MLB 2011

[WayAbvPar]

Fielder is going to be too expensive to sign when they have so many other holes. Unless he puts up a .450/85/190 Triple Crown year or something equally ludicrous.

This sums it up nicely, actually.

Every time I see Fielder, I get Kevin Mitchell flashbacks. The human body just can't hold up carrying that kind of weight for too long. His hips and knees will be shot by the time he is in his mid 30s. If you sign him to some 10 year monstrosity, he could very well be completely unproductive for the 2nd half of it.

[ghost]

Oklahoma City is clearly a better market than Seattle.  I'm not sure what you guys are smoking.  

[Paelos]

Oklahoma City is clearly a better market than Seattle.  I'm not sure what you guys are smoking.   

Seattle's 3x the market. All stats and populations will indicate it makes total sense to have professional baseball there. Then again, Tampa is a better market than Seattle, the team actually wins, and they still don't draw dick.

At least I know if they win in Seattle, people will show up.

[HaemishM]

Fielder is just plain not a good fit for Seattle, period. Seattle is the place where power hitters go to die. Adrian Beltre, that Aussie 1B they got from the Brewers a few years back who isn't even in the MLB anymore (I forget his name). The park is not made for those types of guys. Fielder goes from a 40 HR to a 30 HR guy. He does hit for average, but he's been in a hitter's park all his career and he's just not going to transition to a place like that well. The last 3 years away from home he's 30 points lower on average, less doubles, less HR, less BB, less DBL, MORE K's with more AB. He'd kill it at Wrigley or on the other side of Chicago, or new Yankee Stadium. Not at Safeco.

But he wouldn't go there anyway. I have doubts he'll go to Chicago or Florida because after being one series win from the World Series, he's not going to want to go into full rebuilding mode. I could see him going to California but Baltimore? It'll take $30 million a year to go somewhere with a losing record.

[Paelos]

Florida doesn't deserve a team anymore. They could just move the damn thing to Birmingham and they would draw better attendance.

[ghost]

They should move both the Marlins and Tampa bay to anywhere else.  I think a team would do well in south Texas, but it won't happen anytime soon because of the Rangers/Astros.

[Ingmar]

Marlins have a new stadium, they're planning on spending a bunch of money on free agents which you can assume means they're no longer concerned about their revenue stream.

[Paelos]

Marlins have a new stadium, they're planning on spending a bunch of money on free agents which you can assume means they're no longer concerned about their revenue stream.

Well if moving it closer to downtown doesn't help their numbers, nothing will.

[Fordel]

Paelos, you are not the arbiter of sport team locations!



Though I'd agree in that I have no damn idea how Toronto still has a baseball team. Just by looking at the stands whenever I see a game on TV, it is empty and dead and depressing. No one in this city has given a shit about baseball since a few years after our big back to back world series wins. Back then people were ape shit ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwxuquJ3xxE still remember this as a kid  ), but now... maybe the Jays are doing fine attendance wise and it's just that the Skydome is enormous, but I dunno.

[ghost]

Oh goody.  They're going to expand MLB playoffs.   

Commissioner Bud Selig said owners also approved two additional wild-card teams for the postseason, meaning 10 of the 30 teams make the playoffs. Selig said he hopes the expanded playoffs can start next year, but he said the specifics are being worked out. The players' association favors the move.

I can't wait to have 6 months worth of baseball playoffs.

[Fordel]

Does that mean the jays actually have a shot in hell of getting in again? 

[Ingmar]

maybe the Jays are doing fine attendance wise and it's just that the Skydome is enormous, but I dunno.

The big stadium thing is part of it, but Toronto is definitely low attendance overall as well. They got ~22.5k per game in 2011, which is barely outside of the bottom 5. Skydome is around 50k capacity for baseball I think, but that's with seats blocked etc. that they can normally pack people into for other events, I think it goes to the high 60s for some other stuff. So it is low attendance that looks even lower due to the facility. Most new baseball-only facilities are around 40k these days but that's a 40k that will basically make the whole place look full.

[Fordel]

The wiki page says 50k'ish yea. I want to say it holds way more just by how big the place is, but that might just be my perception.


Basically every time I see it on TV for baseball, it looks like this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tigersbluejaysapril2008.jpg and that is pretty damn depressing.

[ghost]

That is a fucking huge stadium.

[Paelos]

Great, two more playoff teams. Maybe that way they can get another AL East team in. Those fuckers.

[Fordel]

It really is, and that fucking roof and most of those ground level seats all move on giant rail tracks.

[Paelos]

It really is, and that fucking roof and most of those ground level seats all move on giant rail tracks.

I'd move your team so fast. 

[Ingmar]

Getting rid of the roof thing alone would make it look fuller, probably.

[Fordel]

I doubt that roof is going anywhere, they use the place for a lot of concerts and shit.

[HaemishM]

2 MORE playoff teams. Fuck a bunch of that.

[Ingmar]

One in each league, they play a one game playoff with the other wild card and then playoffs proceed as normal. It isn't going to extend the season to any significant degree, and I like the fact that it makes winning your division much better than being a wild card.

[Teleku]

Fuck fuck fuck fuck.  I was hoping they would shit can the stupid expanded play off idea.

[Fordel]

I don't get why 2 extra teams in the playoffs is suddenly hell on earth?

[Paelos]

I don't get why 2 extra teams in the playoffs is suddenly hell on earth?

Because under Selig we've gone from 4 to 8 to 10? It's pretty obvious he's fucking everything up with the playoffs by trying to copy the NFL except in all the right ways?

[Fordel]

No, it isn't obvious.

All I see is 'OH GAWD THIS IS HARRIBLE' and I'm like "but why?" and your like 'BECAUSE IT IS YO'.

[Sjofn]

The one game part is the part that has me a little "wut" but otherwise I don't give a shit.

[ghost]

Because the playoffs take so fucking long to complete that it has become asinine.  The NBA has the same issue.  Playoffs take months and months to complete and the product is such a watered down piece of shit that nobody wants to watch until the quarterfinals. Fuck it, why don't they just make it all the playoffs?   

[caladein]

That's the main reason that I'm not livid about a one-game series.  This last MLB postseason took less than a month to complete and this won't add much to it.

I think with any playoff format there's always a trade-off between entertainment value and being an attempt at finding the best team.  Baseball's definitely on the latter end, even if series of any reasonable length aren't statistically significant, so I don't think we lose too much by adding in another team.

This also deals well with the "standard scenario" of the AL East race being a formality if one of the Rays, Red Sox, or Yankees has an off year.

[Ingmar]

I am pretty sure baseball has the shortest playoffs of any major sport. This isn't going to end the world.

EDIT: I did have to laugh at one of our talk radio guys hurfblurfing about there's no way the Giants miss the playoffs under this system - which of course, they would have this year.

[Paelos]

It doesn't make the playoffs longer. That's not the problem. The problem is that it makes the regular season less important, which is the longest in all of professional sports.

The reason you played 162 games over the years was because at the end, only two teams was going to emerge and go to the world series. Then, it became four teams in the sixties. Then, it became 8 teams in the nineties. Now it's 10? A third of the teams will go to the postseason?

When you are the NFL, you can play once a week, make most of the games matter, and make tons of money pulling in more teams to the playoffs.

If we do that in the MLB, you would need to get rid of some of the regular season because it's just too damn long to prove the same damn thing you know about the teams in August.

[Ingmar]

I would argue it actually makes the regular season *more* important. Not having the possibility of getting fucked by a one game run-in with some star pitcher makes winning your division much more important than it is now, where the wild card team is basically on even footing with the others.

You can't look at this as an extra team making the playoffs, not really, because that extra team is going to play all of one game. You have to look at it as making the wild card spot much more precarious.

[Paelos]

I would argue it actually makes the regular season *more* important. Not having the possibility of getting fucked by a one game run-in with some star pitcher makes winning your division much more important than it is now, where the wild card team is basically on even footing with the others.

You can't look at this as an extra team making the playoffs, not really, because that extra team is going to play all of one game. You have to look at it as making the wild card spot much more precarious.

For a stats guy though, you realize is lowers the value of each individual game when you allow this though, yes?

[HaemishM]

No, it isn't obvious.

All I see is 'OH GAWD THIS IS HARRIBLE' and I'm like "but why?" and your like 'BECAUSE IT IS YO'.

In most seasons, the current baseball wild card is usually less than 10 games above .500. Adding yet another team from each league almost ensures we're going to have a sub-.500 team in the playoffs. Somehow, the idea of rewarded a team that can't win half its games offends me. Also, the season AND the playoffs are already too goddamn long. For a Cubs fan, it makes the agony of watching the fucking Cardinals win a World Series AGAIN even more painfully long.

[Ingmar]

I don't follow the 'each game is less valuable' argument. That might be slightly true for the wild card team with the better record I guess?

And Haemish, adding one more team from each league is not going to result in a sub .500 playoff team in baseball. I'd bet the only way a sub .500 team will ever get in is as a division winner (closest we've ever seen to that in a non-strike season was the 2005 Padres @ 82-80, but the AL West was heading towards a loser team coming in first in 1994), and this doesn't do a thing to alter the chances of that.

The chances of there ever not being two teams with winning records in a 15 team league (minus divisional winners) is vanishingly small, you'd have to have either extreme parity among teams (in which case the race would actually be pretty exciting) or you'd have to have 4 teams winning 100+ games in the same season, otherwise there just aren't enough losses to go around to make it happen.

[Paelos]

I don't follow the 'each game is less valuable' argument. That might be slightly true for the wild card team with the better record I guess?

Think of it from a simple supply and demand point. You're increasing the supply of teams going into the playoffs, therefore the demand on each team to perform is lesser.

Where it really sets in is that certain teams will have clinched much earlier than they will have in the past. It makes even more of September pointless than previously because now it's not only the people who can't make it, but it's also the people who have already made it and don't care or start resting their guys.