[HN Gopher] An insane baseball proposal: Dual league restructuring
___________________________________________________________________
An insane baseball proposal: Dual league restructuring
Author : SubiculumCode
Score : 86 points
Date : 2022-03-01 18:17 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.xstats.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.xstats.org)
| criddell wrote:
| I'd be happy if they would just get rid of blackouts. I subscribe
| to the MLB service and the blackout rules are so annoying.
| snarf21 wrote:
| This is interesting but I think this fails to add the excitement
| that the other leagues have and baseball doesn't. It is true that
| the one problem is that there is this assumption that there have
| to be 162 games that all mean the same. We can throw out a lot of
| the records after two divergent years of playing
|
| I'd rather see something where the regular season is shortened to
| like 140 games and have it end around Labor Day. Then have a full
| 8 teams per league make the playoffs with _FULL_ 7 game series
| with the World Series still finishing at the end of Oct /
| beginning of Nov.
|
| Then if you wanted to have something like this relegation setup
| for the teams that don't make it in, go ahead. They can all play
| each other and their minor leaguers still get to have all the
| "call up" time that the playoff teams don't get.
|
| I also think we need to get rid of the nonsense of pitchers
| hitting, fans want more scoring, not less. Additionally, we can
| address some of the length with a simple rule that any pitcher
| that enters the game must face 3 hitters. If the pitchers are
| injured, they can bypass this rule but must go on the DL.
| asdff wrote:
| As a fan I'd rather get more regular season games that I can
| actually afford tickets to vs playoff games
| throwawaytemp27 wrote:
| They already have the pitchers facing 3 hitters (or ending an
| inning) rule
| eigen wrote:
| yes, rule 5.10g
|
| For National Association play only, the starting pitcher or
| any substitute pitcher is required to pitch to a minimum of
| three consecutive batters, including the batter then at bat
| (or any sub- stitute batter), until such batters are put out
| or reach first base, or until the offensive team is put out,
| unless the starting pitcher or substitute pitcher sustains
| injury or illness which, in the umpire-in-chief's judgment,
| incapacitates him from further play as a pitcher.
|
| https://content.mlb.com/documents/2/2/4/305750224/2019_Offic.
| ..
| snarf21 wrote:
| Get rid of the end of inning clause too.
| baby-yoda wrote:
| interesting proposal from the competitive aspect of the game and
| as a fan this would likely be more exciting. However, a proposal
| like this is quite incomplete without factoring in the draft,
| salary cap and most importantly, IMO, the revenue share.
|
| For a small market team, not spending on player salary to be
| competitive is simply a profitable proposition due to revenue
| share from the entire league. There is little incentive to spend
| a ton of money and be profit negative in the hopes the team may
| win and experience a transient increase in popularity. So much of
| the money comes from TV contracts and a team becoming good might
| get them a few more primetime games per year but their local TV
| contracts which broadcast half of their games are based on
| viewership which simply isn't that elastic - are people going to
| move to an area if a team is good for 2 or 3 years? Are complete
| non sports fans going to be compelled to learn a myriad of rules,
| player names, league competition scenarios, etc. out of the blue?
| Are there local demographic changes (population, age) which would
| negate any positive momentum in the preceding issues?
|
| i'm not naive enough to think there is a simple answer to any of
| this; MLB has presumably known and been working on this for close
| to 30 years. Is the game of baseball simply reaching the end of
| its place in time?
| steve76 wrote:
| bdcravens wrote:
| Seems to me to be extremely biased towards teams like the Yankees
| who spend their way into success. I'm pretty sure you'd create a
| situation like college football where you have the same small
| handful of teams who are always in the championship, which is
| pretty boring. (The focus on the Astros is interesting,
| especially given it would have stacked the odds against them in
| that infamous 2017 season)
| isabelk wrote:
| For what it's worth, the Yankees _could_ buy their way to
| victory but they haven't in the past decade.
| mabbo wrote:
| If this much change is going on, you might as well introduce
| salary caps too, which helps deal with teams like the Yankees
| who can just buy their way to victory.
|
| It's equally unlikely to ever happen.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| It all comes down to wasting stars on bad teams. That's the
| underlying problem.
|
| Maybe there should be some negative/positive weight on draft
| picks based on how "moribund" a franchise is over time. Calculate
| a running average of the pick quality and project a statistical
| estimate of how good your team should be. If it sucks over a long
| time (I'm talking a rolling 10 year average and as a somewhat fan
| of the Detroit Lions... yeah) then the team shouldn't get the
| cream of the crop, they should lose 5-10 positions in the first
| round.
|
| And that's the real rub: at some point bad franchises aren't bad
| luck, bad players, bad coaches, or even bad GMs. They are
| failures because of ownership which is far more entrenched.
|
| Relegation in soccer is really the only mechanism for this.
|
| I also think there should be an exclusive "national signing day"
| for pro football where each team gets 1 player a year they can
| sign regardless of their draft position in the first round
| (assuming they can get a player wants to sign with them) and they
| forgo their first round pick. That would counteract tanking in
| the NFL because the really good players will avoid the crap
| teams. Of course there is a pay scale in the first round so they
| would take less money...
|
| Baseball has strange levels of collusion among the owners, I
| think from generations of labor strife, which the NFL has avoided
| for some reason.
|
| College athletics are kind of a multi-tier league like the
| article. And I'm not talking D-I/II/III. There are the Power5,
| and then even within the Power5, there are established
| powerhouses. Preferential placement, games that change in
| importance and estimation in the "rankings".
|
| Of course college doesn't have the draft, which this entire
| proposal revolves around: preventing tanking for the draft.
| College has forced 4-6 year turnover that prevents decade-plus
| star careers from overtilting the advantage and seems to be a
| sufficient "chaos monkey"... although the 4 team CFP in football
| seems to have concentrated power in only a couple schools.
|
| Is this "good"? Eh. It does make name brands. It makes for lazy
| reporters in an otherwise cacophonous landscape of a 100-odd
| schools who only follow five or ten schools.
| moate wrote:
| Maybe I'm missing something here, but does this proposal
| essentially say that half the teams will be playing something
| like a 70 game season as they're only part of the "Standard"
| league? How is the revenue sharing agreement going to work, you
| only get a cut of the rev from the leagues your in?
|
| The issue right now is that the Yankees and Dodgers each get one
| vote, while the Marlins and Pirates also each get one vote on any
| matter like this. Most of the teams are not located in NY, CA, or
| Chicago where there's major fan bases and ownership that's
| willing to spend to appease these fan bases. At best, I could see
| about half a dozen owners benefitting from this, a dozen actively
| harmed by it, and the rest in a grey area of "being motivated to
| do better at baseball" by it.
|
| I can see how this idea serves the fans and players, but how does
| it help billionaires fleece local governments for stadium
| subsidies/cozy up to local politicians to help grease the wheels
| of their ACTUAL businesses? I'm very anti-owner class, but I'll
| still admit you need to propose an idea they would actually like
| for it to be considered serious. This does not help the majority
| of owners fulfil their actual goals, which is acquiring currency
| at the greatest rate possible.
| nosefrog wrote:
| My understanding is that promotion/relegation systems tend to
| lead to more lop-sided leagues where the winners keep winning
| because of the virtuous cycle of: more money from the TV rights
| from being in the "champions" league -> buy better players -> the
| better players keep you in the "champions" league.
|
| That said, there are no American sports with a
| promotion/relegation system (probably because those systems
| evolved organically in Europe from local teams just becoming good
| and gaining a following, and the American way of having
| billionaires owning one of a small, fixed set of teams means that
| they want to protect their investments and wouldn't accept a
| chance of being relegated and losing their valuable TV money), so
| it would be interesting if one of them picked it up. From an
| outsider's perspective, though, I think it'd probably be better
| to bias towards simplicity instead of trying to fix every
| problem. E.g. instead of having the "must win 86 games in
| two/three seasons to make it to the champions league", fix the
| number of teams in the top league and promote the top of the
| bottom league and relegate the bottom of the top league. Making
| the system more complicated to prevent teams from tanking
| probably isn't a worthwhile tradeoff, since 1) it sucks when
| teams tank, but it's very exciting when a bad team starts to do
| very well (e.g. the Bengals at this year's Super Bowl), and 2)
| that system still doesn't stop the teams at the bottom of the
| second league from tanking, since there's no punishment for them
| and they can get better draft picks.
|
| Though my 2c to improve baseball as someone who just started
| watching football and tried to follow baseball when I was
| younger:
|
| 1. Reduce the number of games. In football, there are so few
| games that each one matters a lot. In baseball, there are so many
| that it's hard to be invested.
|
| 2. Find a way to make games more fun to watch on TV. Going to a
| ballpark in person is always a fun, chill experience as long as
| you bring a friend. That atmosphere doesn't translate when you're
| watching on TV, so the game itself probably has to be made more
| exciting in some way (add more time pressure, or let the players
| take steroids /s).
| sien wrote:
| In Europe you can't have rules about salary taxes and maximum
| spend because football (soccer) is a truly international game
| and other countries don't agree.
|
| Also the TV money split is very inequitable in Spain with Real
| Madrid and Barca getting ~50% of the leagues TV money where as
| in England the TV money split is much more equitable. Baseball
| also doesn't have a Champion's League so that's no issue.
|
| With baseball you could have a fairly equitable split on TV
| money and a salary tax at a certain point so you would still
| get different teams winning over time.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| > My understanding is that promotion/relegation systems tend to
| lead to more lop-sided leagues where the winners keep winning
| because of the virtuous cycle of: more money from the TV rights
| from being in the "champions" league -> buy better players ->
| the better players keep you in the "champions" league.
|
| This is sort of true, but I'd argue it still results in a
| better product than the American model. Pro/rel in Europe tends
| to vary based on the way TV rights money is divided and how
| much is available. In Spain, your description is pretty
| accurate, since Real Madrid and Barcelona can negotiate their
| own rights with minimal revenue sharing. Those two teams will
| always be near the top, as demonstrated by Barcelona's
| performance this year - they've been complete trash and are
| still tied for 4th on points. In England the TV money gets
| divided up more evenly, and the result is that big clubs can
| fail if their management is poor - Newcastle, West Ham, Aston
| Villa, Fulham, and other large clubs have experience
| relegation. Everton is at risk of it for the first time ever (I
| believe) due to some really poor decisions by their front
| office. On the other hand, Leicester City - a team no one had
| heard of - won the EPL in 2016.
|
| I'd prefer the league with a handful of locked-in elite clubs
| where mobility is possible than a league where 1/3rd of the
| teams are incentivized to lose, and another 1/3 know they have
| nothing to play for while the season is still going.
| paxys wrote:
| What problem is the proposal trying to address? From what I see,
| the two things it will "fix" are already non-issues.
|
| 1. Better TV slots for good teams - this already happens in every
| American sports league. Teams with popular star players, teams in
| big markets and teams performing well get the prime time slots.
|
| 2. Easier path to the playoffs for good teams - playoff
| eligibility is contingent on regular season performance. Why
| should it be any different? If you are a good team, play like it
| and earn your spot.
| jkingsbery wrote:
| A change like this would never happen. But it is a fun thought
| exercise. The current system in North American sports rewards
| losing. Between getting better draft picks helping to improve the
| roster and revenue sharing agreements minimizing any financial
| impact of losing, it is better to be a bad team than a mediocre
| team. Over the past 10 years or so, the result is that there are
| the teams that are trying to win championships, and the teams
| that consist of replacement-level talent. The current rules only
| make sense when everyone is trying to win with similar effort
| every year.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| > _the result is that there are the teams that are trying to
| win championships, and the teams that consist of replacement-
| level talent_
|
| And then there are the Cleveland Browns and New York Jets, who
| consistently spend hoarded top draft picks to not win
| championships.
| [deleted]
| nigerian1981 wrote:
| Seems to be the model adopted by Manchester United too in
| recent times who coincidentally have American owners
| remarkEon wrote:
| It's probably more accurate to say something like "NA sports
| rewards losing after a certain threshold of mediocrity", but
| you make a good point. The division of talent tends toward the
| extremes.
| Uhhrrr wrote:
| I'm only a casual fan at best, but my impression is that there
| are already informal tiers, and things like the draft and
| (attempts at a) salary cap are designed to counter that
| hierarchy. So I don't think this would go over well.
| schoubey wrote:
| We should introduce a new type of basketball league for players
| under 6 feet tall for males and under 5 feet 9 inches tall for
| females. While slam dunks will disappear, we will see new types
| of tactics and shots.
| mabbo wrote:
| Or just raise the net by 2 feet.
| subsubzero wrote:
| I think the biggest problem with baseball is you can buy your way
| to greatness. Not always mind you, but teams with seemingly
| unlimited payrolls like the Dodgers, Giants, Phillies, Yankees
| have a huge advantage over smaller market teams in terms of
| attracting top talent and they are perennially "in the hunt"
| which makes the chances of smaller franchises all the more
| smaller. I know they implement revenue sharing to the smaller
| teams but restricting the top teams salary would make for a more
| compelling product.
|
| Compare that to NFL football which has a very restrictive salary
| cap and you get a scenario where any team in 1-2 years despite
| how bad they are in a given year with great coaching and a smart
| draft can get to the superbowl or win it all(see this years
| Cincinnati Bengals, or last years Buccaneers).
| xxpor wrote:
| How many times have the Rays had a better record than the
| Yankees in the past decade?
|
| It's not all about the payroll any more. It's about who
| _actually wants a good team and is willing to hire the right
| people_.
|
| The small market excuse is just that, an excuse. The value of
| the franchises has been exploding. Direct revenue isn't a
| meaningful constraint on payroll.
| asdff wrote:
| Small markets notoriously can't afford to keep their talent
| around. Pros know they have a limited time in the league and
| want to maximize revenue so they go to whoever offers them
| the most. The tweet below is relevant to the sentiment:
|
| https://twitter.com/cc_sabathia/status/1378175536774713348
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| >Small markets notoriously can't afford to keep their
| talent around.
|
| I highly doubt this, as a longtime Marlins fan. I strongly
| suspect that "small market" teams are those owned by people
| who notoriously don't want to spend more money than they
| have to.
|
| According to Forbes, the Rays were purchased in 2004 for
| 200 million and are now worth 1.1B. In 18 years ownership
| has received a total return of more than 500% on their
| investment.
|
| Now, for some strange reason, these teams don't want to
| publish annual audited profit/loss numbers, but the Marlins
| had those numbers leak for some of the franchise's bleakest
| years. The leaks showed them making money hand over fist. I
| suspect the same is true of the Rays during much of the
| last 18 years. So, you have a profitable business (I
| speculate) that's also appreciating in value at an
| incredible rate. Sounds like someone who can afford to pay
| the people who actually put butts in seats.
| iratewizard wrote:
| The products don't understand what they're selling (or are
| desperate for Blackrock money). They continue to alienate fans
| by continually injecting ESG propaganda into the product, when
| most fans I know use it as an escape from all that inane
| bullshit.
| subsubzero wrote:
| haha very much agree here. Baseball fans are probably one of
| the more conservative/older fan bases in sports and the
| leagues tilt towards ESG is quite baffling from a business
| perspective. I think they are trying to be more relevant
| again to younger fans by embracing stuff like this but could
| see it backfiring by alienating a whole generation and
| another with a strike on the horizon. Going back to the
| strike back in the 90's that really mad alot folks mad and
| set the stage for a large percentage of its fanbase to leave
| and some of which never came back.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Yep, that's the takeaway that I hope non-sports-fans will have
| from this thread. The salary caps in the NFL/NBA promote parity
| extremely well while maintaining the same pay level for the
| vast majority of players. I'm told European soccer and MLB
| suffer greatly from big-market teams heavily hoarding the
| success.
| smcl wrote:
| You're not wrong, the state of football in Europe feels quite
| unsustainable to me and rewards clubs who make huge financial
| gambles or manage to get lucrative investment from
| billionaires (or both!). Every now and again you'll see a
| flash-in-the-pan where a slightly less well-off team will
| succeed (Leicester a couple of years ago in the Premier
| League springs to mind, though they were owned by a Thai
| billionaire...) but overall it's pretty predictable.
|
| It's a funny situation though because having stupendous
| injections of cash doesn't always pay off. Paris Saint
| Germain have been profligate in the transfer market and have
| little to show for it on the European stage (and domestically
| they didn't even win Ligue 1 last season). And sometimes just
| a _modest_ investment, raising the wage bill by shrewd
| signings can really upset things. There was a fairly sizeable
| backlash at RB Leipzig - a team bought by Red Bull which
| progressed through the ranks to the top level - suggesting
| that they 'd bought their way to success. Which is true in a
| sense but in reality _everyone_ who 's successful has
| basically bought that success. Bayern's average salary is 8x
| that of Leipzig's[0] - as an outsider it seems they were just
| nervous at the idea of someone upsetting the balance. Right
| now Leipzig are the fourth-highest wage bill and are fourth
| in the Bundesliga.
|
| I kinda hope one of these big clubs has a high-profile
| collapse, it's a shame that it's Barcelona who have come
| closest because I don't feel too much disdain for them. Scots
| tend to have a soft-spot for Catalonia :) Interestingly we
| weren't without our own big-spending-investor stories, Gretna
| (tiny club from a town of 3,000 people) were bought by a
| supposed-millionaire who bankrolled them to the top-level,
| took a turn for the worse, withdrew his support and the club
| then fell to pieces.
|
| Anyway yet another ramble-y football comment from me, you can
| tell I hang out with people who do not like the sport :)
|
| [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/675490/average-
| bundeslig...
| banannaise wrote:
| One might argue that's an ownership incentive problem - there
| are insufficient incentives for owners to spend enough money to
| field a competitive baseball team. A bunch of owners are more
| or less explicitly in it for the guaranteed profit that comes
| with cheaply fielding uncompetitive teams.
|
| (It's notable that teams in capped leagues also do this, most
| noticeably in the NHL. So the salary cap doesn't solve this
| problem so much as it redirects revenue from players to
| owners.)
| mkovach wrote:
| You can try to buy your way to greatness, but it really works
| as a long term solution. Signing at 28 year-old star to a 10
| year contract means you have to managed an expensive older
| player that will under-perform at the end of the contract. In a
| few occasions that works, but generally you are spending more
| for less at that point. Sure, you can keep spending, but you
| eventually have an old aging team that is difficult to upgrade,
| unless you trade players and agree to pay part of the salary.
|
| The biggest problem in baseball is you have to maintain a minor
| league AND a major league. You need younger less expansive
| players, inexpensive players to fill the roster, and expensive
| players. Depending on the market you need to either trade your
| younger talent before it gets expensive (getting younger
| players from other teams) and be able to develop those players.
| Or, you have to be able sign high price players and make trades
| to bring in lesser talented players from other teams to
| developer your farm system, where you'll often trade your best
| prospects for older, more expensive players.
|
| Both systems have worked lately. Cleveland has had one of the
| best records in baseball since 2014, but the Dodgers and
| Yankees spend and do well.
|
| The larger problem is revenue sharing in MLB. While there is
| revenue sharing because of the TV contracts, New York, Boston,
| and LA make a huge amount of money off local TV deals.
| Cleveland, Tampa, et.al. make a lot less. So, unlike many other
| sports, revenue is not shared equally and teams need different
| ways to acquire and use talent.
|
| In the NFL, you need to have a very good QB and you can build a
| team around them. In the NBA, you need 2-3 very talented
| players, mid-cost starters to fill your game day rotations and
| strong reserves to handle injuries and such. Since those
| leagues share revenue that can implement caps and floors with
| salary. Sorry, I can't talk about the NHL, I don't understand
| their business enough.
|
| The bigger problem with the MLB is their lack of equal revenue
| sharing makes a floor and cap next to impossible to setup. MLB
| teams simply are not going to put all their money in a big pool
| and share it.
| spike021 wrote:
| Many of the teams in MLB are more than affluent enough to
| afford players. They just choose not to.
|
| This is why there should be a salary floor as well as ceiling.
| Imnimo wrote:
| This is an interesting idea and would be something to consider if
| we were building MLB from scratch. I think it's a non-starter as
| a modification of the current system, though.
|
| It's a great idea for an OOTP simulation. (OOTP is a highly
| detailed baseball management simulation game that accommodates
| things like this)
| jeffalbertson wrote:
| the XFL missed an opportunity to focus on baseball instead. NFL
| is too strong on the marketing front and dynamically changes
| their rules to meet new needs.
|
| Baseball is poorly marketed and is extremely slow to change (not
| always a bad thing). But an XBL, or something like it, would have
| been a stronger challenger to the MLB than the XFL was to the
| NFL.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The difference is that colleges and high schools are the farm
| leagues for football and basketball.
|
| Baseball is vertically integrated, and the talent is mostly
| controlled immediately.
| moate wrote:
| MLB also have a literal monopoly in place and endorsed by
| law. So, there's also that.
| darig wrote:
| arrosenberg wrote:
| MLB will never make structural reforms without Congress forcing
| the issue. The labor issues always come down to mental gymnastics
| one must do to justify and work around the government granted
| monopoly the major sports leagues have (de jure for MLB, de facto
| for the rest). The leagues should be structured much more
| similarly to European Football with relegation, promotion and
| league cups. That structure eliminates tanking, salary issues,
| service time and arbitration, deflates some of the power of TV
| and marketing budgets, and a whole host of other issues. It also
| gives smaller American cities a shot at seeing major league teams
| play locally, which for baseball at least, seems like a no
| brainer thing that should happen.
|
| If you are going to restructure the leagues, it should be done
| geographically - West, Southeast/MidAtlantic, Great Lakes and
| East. With the elimination of the DH, it makes exactly no sense
| for LA teams to each play 50+ east coast games and only 6 against
| each other. That would also allow for some expansion as cities
| like Nashville, Portland and SLC could easily fill out some of
| the regions.
| fastball wrote:
| How are the sports leagues government granted monopolies?
| arrosenberg wrote:
| MLB has a de jure antitrust exception granted in 1922. The
| other sports leagues have consolidated and the government has
| failed to break them up, ergo, a de facto monopoly.
| EpicEng wrote:
| Wow I had no idea about this. Apparently there's a
| challenge happening right now
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/01/08/mlb-
| antitru...
| maxwell wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Baseball_Club_v._Natio.
| ..
| ralph84 wrote:
| Agree that MLB should have its antitrust exemption revoked, but
| relegation would be a tough pill to swallow with how much has
| been invested in MLB stadiums. Globe Life Field opened in 2020
| at a cost of $1.1 billion. The numbers don't work if suddenly
| it's hosting minor league games.
| switz wrote:
| Interesting thought experiment, but as is often the problem in
| North American sports, it hurts small market teams. What free
| agent is going to willingly join a small market team out of the
| champions league that has less capital to expend than large
| market teams. You end up with a negative feedback loop in which
| small market teams have an even tougher time affording to compete
| or incentivizing free agents to join. This is already a problem
| and a structure like this (namely, the 3-5 year qualification
| period) only compounds it. If a smaller market team hasn't had
| any qualifying seasons in 5 years it essentially pits them into
| purgatory.
|
| Personally, I'd like to see the season shortened (in # of games)
| to give each game a more outsized impact. Give teams a bit more
| rest to enable shorter rotations (star pitchers get more game
| time) and expand the playoffs slightly (via play-in games) to
| lessen the soul crushing nature of missing the playoffs by a
| single game after a grueling 162 game season. Not that any of
| these ideas are novel or perfect, but it's clear baseball has
| engagement issues that are not improving any time soon.
| long_time_gone wrote:
| >but as is often the problem in North American sports, it hurts
| small market teams.
|
| In the case of baseball, the negotiations are being held up by
| the small-market owners because the existing system is so
| beneficial to them. There is a de-facto salary cap through the
| Competitive Balance Tax, which directs money straight from the
| richest to the poorest teams. Meanwhile, there is no guarantee
| that the poor teams spend that money on actually improving
| their team.
|
| I don't see any non-North American system where small-market
| teams perform this well. In the NFL, small-market Cincinnati
| was just in the Super Bowl because of a draft process that
| rewards poor performance.
| daed wrote:
| If they had a hard salary cap + floor like the NFL that would
| help some. But otherwise agree 100%.
| briangri wrote:
| I think that this article looks to European football as a model,
| whereas it would do better to look to the NFL.
|
| I'd implement a few economic reforms:
|
| - Decent wages for minor leaguers - Hard salary cap and floor per
| team such that players take home ~55% of revenue
|
| And a few gameplay reforms:
|
| - Pitch clock, to speed up pace of play - Tweak the baseball
| and/or mound placement, to discourage the home run / strikeout
| style and incentivize more balls in play - Cap the number of
| relief pitchers per game
|
| This would make the game faster, more visually appealing, more
| equitable between teams (so every team will be forced to spend /
| have a good shot to keep their best players) all without any
| extreme changes.
| mbg721 wrote:
| Baseball has a rapidly-dissolving semi-religious status in the US
| (losing some ground to the NFL), and its owners definitely don't
| get it. I think it's mostly gone after '94 anyway. My personal
| guess is that its popularity is correlated with family size.
| asdff wrote:
| It depends on the market. Small markets have been hurting, but
| teams like the dodgers have been making millions hand over fist
| the last 10 years, revenue only being down really because of
| expected covid cancellations.
| mbg721 wrote:
| Why are the Dodgers making money? Is it TV rights, or the way
| revenue is divided up, or are they just filling up the
| stadium because demand is huge?
| jacobkg wrote:
| All of the above. Dodgers signed a massive $8B TV deal and
| also routinely fill their stadium which has the second
| largest capacity in MLB
| EduardoBautista wrote:
| The have the highest average attendance in baseball by a
| significant margin.
|
| https://www.espn.com/mlb/attendance
| asdff wrote:
| They just dumped millions into renovations too, and
| eventually there will even be a gondola from the metro
| system up the hill to the stadium. It seems the owners
| are pretty bullish.
| marktangotango wrote:
| Baseball was a game for the "dog days" of summer, and no air
| conditioning. The typical, agrarian 3 months summer vacations
| meant there were hordes of kids trying to fill in the time
| between dusk and dawn. Now kids stay inside and play vidya
| games all summer. Baseballs time is past, imo.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Canada too. Here in Waterloo Region we have a particularly
| goofy situation where I believe a number of prominent public
| parks were formed after the land was donated in the early 20th
| century by wealthy local industrialists, with the single
| eternal proviso that there had to always be a functional
| baseball diamond on the property.
|
| I'm sure this made sense at the time, but it's super
| frustrating now living in these neighbourhoods where there's a
| big park with vast green space that is mostly unused, and the
| amenities people actually want and use (tennis courts,
| playground, community garden, skate park, hangout space)
| shunted to the very edges of the space, and no room for
| potential alternative uses such as a soccer pitch.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Maybe they should band up, gather money, buy some property
| and then bulldoze it and build a park?
| mikepurvis wrote:
| ... I guess?
|
| The point is more just that you can't know the future, and
| any constraint like that should have limitations on it,
| with an upperbound of something like 99 years. That's more
| than enough time for your kids, grand kids, and even
| _their_ kids to all enjoy playing baseball in the park,
| while not saddling your community with your specific vision
| of outdoor recreation for all time.
|
| Like sure, the land donation was no doubt generous and
| appreciated, and the people involved would have foregone a
| potential payday had they sold it to a developer to be
| carved up instead. But on the flipside, it was probably
| also a big tax writeoff, and the city inherited the
| unbounded future cost of its maintenance, lost tax revenue,
| and so on.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| I found statista saying average US family size to be basically
| steady for the last 30 years.[0] (median might be better but I
| couldn't find it). I would expect football to have fallen in
| popularity if it were about ability to field a team.
|
| The steroid scandal, hd TVs, changing media consumption,
| sabremetrics, rule changes make more sense to me.
|
| 0: https://www.statista.com/statistics/183657/average-size-
| of-a....
| mbg721 wrote:
| 30 years is a short enough time in this case; one generation
| (my age) might play baseball because their parents did, even
| though the neighborhood doesn't have 18 kids with nothing to
| do, but the next would find no reason to.
| xphilter wrote:
| So pro/rel for baseball? It'd be amazing if it happened for
| baseball before soccer in the US.
| rossitter wrote:
| This wouldn't really be pro/rel, not as it's implemented in
| European football anyway. It's a single league where entry into
| the lucrative year-end tournament is partly based on long-term
| (3- or 5-year) performance, whereas now it is only short-term
| (1-year).
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-03-01 23:02 UTC)