I hate interleague play.

[OriolesMagic83]

Instead of American League and National League, MLB could be divided into Upper (high payroll) and Lower (low payroll) Leagues.  This would insure that a low payroll team makes the World Series every year.  The only drawback for the O's would be that they would be in danger of being demoted to AAA.  Jokingly suggested.

[Emory Eagle]

Well I think it’s pretty clear that if we could be in a two team division with the Cubs we’d be contenders, at least this year.  Make it happen MLB.

[OriolesMagic83]

4 minutes ago, Emory Eagle said:

Well I think it’s pretty clear that if we could be in a two team division with the Cubs we’d be contenders, at least this year.  Make it happen MLB.

Throw in the Reds and Pirates too.  I see the playoffs in the O's future.  We're just in the wrong division.

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

1 hour ago, OriolesMagic83 said:

Throw in the Reds and Pirates too.  I see the playoffs in the O's future.  We're just in the wrong division.

Do it more like the Premier League. Let the lower payroll teams compete in the same division and play just against other lower payroll teams. That right there ends the rebuild in short order. 

[DrungoHazewood]

20 hours ago, interloper said:

Strange take IMO. I'm so bored of the AL East opponents that any team we haven't seen in awhile is always like 1,000 times more interesting to me. 

There's some validity to that, I get sick of Red Sox, Yanks, Blue Jays, rinse repeat.  But it really doesn't matter much if they play the A's or Angels on the west coast, since I'm not staying up to 2 am.

[DrungoHazewood]

13 hours ago, OriolesMagic83 said:

Instead of American League and National League, MLB could be divided into Upper (high payroll) and Lower (low payroll) Leagues.  This would insure that a low payroll team makes the World Series every year.  The only drawback for the O's would be that they would be in danger of being demoted to AAA.  Jokingly suggested.

I'd be okay with a situation like that, two 16-team divisions sorted by market size.  But the big market division gets six of the eight playoff teams.

[DrungoHazewood]

19 hours ago, deward said:

And if you want to see them in person, playing against your home team?

That's not going to happen, but compromises must be made. Either ridiculous travel, unwatchable game times, unbalanced schedules that are unfair to many teams, or you just don't get to see Giants-Orioles games in person.

[spiritof66]

13 hours ago, OriolesMagic83 said:

Instead of American League and National League, MLB could be divided into Upper (high payroll) and Lower (low payroll) Leagues.  This would insure that a low payroll team makes the World Series every year.  The only drawback for the O's would be that they would be in danger of being demoted to AAA.  Jokingly suggested.

The players' union might take a negative view of a setup that encourages teams to arrange their payrolls in order to get assigned to a division they prefer.

[DrungoHazewood]

56 minutes ago, spiritof66 said:

The players' union might take a negative view of a setup that encourages teams to arrange their payrolls in order to get assigned to a division they prefer.

That's why you use market size instead of payroll, at least to start.  Then promote/relegate based on success or failure at said level.  And reward teams that punch above their weight class.

[Moose Milligan]

I wonder if Cubs fans are all like "Oooohhhh, I can't WAIT to see Trey Mancini!"

[deward]

1 hour ago, DrungoHazewood said:

That's not going to happen, but compromises must be made. Either ridiculous travel, unwatchable game times, unbalanced schedules that are unfair to many teams, or you just don't get to see Giants-Orioles games in person.

I don't care about the travel aspect of it, at all. The players get compensated very well for that travel. It's not a fan issue. I don't have an issue staying up late a few times a year for two west coast swings to watch the games (if the team is worth watching). If we're going to compromise, losing some viewers who don't want to stay up for a handful of games seems like a much more viable and reasonable one to me. I don't like the unbalanced schedules, but I have no interest in being stuck watching the same 7 opponents over and over and over again. Not to mention, from a business standpoint, reverting your national business back to a regional one would be foolish. Asking your season ticket holders to continue to pay the same prices to see less of the best players in baseball would be ridiculous. MLB would never even consider that, nor should they. 8 team leagues concentrated in the same couple of time zones might have worked in 1918, but it would likely kill the sport now. Blowing up the existing league/division structure and reworking it into something more logical? Sure, that's not a bad idea, but cutting teams off from playing the majority of the league would be going way too far.

[DrungoHazewood]

2 hours ago, deward said:

I don't care about the travel aspect of it, at all. The players get compensated very well for that travel. It's not a fan issue. I don't have an issue staying up late a few times a year for two west coast swings to watch the games (if the team is worth watching). If we're going to compromise, losing some viewers who don't want to stay up for a handful of games seems like a much more viable and reasonable one to me. I don't like the unbalanced schedules, but I have no interest in being stuck watching the same 7 opponents over and over and over again. Not to mention, from a business standpoint, reverting your national business back to a regional one would be foolish. Asking your season ticket holders to continue to pay the same prices to see less of the best players in baseball would be ridiculous. MLB would never even consider that, nor should they. 8 team leagues concentrated in the same couple of time zones might have worked in 1918, but it would likely kill the sport now. Blowing up the existing league/division structure and reworking it into something more logical? Sure, that's not a bad idea, but cutting teams off from playing the majority of the league would be going way too far.

It's already a regional sport.  The number of people in Philly watching a Twins-Rangers game is probably in the tens.  The only teams with sustained national interest are the Yanks, Sox, and Dodgers.

But tens of people is also pretty comparable to the number of people in Maryland watching an O's-A's game with a 10:30 first pitch.  Most people have to get up for work.  I am at work at 7am.  I will almost never stay up to midnight to see a game, and my kids are teenagers and have never seen the 8th inning of a weekday regular season game.  West coast games?  When they were at their peak years for forming a baseball fan relationship they'd been in bed for 2 hours by the time Chris Tillman would throw a first pitch in Anaheim.

From 1902-60 MLB was at the height of its popularity and each team just played the other seven teams in the AL or NL.

I bet if you asked the players and owners if they'd prefer far less travel and travel expenses they'd be almost unanimous in support.

I understand you like the current setup or even one with expanded games across the country.  But your opinion isn't unanimous.

[deward]

3 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

It's already a regional sport.  The number of people in Philly watching a Twins-Rangers game is probably in the tens.  The only teams with sustained national interest are the Yanks, Sox, and Dodgers.

But tens of people is also pretty comparable to the number of people in Maryland watching an O's-A's game with a 10:30 first pitch.  Most people have to get up for work.  I am at work at 7am.  I will almost never stay up to midnight to see a game, and my kids are teenagers and have never seen the 8th inning of a weekday regular season game.  West coast games?  When they were at their peak years for forming a baseball fan relationship they'd been in bed for 2 hours by the time Chris Tillman would throw a first pitch in Anaheim.

From 1902-60 MLB was at the height of its popularity and each team just played the other seven teams in the AL or NL.

I bet if you asked the players and owners if they'd prefer far less travel and travel expenses they'd be almost unanimous in support.

I understand you like the current setup or even one with expanded games across the country.  But your opinion isn't unanimous.

I'm not talking about people watching other teams on tv, I'm talking about fans of a team watching their team play against a greater variety of opponents. Wouldn't it get stale to watch them play the same handful of teams, in the same handful of stadiums, over and over again, 154-162 times a year? It would for me. I understand that some schedules don't allow for watching the late games, but (as you've mentioned) you can't please everybody. No solution is going to be perfect, but I would prefer to err on the side of more variety. I'm all for moving the start times up and introducing a pitch clock to speed up the game times, but I don't see the 10 or so evening games on the west coast as a major issue in the big picture. 

I don't think you can compare the popularity of MLB 1906-1960 to the situation today. The entertainment space has changed, there are so many more options than there were 60 years ago. Things fans might have accepted as normal back then wouldn't necessarily work now. 

I'm sure the players don't really enjoy the travel. I do things for my job that I don't particularly enjoy, but I get paid to do them anyway.

If we didn't have different opinions, then it wouldn't be any fun arguing on the internet. This is all just a thought exercise anyway, I can't see MLB ever going down this route.

[DrungoHazewood]

1 hour ago, deward said:

I'm not talking about people watching other teams on tv, I'm talking about fans of a team watching their team play against a greater variety of opponents. Wouldn't it get stale to watch them play the same handful of teams, in the same handful of stadiums, over and over again, 154-162 times a year? It would for me. I understand that some schedules don't allow for watching the late games, but (as you've mentioned) you can't please everybody. No solution is going to be perfect, but I would prefer to err on the side of more variety. I'm all for moving the start times up and introducing a pitch clock to speed up the game times, but I don't see the 10 or so evening games on the west coast as a major issue in the big picture. 

I don't think you can compare the popularity of MLB 1906-1960 to the situation today. The entertainment space has changed, there are so many more options than there were 60 years ago. Things fans might have accepted as normal back then wouldn't necessarily work now. 

I'm sure the players don't really enjoy the travel. I do things for my job that I don't particularly enjoy, but I get paid to do them anyway.

If we didn't have different opinions, then it wouldn't be any fun arguing on the internet. This is all just a thought exercise anyway, I can't see MLB ever going down this route.

Yep, these are mostly academic exercises.  MLB isn't doing any radical restructuring any time soon.  They may chip away at a few things, but it'll stay mostly the same.

If you really want a pie-in-the sky discussion, what's great for variety of opponents is to relegate the bottom three teams every year and bring up new ones. In most soccer leagues just about every year your team gets to play someone in a meaningful regular season game that they haven't played in 5, 10, 20 or more years.  But for most North American sports that ship sailed 120 years ago.  Truly is never going to happen.

MLB is lucky that they don't have any real competition.  In soccer players have chosen 2nd or 3rd tier European leagues over MLS at least in part because the travel is less crazy over there.

[ArtVanDelay]

On 6/6/2022 at 6:11 PM, Can_of_corn said:

I am very much a fan of seeing less of the Yankees, Red Sox, Rays and especially the Blue Jays.

It was just too many games.

And not to mention they all have terrible stadiums except Boston.  Doesn’t make for great TV.