THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

In his book, Whitey Herzog suggested a fixed location in the South for the World Series, which would not be a bad idea. It would be a weeklong baseball party.

I will say the postseason often feels like an anticlimax to me. Look at the Brewers—they were dead by the time they got a home playoff game for the first time in ages. How exciting is that?

What I’d like to see is each league with a single four-team playoff round, with the winners advancing to the World Series.

It is more than unfortunate that the final round has a chance to be anti-climactic.  That is has happened so often is a real bummer.  I much more look forward to the first two rounds, than the last round.  The same applies for me in hockey: I prefer the middle two rounds, don’t care too much for the initial round, and the final round is a 50/50 situation.

I agree that a round-robin style tournament would be preferred, and that the best two teams advance for a true playoff.  But, round-robin is what the regular season is for.

I agree ... I have no idea why the seasons are so short.  Especially in indoor sports like hockey and basketball.

Do fans really not want to see hockey in the summer?  Is 16 or 18 games really all an NFL fan wants to see in a year?

The long-term trend is more and more games per year, but that seems to have leveled off lately. 

Why haven’t the leagues gone to longer seasons?  Is the off-season necessary to make the fans excited again?  Do the leagues know something we don’t?

looking at other sports for ways to improve, the european football model has some interesting points. obviously their relegation/promotion system makes the “regular” season more relevant to more teams - but that’s a concept that could never work here. but they do have multiple tournaments going on, in addition to their league season, which are usually of the single elimination format.

i like tom’s idea of two seasons (south american soccer leagues, like argentina, have winter and summer seasons). but i wonder if the idea of “other” tournaments going on either concurrent to some degree with the regular season or during a break or something else wouldn’t increase interest. certainly could get multiple champions that way, like in the example of tennis. bringing over japanese teams, for example, might be part of such an idea. haven’t given it a great deal of thought but it’s something to consider.

A few things:

1) Most die-hard baseball fans would like to see more baseball. That goes without saying.  There is a bias right at the end of the year - “Whew, that was a long season.  I am glad that it’s over.” Take another poll in 2 months, when a lot of fans are “Jonesing” or at the beginning of the season.

2) No matter what, there will be supporters and detractors for whatever you have or propose.  You will primarily hear from the detractors.  You will rarely hear people clamoring, “The season is just right!  The season is just right!”

3) The weather situation can (and should) obviously be dealt with, but it is not because of my final point.

4) Baseball seems to be a game that HATES change and values tradition for no good reason.  However, to some extent everything is like that.  Things usually exist or are structured for a good reason (sometimes even the original reason is no good) at one time and then that reason disappears, but then it is difficult to undo the structure or “thing.” If we were to “redo” just about anything that is steeped in tradition, we would always be able to make it much better.  As I said, baseball HATES to do that for some reason and the game and the fans suffer.

One thing that baseball does (I think), which is bad, is require a large consensus when trying to change something.  That is stupid and will generally doom progress.  Even the best ideas/changes will only have 70% support among a group of people (like the owners).  You also have problems when one person (Bud Selig) has too much power.  Whatever his subjective and biased opinions are will dictate the extent and direction of the progress.  That is NOT a good policy.  There are some advantages to a democracy in terms of making positive changes.

And of course in baseball (as in other things), you have 2 competing forces:  one, the owners’ pocket books, and two, the fans.  And who runs the show with NO impact or say so from the fans (other than their choice to attend games or not - which is a limiting but “weak” force)?  The owners of course.  For example, in “real” societies you have government (theoretically) looking out for the interests of the people.  Can you imagine what kinds of “shafts” we would have to take from businesses if there were ZERO government regulation. The notion put forth by some people (Republicans?) that competition and the “free market” would take care of those problems (the public getting “shafted” by business) is a ridiculous assertion.  Look at the feudal society that once existed in Europe. How did competition and the “free market” work out then (OK, it wasn’t quite a “free market")?

Well, when a guy who watches baseball a lot, has a baseball blog, writes for other sites about baseball, has a book about baseball, works part time for baseball teams, and conducts baseball statistics research in his spare time… he may not be the best person to speak for the rest of the public about how much baseball is best.

I’d bet if they could make more money from a longer season, we’d have a longer season already.  Baseball owners may not know too much about when to bunt, but they own teams because they’ve been successful at making money in past ventures (or, I guess, maybe their parents did).  If they could squeeze a few bucks more out of me with a longer season, I’d guess they’d have done it by now.

Of course, winter leagues are prevalent south of the border, with a good amount of MLB players and close-to-ready prospects participating every year.

ESPN seems in the business lately of offering small(er) school NCAA football and basketball programs national TV opportunities if they agree to play on non-traditional game weeknights. It’d be interesting to see if some baseball games would register as well. Although I’m probably underestimating the gambling factor.

"(OK, it wasn’t quite a “free market"”

Not quite a free market?  Quite a tangent there.

Fact check:  Feudalism was the opposite of the free market.  It was established and supported by the Roman Catholic church based on incorrect historiography and theology.  Enter the Protestant Reformation which separated the Religious and Civil spheres into two separate God-ordained institutions.  Thus, profit and investment in civil pursuits was no longer seen as selfish, sinful behavior but simply the “call” that many men received from God to civil vocations, which are no worse and no better than the “call” that priests received to join Holy Orders.

Hence the name Magisterial Reformers as it was not only religious life which was reformed but the magistrates and the state itself. 

The Reformation gave us Capitalism which then empowered an ever increasing number of private citizens who increasingly demanded more say in their own affairs and that of the state which resulted in (you guessed it!) Democratic Republicanism.  No serious historian debates this chain of events. 

Please see Max Weber’s “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” and Adam Smith’s “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” for further study.

Well, I don’t think I have a problem with change per in the game per se, but I hate the idea of a neutral warm weather site for the World Series:

I was living in San Diego in 1998 when the WS came to town, and I’m now in Tampa.  SD also had the super bowl while I lived there, and Tampa’s getting it in a few months.

The two were totally different experiences.  The Super Bowl was a show, and everybody knew who the stars were because they had national profiles.  On the other hand, the WS was exciting because fans were getting to see their guys, even if they had relatively little idea of who the players on the other team were (Cole Hamels wasn’t a household name in Tampa, at least not 2 weeks ago).

Now, maybe the answer is to promote the national profile of baseball.  But I’d submit that the more frequently a sport is played the more local its audience becomes.  People make an event out of watching 9 NFL games at once on Sunday, which is doable precisely because they don’t have to do it again come Tuesday, and again on Wednesday, etc.  OTOH, with baseball played just about every night for 6 months your casual (i.e. not on these boards) fan is really only going to become familiar with his hometown team and probably the intradivisional rivals.  The NBA is somewhere in between these poles, and I’m sure Tango can speak to the NHL.

So if baseball is going to be primarily local in appeal, your best bet for driving interest in the championship is to play the games in the hometowns of the competing teams.  Sure, in years when the Yankees, Red Sox or Cubs play in the WS you’d sell out.  But how many tickets are you really going to sell for Phillies-Rays at some random stadium in Arizona?

NOW: if you want to argue for a southern league that can play in warm weather while the northern league shuts down, you might be onto something.

The most immediate and viable solution to more baseball would be to show Caribbean and South American winter league ball on TV in the USA. The fact that it isn’t shown must reflect the opinion on the part of the cable sports networks that it wouldn’t make money, which is too bad. I am one of those who would like year-round baseball.

i have a feeling that you may see a lot of fall/winter baseball on the new MLB channel. ESPN deportes in the past has shown the caribbean series, so i’m not sure if there’d be an immediate rights issue with that. but i think it’s a near certainty that we’ll see some AFL games in the future.

#4: Argentina does not have two seasons per year. They have 1, as do most European leagues, if not at all.

There are many Latin American leagues that do have 2 seasons per year, though, such as Colombia and Mexico.

I know that at least in Colombia the shorter seasons hurt the bigger, “better” teams and favors the weaker, smaller teams. 2 of the past 4 winners have been teams that were in the B League the season before being crowned. Some 2nd place teams have also been previous “B-leaguers”. This is not something you see in the leagues that do 1 season per year, and it is something that hurts Colombian soccer and the like because they end up having weak competitors in the international competition.
I’d love for year-around baseball, but I don’t see this ever happening (having 2 seasons per year)

Speaking from an Australian perspective: here we traditionally have footy season from late March to September, cricket from November to February.  In recent years one of the football competitions (rugby union’s Super 14) has been starting in January.  IT’S JUST TOO EARLY FOR FOOTBALL!  There’s still cricket being played, and rugby’s an annoying distraction.  I start paying attention to the Super 14 about half-way through its season.

Now I’m sure that rugby devotees are following from week one, but for me (and at least some others), cricket is for summer, football is for winter.

(I am a very keen cricket fan, so I’ll follow the cricket occasionally played here in the off-season, or in the English summer.  But cricket during winter gets drowned out by football for most Aussie sports fans.)

If we’re going to have all sports almost all-year round, then limiting the number of overlaps would be a good idea.  You can make NFL sunday only, MLB (and other pro sports league in the South) Mo-Sa, NHL and NBA alternate days to play 3 days a week.  So, you have 2 sports each and every day, with a 2-month layoff for each sport.  Works for me…

If the NFL played more than a 16-game season the injuries would force you to essentially have 2 leagues (NFL and a lesser league).  I’m all for baseball all year long, but I don’t see how you can play football more than they already do without watering the talent down to the point where it’s not worth watching.

#12
argentina certainly has two “seasons” per year.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primera_División_Argentina

I favor the minor league system of having a first half champion in each league and a second half champion.  Playoffs are the first half champion versus the second half champion for each league.  The winners meet in the world series.  Since you only have two rounds of playoffs you could lengthen each round to best of 9 or best of 11 to give a better chance for the better team to win each round.

As far as changes in the game goes, I think all decisions should be made by a five member panel. They would be a commissioner elected by the team owners, a representative elected by the major league players, a representative selected by the minor league players, an advocate that represented the fans, and a fifth member selected by the congress with a mandate to act in the best interests of baseball as a national institution.  The original idea was that the commissioner was to act in the best interest of baseball, but that idea has been corrupted into acting to maximize short term profits to the owners.  Baseball management likes to point to its attendance increases as the single measure of its overall health and the correctness of its recent decisions but I worry that the long term consequences of the short term thinking may not be reflected in current attendance numbers.

#16: The link is dead, but you are definetely right now that I think about it. I can’t find it online, though (at least not in English). You are right, though. I guess that shows how much I’ve been keeping up with River for the past few years.

I’m sorry, what did you guys say?  I was busy watching Caracas vs. Magallenes.
http://www.lvbp.com/scripts/home/streaming.asp

The other thing to consider though is that the beginning of spring training to the end of the World Series is in the neighbourhood of 250 days—the same “work year” as an ordinary Joe working 50 five-day weeks (52 weeks in a year minus two weeks vacation). Hard to imagine asking the players to work 350ish days a year.

I remember in the early 1990s there was a seniors league in the off-season—that’d be cool to see again.

The off-season is Dec 1 to Jan 31.  ST, regular season, world series all happens in the other 10 months (300 days total).

Agreed that senior leagues would be fun…

Here are a couple of podcast links (Re: #5, MGL) from one of my favorite sites on the web.  Feel free to ignore, as they are not baseball-related.  The first is a discussion of risk taking (click name).  MLB is closer to the public model, imo.

notion put forth by some people (Republicans?) that competition and the “free market” would take care of those problems

In terms of government desired:
Anarcho-capitalists< Libertarians < Republicans

in “real” societies you have government (theoretically) looking out for the interests of the people

Click name for second podcast about a model of how governments look out for the people.