MLB's Blown Circuits

Tomorrow was supposed to be Opening Day of the Major League Baseball (MLB) season, but the impasse between owners and the players’ union (MLBPA)  delayed matters. It’s fashionable to blame owners, but if it’s ever appropriate to call down a curse on both houses, this is it. MLB is badly broken but all that happened is that two fat boys argued over who gets the biggest slice of pie.

 

I’m not sad the season won’t open on March 31. Baseball makes zero sense any place north of Atlanta until mid-April. I’m in favor of getting rid of gimmicky interleague play—especially now that there will be a designated hitter in the National League—and returning to a 154-game season. Here are some other things that need to be abandoned or altered.

 

1. No to seven-inning doubleheaders. MLB isn’t Little League.

 

2. Absolutely no to beginning extra inning games with a runner on second. What next, a homerun derby analogous to hockey’s ridiculous shootout? Or maybe like soccer’s corner kicks, the winner is the team that strikes out the least? Ugh!

 

3. No to expanded numbers of playoff teams. MLB should not emulate hockey’s every kid gets a gold star except for the intellectually challenged (who get high draft picks). In 1954, the Yankees won 103 games and didn’t even make the World Series (no playoffs then) because Cleveland won 111. That’s the way it should be. There are more teams today, so I’m okay with one playoff round, but it should be between the four teams in each league with the best winning percentage, even if that means a division winner is left out in the cold.

 

4. Raise player minimum salaries, but rework the arbitration system. It’s no such thing. Players get automatic raises no matter how lousy they’ve played. Wouldn’t you like to be Gary Sanchez and get a raise to $8 million for hitting .204 and being such a horrible backstop that you couldn’t catch a one-legged dog with a trawling net? I'm happy the Yankees shuttled him off to Minnesota.

 

5. Eliminate service time contracts. If a player stinks, he can be sent to the minors at any time, with the team on the hook only for the money stipulated in the contract. If some young player comes along and takes his job, the team should have the option of releasing the player to any team willing to pick up the remainder of his contract. I’m sick of non-talents clogging up rosters because of guaranteed MLB slots. Eliminating automatic roster spots would do more to help young players than anything the MLBPA proposed.

6. Eliminate the team salary cap and institute a salary floor. The cap is based on the false premise that it helps “small-market” teams. Nonsense! Only billionaires own MLB teams, but too many of them are tightwads. A salary floor would do more to force those teams to be competitive than penalizing large-market teams and putting the money into the pockets of those who don’t improve their teams. MLB practices trickle-down economics, the biggest load of hooey in the history of economic theory.

      The cap is also dumb in the respect that it puts large-city teams at a disadvantage. Has MLB ever heard of cost-of-living? I’m not crying Argentina for overpaid MLB stars, but if someone is going to write you a big check to play baseball, it sure will go a lot further in Kansas City than in New York, LA, or Boston, where a month’s rent would buy you a block of KC or Milwaukee.

 

7. Reinstitute the old strike zone (breastbone to top of the knees) to reduce walks. It would also get hitters to stop swinging for the fences on pitcher-friendly counts and might actually lead to more balls in play. My goodness, it might even bring back drag bunts, stolen bases, and the hit-and-run.

       Baseball has become really dull–almost as boring as football, where the ball is in play an average of just 11 minutes. (The rest of the time is swaggering quarterbacks barking numbers like little boys playing army, or patting each other on the butt so often that Freudian folklorist Alan Dundes once claimed that football is a closeted homosexual ritual.) For the record, both NFL and MLB games take the same amount of time to play, but MLB actually has about 7 minutes more action.

 

8. Ban analytics and hire scouts. I stop reading any article that plunges into Rosicrucian-like sabermetrics. These people are fraudulent number-crunchers with no love of sports and have made baseball roughly as interesting as reading actuarial tables. It would be one thing if they produced results, but they don’t. The much-hyped Moneyball followed the Oakland As 2002 season. In the past 20 years, Oakland has missed the playoffs 11 times and hasn’t been to the World Series since 1990, 12 years before sabermetrics hijacked MLB. Analytics cannot predict the vicissitudes of an MLB season (injuries, off years, Covid, trades, poor field conditions, mistakes, etc.). They can’t even assure that teams will be competitive.

       It takes good baseball minds to find and sign talent outside of the draft. The latter is hope and hype over experience; just 32% of drafted players ever make the majors.

 

9. Subtraction is addition. There are simply too many teams to produce exciting races. That’s to be expected when there are players who should not be in MLB in the first place. Instead of expansion, contraction with a dispersal draft is in order. These things should be done:

·      The Rays should be moved from Tampa to Montreal.

·      Miami should lose its franchise, as should Oakland. Arizona, Cleveland, Detroit, and Pittsburgh should be put on notice to improve their teams and attendance or they too will be slated for contraction. Two 12-team divisions would spotlight much better baseball.

 

10. Rod Manfred should be fired and the new commissioner should be independent of owners.

 

11. I’m in favor of one kind of salary cap: an upper limit on star contracts. Twenty-five million per is enough for anyone and would dissuade agent-induced team-jumping. It would also relieve franchises of the bind of needing 22 stiffs to pay for two great players.

 

12. Ticket prices should be slashed by 20% across the board. It would cost you at least $500 for a seat behind home plate at Yankee Stadium and the average cost for four people to attend one MLB game (with cheap seats factored in) is a whopping $253. It’s way more in Boston, the most expensive place to see a live game. For heaven's sake, this is the age of MLB.com and cable. I’m shocked anyone pays this kind of coin to sit in nosebleed discomfort when they can see a game better in the comfort of their home.

     Play more day games with further reduced ticket prices so the kids come back to baseball. If they don’t, start writing MLB’s epitaph.

 

Rob Weir