Personally I like how Baseball is with the number of teams going through, it makes it so the best of the best get in, unlike football where teams like Seattle with a 7-9 record get in or in Basketball where the 1st round tends to be a snoozefest the majority of the time. However, I can and do understand the arguments for adding 2 extra teams to the playoffs. And not only this but maybe realigning the divisions too. Is it really fair to have teams like Baltimore and Toronto have to compete with the likes of Boston and New York year in and year out? I think changes can be made without having to completely alter the game. The beauty of this debate is hearing all the interesting ideas people come up with. Here are my thoughts:
What to do with the Divisions? - I've heard arguments that have just 1 division in the AL and NL, and the top 4 teams go though and so on and so forth. This is an intriguing idea but not one I agree with. One of the beautiful things about baseball are the rivalries and division teams playing each other regularly, Boston vs New York, San Francisco vs LA Dodgers, St. Louis vs Chicago Cubs. Not only this, but having the Mets and the Padres in the same division means so much more travel in an already crazy schedule for the players.
Here is my idea, move 1 of the National League teams to the American League. The easy choice has to be the Houston Astros, they are already a team re-building, a great rivalry can be made with the Rangers and they can be slotted in to the AL West. Thus giving each division 5 teams. I never understood why so many thought it was fair having 6 teams in the NL Central but only 4 in the AL West?
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| WOULD MOVING THE ASTROS TO THE AL BE GOOD FOR BASEBALL? |
What to do with the Playoffs? - As I said before, I quite like how Baseball is done with the playoffs, but I can't help but think it can be improved. Hear me out on this, 10 teams go through, 5 in the AL and 5 in the NL. The winners of each of the divisions automatically go through to the 2nd round, so in both the AL and NL you have 2 teams play each other. 1 game, and whoever has the better record gets the home field advantage. Can you imagine how exciting this one game would be in each League? Imagine the Phillies, Cardinals and Giants win their respective divisions and then you have the Braves travel to the Brewers to play sudden death. How great of a start to the postseason would that be? What a way to kickstart it.
Minimum Team Salary - First off I want to say that Baseball will never be like the NFL where you can have 1 salary cap figure for every team, its just impossible. What my idea is to implement a minimum team salary that owners must spend. MLB needs to do this on a team by team basis, and the number is based on how much income the team gets. Example, the Yankees make so much more than the Pirates, so the minimum salaries are going to need to be significantly different. I just don't think it's fair or reasonable to fans of say the Pirates to look at their awful team of 18 straight years losing, most owners should wanna spend money to win and therefore make money. In recent years, all the Pirates have done is dump contract after contract and spend so little on the team and they just keep losing. I feel that owners of each team need to be serious about the team and not just in it to make money. This would be good for all the smaller markets like Kansas City, Florida, etc.
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| WHILE HAVING A SOLID 2011, THE PIRATES HAVE NOT SPENT ENOUGH TO KEEP THE TEAM COMPETITIVE |
All in all I think Baseball is in a great position and with the pending Lockouts of both the NFL and MLB, they can hope to expect a big surge in interest. By possibly implementing my ideas I feel it could vault Baseball to be right there with Football and ahead of Basketball once again. The one issue you can say about Baseball, is the refusal to alter the game for the better. This is something that Football has been great at.
Baseball is my 2nd favorite sport behind......you guessed it Football. Who knows how that will go in the future? Giants are playing great and the 49ers have been tough to watch. I like the direction of the 49ers and the Giants and Bulls are all in great positions going forward. God it's good to be a sports fan.
Kalen from the Sports Cave. Check in tomorrow when I update my weekly MLB Power Rankings.
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