Many people blame this problem on there being 162 games in a baseball season, so each one has little meaning. Others blame it on teams financial situations, smaller market teams can't compete with the "big boys". I have a better solution to the problem and would make the game on September 15th between the KC Royals and Seattle Mariners worth paying attention to.
Major League Baseball needs to adopt a system similar to the English Premier League (or any of the top leagues in Europe). This would mean creating a drop zone in major league baseball. The two worst teams in the National League and American League would be relegated to the current triple A league, and the top 4 teams in triple A would be promoted to MLB. In order for this to happen the Triple A teams would have to be independently owned, and free from being a farm system for MLB teams and become a league of 12 "big market" or "potentially big market" cities. This would be your Las Vegas' of the United States. These teams would be able to give higher paid contracts to veterans a the end of the career unwilling to hang up their glove feeling they could still contribute (ala Ricky Henderson). They would also be able to "loan" developmental players from MLB teams in order to give them more experience. Of course the Triple A teams would have to pay their salary during their loan period.
The reason that this would be so successful is that it would make the owners of teams, such as the Pittsburgh Pirates, to stop treating their franchises as an investment. There would be much more to lose in not investing in their teams fully where as now they have nothing to lose besides fans. But more importantly it would create more interest in every game being played throughout the season! Games between the worst team in the NL and the 10th placed team would now be a lot more interesting and mean a lot more creating a scene like this:
A picture from Fulham's last game of the season where they avoided relegation
Instead of this:
An image from Monday, Sept. 24, 2007 of a game in Baltimore between the Baltimore Orioles and the Kansas City Royals
If the MLB developed a system like this the All Star Game would become a distraction from the passion of regular season game instead of an attraction needed in the middle of boring mid season MLB season where no games matter.
3 comments:
I think that this idea is great. As Bobby said, you just can't be cheap in this situation, because if you are too cheap and unwilling to spend then you get completely fucked when your team is dropped.
I think in the end, as I've said with all the leagues, that a salary cap is the best situation and would probably be easier to orchestrate. But, this system you're describing would actually probably be more appealing to many of the fat cats in MLB because they can still spend/earn through the roof money. This obviously wouldn't affect your A-Rods or Mannys. But, as you said, it would add some excitement to games that nobody would watch otherwise.
I like this idea a lot. Although I bet a lot of people stay interested in late season games through fantasy baseball. Late season call ups make it particularly intriguing. Of course that does very little for attendance.
I guess I just wish more owners were like Mark Cuban (although he is kind of annoying) and have a real passion for their team and will look at it as a sense of pride and be a real fan, not just look at it from the business side. Right now nothing forces them to do that and the fans suffer.
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