not coming to the table with proposals to completely upend the current system.  They're not going to offer open free agency for everyone after four years, it's a non-starter.  I'll be astonished if both sides' proposals are not closer to tweaks than overhauls.

The owners are going to have to make significant concessions with younger players. I’m fine with not paying past their prime players but they can’t have it both ways. I agree it will not be overhauled. 
 

It looks like more playoff teams next year are a given as well. I am not in favor of 7 teams where the #2 seed has to play the #7 seed. It’s not enough of a reward to the better team. 

[Can_of_corn]

3 minutes ago, eddie83 said:

The owners are going to have to make significant concessions with younger players. I’m fine with not paying past their prime players but they can’t have it both ways. I agree it will not be overhauled. 
 

It looks like more playoff teams next year are a given as well. I am not in favor of 7 teams where the #2 seed has to play the #7 seed. It’s not enough of a reward to the better team. 

I'm not sure how much pull the younger players have in the union.  Are the more established players going to fight for changes that don't directly help them?

[foxfield]

4 hours ago, Can_of_corn said:

I'm not sure how much pull the younger players have in the union.  Are the more established players going to fight for changes that don't directly help them?

This is a good point...and one the owners should exploit.  Andrew Miller is the player rep quoted in the article.  He is not worried about Grayson Rodriguez getting paid or Felix Bautista.  These guys want to change the 33 year old looking for a multi year contract in November-January and make sure they get paid.  

I wonder if the owners embraced more money for the bottom ie the MiLb players and made the money during controllable years better at the Major League level, could they come out ahead both financially and politically.

edit to add:  I tend to agree with you Corn in general...to be in favor of players but in this case the players are not looking out for players.

[eddie83]

34 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

I'm not sure how much pull the younger players have in the union.  Are the more established players going to fight for changes that don't directly help them?

I agree with you on that but I just don’t see how the owners are going to go back to how it was. The veteran players have to concede the reality. I’m sure they are looking out for themselves. Perhaps improved pension and benefits above now.