NL Central

Ladies and gentlemen, the St. Louis Cardinals are now only 3.5 games behind the struggling Milwaukee Brewers and 2 games behind the Cubs. If you've been following the season at all, you would have said around the beginning of July/end of June that the Cards had absolutely no chance of getting back into any sort of race. Now, Rick Ankiel has spurred an energy back into the team. The starting pitching has been outstanding the past two weeks and last night the MV3 all hit HR's (Pujols, Rolen, Edmonds). Considering everything that's happened to the Cards this year, it's hard to believe that they can even say they're still in a race. However, they are in the weakest division, they're still 3 under .500 but still surprising. The Cards and Cubs play a four-game wraparound (Fri-Mon.) series this weekend, who knew this series would be important a couple months ago.

The Brewers have some major issues. Capuano might be done. Yost doesn't act like he always trusts his bullpen. Their corner infielders have average defense at best. The offense is really good but they are so young...definitely something a veteran team can take advantage of.

If the Cubs get good starting pitching, they're gonna be tough to beat especially when Soriano gets back. If not, it's anyone's division. Surprise, surprise...it comes down to pitching.

Milwaukee 62-58 --
Chicago 60-59 1.5
St. Louis 57-60 3.5

Since you're a dumbass and didn't do a poll where we could only pick one team, I picked both the Cardinals and Cubs to tie for first and have to play a one game playoff at Wrigley Field....That will also be the same day I pass away from this world no matter which team wins. The city will be out of control.

Um, I could pick one team. It's my first experience with one of STU's polls...so kiss my ass.

Your overconfidence is your weakness when you say the one-game playoff would be played at Wrigley. I like the idea of it being played at Busch better...the sea of red is more intimidating than ivy. It would be out of control no matter where it was played. It would be me pacing back and forth between every pitch like Game 5 of the World Series last year, living and dying with every play. That's one thing the Red Sox-Yankees have over other rivalries, they've met in great postseason matchups numerous times.

I'm so tired of Wrigley. Fenway is way better.

Actually I think the Cubs blow and brewers blow it.

I also enjoy that you can select more than one answer.
I'm voting for a three way tie. All three teams will play a tiebreaker game on two overlapping fields at the same time.

Hey, look at that; you just made baseball exciting!

Have you considered becoming commissioner? They could use a guy like you.

I have considered becoming the commissioner of baseball, yes. I actually went to the commissioner's office to put in an application and they kept saying stuff like "who are you?" and "that's not how it works, you don't just apply for this job" and "Mr. Sims, please stop dancing on the desk" and "stop flirting with all the secretaries; wow, have you been drinking?" and "we're calling the cops", etc...typical. Actually, that's how a lot of my job interviews have gone.

If you got drunk and danced on my desk I'd hire you.
Don't need any employees... but I'd find something.
Office desk dancer... yeah.

Commissioner Roy's first actions are three new rule changes.

1) One strike = out
2) One ball = walk
3) Season cut to 100 games

That oughta spice things up. Carry on.

MAX IS THE NEW COMMISH

Rules:

- one batter per team per game
- one inning
- furthest hit wins

I picked the Brewers, BTW. Brewers just sounds like a fun team name.

meathorse wrote:

1) One strike = out
2) One ball = walk
3) Season cut to 100 games

Uh...that's just dumb. Spoken like a true baseball hater. :)

Well I am the TRUE baseball hater on this board and here's what I would do if it were up to me. I wouldn't change anything about the game itself, I at least respect the tradition of the game and how it is played. It's the overall pace of the game that bores me to tears and why I feel about the game the way I do. But I wouldn't do anything to speed the game up either, the games themselves would go untouch under my regime. But here a few things I would change:

1. I'd even out the schedule more so that you play teams outside of the division more and in division teams less. And what I mean is, as a Cubs fan I only get to see them play teams like the Braves and Dodgers six games a year, but I get to watch them play suckfest teams like the Reds and Pirates NINETEEN times a year? No thanks. It feels like they are always playing these teams because they play them so much. I'd narrow the gap a bit, knock the division games to about 13/14 games a year and bump the out of division games up to at least 9 or 10. But my next idea would probably knock these numbers down a little.

2. (I'll give Simmons credit for this idea, cause he's the one who thought of it, I just modified it a little) Every series would be a four game series played Thursday through Sunday. I think there would be a little more excitement around the game if there were a little more build up to each series.

3. Number two almost makes this a necessity: FEWER GAMES. Not a shorter season, fewer games. The regular season would still go from April to late September/early October, there would just be a hell of a lot fewer games in that time frame. By my match, going from the last weekend in March to the first weekend in October is 28 weekends. 28 weeks X 4 games = 112 games. That's fifty fewer games a season, tell me the players would love fifty more off days a year.

4. A TV deal similar to the one the NFL has. AL on one network, NL on another and they trade rights to the World Series. I think the overlap with football season would make this near impossible, but an idea worth looking into.

5. No more interleague play. I know I went on record as being a fan of interleague play, but I don't think it's necessary. Besides with my new scheduling system, there would be no time for interleague play.

And last but not least....

6. A hard salary cap. I'd let the MLB Union and MLB hash it out, but baseball needs a salary cap. The sport might be more popular among casual fans if, like the NFL, every team had a shot every year. There aren't enough worst to first stories in baseball, but there is one in the NFL every year. A Detroit Tigers story only happens every once in a great while, but there will be a New Orleans Saints every year.

I think that's all I have for now. I'm sure CPH will be impressed, not by my ideas, but at least that my ideas are logical unlike meathorse's "one strike and you're out rule."

Hey! The Reds aren't THAT damn bad!

Well, let's be honest. Less games is not realistic. That means less revenue.

I agree most with #6, but still probably not that realistic.

I disagree with number 1. The more times the Cubs and Cardinals can play, the better. And if I'm not mistaken they have already toned that down a bit

Honestly, I don't think that fewer games is going to mean less revenue. The NFL has an exponentially shorter schedule, but they make billions of dollars. If they play fewer games, MLB is just going to have to be smarter about making money, because right now, they really suck at it.

The thing that hurts them most is their insistence on only televising sold-out games. Their blackout policy is foolish if you want to make money. Their reasoning is that if they start showing games that aren't sold-out, no one will come to the games, and they'll lose money. But that's not true. Showing games generates ad revenue, tons and tons of it. It also generates interest. Show people a game, spark their interest, and they'll buy tickets, partially because baseball games are cheaper than football games - at least in Cincinnati they are - and partially because even I willingly admit that baseball is much better in person. The atmosphere, being around people who are excited, spending that time with friends, laughing at the girl who gets wasted and starts screaming her phone number to one of the relief pitchers (true story); I am not a baseball fan, but I love going to ballgames.

As commissioner, I would lower the number of games played per year, but I would also make some deals to televise a certain percentage of games per season.

I'm also for the hard cap. How competitive you are should not be linked to how much money you have in your pocket. Spreading the love will give lots more teams a chance, which will also go a long way toward stimulating interest in the game.

Don't disagree on the TV policy at all and I may address that on my next solo show.

But as for

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Honestly, I don't think that fewer games is going to mean less revenue.

I have to completely disagree. Sure MLB needs to continue to get smarter about making money but they are making more money as a league than ever before. A sheer numbers game alone means taking games away will generate less money. MLB pays their players much better than NFL. Larry's proposal is basically going to put you at 108 games a year per team. you're telling me that if you cut the schedule by 1/3 of the games that no revenue will be lost from that? Are you serious? Whodey, I expect better from you on this. Pure math alone this would mean less revenue in this area of their money making machine. It's not going to happen.

Fair enough. Maybe not cutting the schedule by 1/3 (I didn't realize that was the cut amount on the table, sorry!), but reducing it by a small amount, maybe just half that, won't hurt the league in the long run. There would be a dip in revenue, but it would be temporary. With smarter money methods in place, revenue would be back up in just a few short years. Any wholesale change is going to cause an initial dip. That's just economics. But equilibrium would hit soon enough.

Unfortunately, the massive paydays that MLB players take home are going to make the establishment of a hard salary cap next to impossible. The fact that it's been ignored by the head office for so long is going to keep baseball a pure money game; only the teams with the deepest pockets are going to be able to afford to keep the big talent for any reasonable length of time. Teams like the Marlins will get the talent before it's fully developed, and will have to sell it off before they can reap any benefit from them to keep costs down. Baseball's current system severely cripples smaller market teams.

The biggest downside of that is that the soft cap ultimately costs MLB money, in my view. Teams without a ton of cash can't field competitive teams, and no one wants to spend money to watch a crappy team play. People stay away in droves, and a lot of money is lost.

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ir enough. Maybe not cutting the schedule by 1/3 (I didn't realize that was the cut amount on the table, sorry!), but reducing it by a small amount, maybe just half that, won't hurt the league in the long run. There would be a dip in revenue, but it would be temporary. With smarter money methods in place, revenue would be back up in just a few short years. Any wholesale change is going to cause an initial dip. That's just economics. But equilibrium would hit soon enough.

Ahh. Common Ground. Don't disagree with anything there.

Take the average percentage of stadium attendance for all teams and reduce the schedule by the same number of games.

I don't think a drastic cut of the number of games would hurt revenue except for in the very short term. I like the Thurs-Sun games, and love the hard salary cap. The less something is available the more you want it. Methinks the holy god number of games they play hurts more than it helps.

They olympics suck ass. Why do people watch curling on TV? Cause it's only on once every 4 years.

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Methinks the holy god number of games they play hurts more than it helps.

Don't necessarliy disagree with that comment either. This might bring in more fans that are fair weather. However, the number of games don't discourage the die-hards. Baseball fans are grinders much like the players. I agree with all of you in the long run it might help, but baseball won't want to take any initial hit and they don't want to mess with the numbers of games played for fear of baseball records not having the chance to be broken in the future. Baseball is our oldest professional sports league in the US. There are a lot of traditionalists and die-hards trying to preserve the game. This would take years upon years for anything to realisitically happen to the schedule.

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There are a lot of traditionalists and die-hards trying to preserve the game.

Well... then we shall wait until a few of those crotchety old farts kick it, then we'll move in.

See you in a few years.

What's interesting is that baseball attendance has never been higher across the league. No teams had to dump any payroll because every team is making money.

I imagine some of the players would like the 100-game schedules but then that might mean getting rid of the popular interleague play. And maybe even some of the games against some of the teams in your own league or cutting the amount of games against your own division which wouldn't make much sense to me.

Call me a die-hard. I like the 162-game schedule still.

BTW, I tried watching some football the other night, I sat around for 10 minutes and I think there was a total of 2 plays, other than that there were commercial breaks, penalties and an injury. Pathetic.

No, not "pathetic."

"Preseason."

Yeah I know. I just wanted to turn the tables a bit from baseball getting knocked. I'm looking forward to the regular season.