I Fixed Baseball

[MFS62]

A Boy Named Seo wrote: I have two more baseball fixes, both inspired by soccer because everyone loves soccer.

Which is why if you suggest it that way it might be a tougher sell to MLB executives than if you didn't mention soccer. It would be running head first into the NIH (not invented here) syndrome.

But I'm not sure how baseball fans would react to that pitch (double entendre intended) of "Hey, soccer has this great idea. Why don't we try it?".



Later

[Fman99]

You're saying you could make baseball as great as soccer? Jeesh, what'd we ever do to you?

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

As though baseball execs are so ignorant to not recognize what a cup-style tournament is

[A Boy Named Seo]

A Boy Named Seo wrote: I have two more baseball fixes, both inspired by soccer because everyone loves soccer. Which is why if you suggest it that way it might be a tougher sell to MLB executives than if you didn't mention soccer. It would be running head first into the NIH (not invented here) syndrome. But I'm not sure how baseball fans would react to that pitch (double entendre intended) of "Hey, soccer has this great idea. Why don't we try it?". Later

No, it's a fact that everyone loves soccer, especially Fman99, so the more I mention soccer to all the MLB execs, the better.

[Centerfield]

And if you combine our ideas, when the 15 game round robin kicks off, the winner of the Supporter's Shield stays home the entire time.



Atlanta, Baltimore. Congratulations. You get 15 home games starting October 1. Higher seed plays at home. 6 seed. Kiss your wife and kids goodbye. You won't see them for a while.



1 vs. 6

2 vs. 5

3 vs. 4



1 vs. 5

2 vs. 4

3 vs. 6



OFF DAY



1 vs. 4

2 vs. 3

5 vs. 6



1 vs. 3

2 vs. 6

4 vs. 5



OFF DAY



1 vs. 2

3 vs. 5

4 vs. 6



OFF DAY (or, in the event of a tie after pool play, a 1 game playoff for the right to play in the WS)



World Series

[A Boy Named Seo]

By God, we've done it. We've fixed baseball.



https://media.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExbmphNHE5eTE4YzVxZjY5d3FqcTl5aDRqeGt3NTIzMmcxbWdycWgxMyZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/WmpO7jZg7suIjwVz4S/giphy-downsized-large.gif>

[MFS62]

A Boy Named Seo wrote: By God, we've done it. We've fixed baseball. https://media.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExbmphNHE5eTE4YzVxZjY5d3FqcTl5aDRqeGt3NTIzMmcxbWdycWgxMyZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/WmpO7jZg7suIjwVz4S/giphy-downsized-large.gif>

Do we detect a tiny note of sarcasm there?

LOL!

Later

[Edgy MD]

I'm all for a Cup tournament.



The knockout play of hot, sexy, and wet Cup action would certainly fill the emptiness that any folks may feel from my elimination of playoffs.

[Frayed Knot]

Johnny Lunchbucket wrote: sign me up for the supportrs shield. an IST in baseball might be fun. You'd have to craft the entire season schedule around it, and rainouts would be a problem. But let's see how the NBA does with theirs. The risk is it devalues non-IST games

I had planned to dredge up this thread once the NBA's IST was over ... only to have the topic brought up in one of the all-purpose threads (cuz

everything winds up in APTs) so I'm bringing it back to here lest the topic get lost.



Here's my take: I have absolutely no idea what this recent NBA tourney was about, how it was structured, what it accomplished, and, most

importantly, why ANYONE cared except maybe those who like garishly colored floors (special floors for special games even if it means you

can't see the ball) plus even more alt uniforms.

It's being claimed that TV ratings and in-house attendance was up for these games -- although I am suspicious whether those claims are

actual or partially propaganda -- so the league and the hoops press is declaring it a rousing success. But what was the point?

The players apparently loved it, mostly the ones who won the half-mil/per prize money. But do fans care about that?!?



- The Lakers won meaning LeBron gets to have HIS name on the trophy, something Jordan, Kobe, Wilt, Shaw, etc can't claim. Wow,

I guess this makes him better than Bill Russell.

- LA is going to raise a banner to the rafters commemorating this feat ... as befits a team who are the champion of the late-November/

early December period of your season. Does Jan/Feb get one too?

- I guess those games count towards the regular season totals but certainly the opponents being paired changed depending on results

which means it has to alter the full season results even as I heard that individual records would NOT count if set during these games.

So is it part of the season or not?



I can't even begin to contemplate how MLB would run a version of this or what it would bring to the game over and above the current

set-up.

[MFS62]

Frayed Knot wrote: It's being claimed that TV ratings and in-house attendance was up for these games -- although I am suspicious whether those claims are actual or partially propaganda -- so the league and the hoops press is declaring it a rousing success. set-up.

I saw a comment on a Nets board after they were eliminated that said the tourney attendance was lower than for their regular games. IIRC is was a substantial drop (1,500/game)

But I've seen no data for other teams.

Later

[batmagadanleadoff]

MLB is retroactively declaring last season's September 27th doubleheader between the Mets and Marlins to have been a tournament. A tournament!! The tournament between two teams whose nicknames begin with the letter "M". And because the two teams split the doubleheader, each team winning one game --- everybody wins! Participation trophies for everybody! Commemorative jerseys coming soon. Fans in attendance will be biiled an extra 40% over the face value of their tickets. Because it was a tournament. A tournament!!!

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

Lotta sour old men here.

[MFS62]

I like this idea:

from Rotoworld:

ESPN's Jeff Passan reports Major League Baseball will hold it's first-ever “Spring Breakout” minor league showcase games March 14-17. The series of games will showcase young players from all 30 organizations, with prospect groups from each team facing off against one another, as part of a doubleheader accompanying a regular spring training contest. Passan adds that the goal is to bring top-caliber prospects onto big league fields as opposed to backfield games at spring training complexes.

Later

[Frayed Knot]

Johnny Lunchbucket wrote: Lotta sour old men here.

Well then somebody needs to explain to me what I'm missing here because I simply don't get it.

I don't understand what the point of this (NBA) tourney was or why, assuming I was a fan, I

should care.

It seems to me to be a case of the league saying it matters because we say it matters.

[batmagadanleadoff]

I think that MLB should have a World Series tournament (tournament!!!!!) every month. It's not fair that only one team per season gets to win the World Series. It's not fair to the other 29 teams. So let's have an April World Series tournament. (Tournament!!!). And then a May World Series! etc., etc., etc.

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

James Naismith never demanded that the game of basketball have only one tournament a year.



From the league's point of view its turning a weakness (low ratings and excitement until Christmas) into a potential strength ,(a new "tentpole" it can market and sell for big bucks to a streaming service and better compete with nfl/college fb). Disruption to the schedule was pretty minimal. Two games for each team were scheduled based on the results. And only the finalists play an 83rd game. So if you didn't care about the tournament it didn't cost you anything as a fan.



If you don't want to believe the ratings were better I dont know how to convince you but fans apparently tuned in. LeBron vs Russel is irrelevant and nobody is saying that based on this.

[bmfc1]

https://www.mlb.com/news/spring-breakout-prospect-showcase-to-debut-in-2024?t=mlb-pipeline-coveragehttps://www.mlb.com/news/spring-breakout-prospect-showcase-to-debut-in-2024?t=mlb-pipeline-coverage

This is a good idea. It's not earth-shattering and you might not even notice, but showcasing a team's best prospects regardless of level is smart. This way, we could see the players that the Mets received for David Robertson: Ronald Hernandez, a 20-year-old catcher, and Marco Vargas, an 18-year-old 2B. These players likely would stay "on the back fields" for ST but here they can play in the bigger ballpark and it won't cost the fans anything (which is shocking) because it will be part of a doubleheader with the scheduled spring game.

[A Boy Named Seo]

Johnny Lunchbucket wrote: James Naismith never demanded that the game of basketball have only one tournament a year. From the league's point of view its turning a weakness (low ratings and excitement until Christmas) into a potential strength ,(a new "tentpole" it can market and sell for big bucks to a streaming service and better compete with nfl/college fb). Disruption to the schedule was pretty minimal. Two games for each team were scheduled based on the results. And only the finalists play an 83rd game. So if you didn't care about the tournament it didn't cost you anything as a fan. If you don't want to believe the ratings were better I dont know how to convince you but fans apparently tuned in. LeBron vs Russel is irrelevant and nobody is saying that based on this.

Yeah I agree with all of this. I'm an NBA fan, NBA package subscriber and have a social media that has algorithm'd itself around NBA content and the IST was super popular amongst fans. Some players didn't get it (Terrence Mann on my fav team said he didn't understand it at all) and Spider Mitchell didn't like the point differential for tie-breakers, but confusion or dislike was not the majority (or loudest) opinion, in my circles anyway.



And it did what Silver wanted it to do. Give fans a reason to be excited and tune in when teams were ramping up their starters minutes and managing load even load management isn't allowed wink wink.



Sounds like they want to give the winner of the IST an automatic entry into the playoffs next year, which is cool, IMO.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Next year, new Mets GM David Stearns will have his Mets players pretend that every regular season game is a "tournament game" (Tournament !!). This way, said Stearns, "they'll play harder, thus increasing their chances of winning games and qualifying for the post-season. I can't wait for this tournament mindset to bring out their magic clutchiness powers. They can play better whenever they feel like it. And they'll feel like playing better if they thought they were playing tournament games."

Edited December 14, 2023 by Guest

[A Boy Named Seo]

Stearns got demoted to GM already? Sad.

[batmagadanleadoff]

A Boy Named Seo wrote: Stearns got demoted to GM already? Sad.

Yeah. He lost a tournament to decide his title.

[Frayed Knot]

I understand a tourney within a season when it's done the way of English football.

The Premier League goes dark approximately one weekend in four (at certain times of the year) to allow teams to play in domestic FA Cup

games or in one of the Pan-European tourneys if they qualify because those are separate tournaments with no connection to the PL season.

They have completely different set-ups, different opponents, and different titles that are something other than just champions of a portion

of a season in progress because certain games, which are essentially the same as any other games, are designated to be different just to

call them different.

Watching the Mets being crowned 'Champions of April', or whatever, holds no appeal to me.

[metirish]

Yeah the FA Cup is magical, any teams in the pyramid of the game get to play , kind of like the Toledo Mud Hens drawing the Mets in a knockout game , anything can happen, of course players and managers will say they play too many games with league, domestic cups and Euro competition, gets worse in a World Cup/Euro year ...MLB should play more games in division, but that's gone

[Frayed Knot]

=metirish post_id=142953 time=1702591972 user_id=72]
Yeah the FA Cup is magical,

[metirish]

No doubt the magic for the very top clubs has gone , but winning the cup can save a season and manager, teams like Spurs would love to win, they've not win anything in years , a team competing for the EPL title likely wouldn't mind been dumped out

[MFS62]

=metirish post_id=142957 time=1702593631 user_id=72]
... Spurs would love to win, they've not win anything in years