Rob Neyer talks about contraction in today's column and about how the Royals have to be on the short list despite denials by Glass. His arguments make sense.

I'm not opposed to contraction in general, but I am opposed to the way Bud Selig tried to pull it off. One reader wrote to tell me that he considers Bud a dictator. I'm not about to disagree with that. What Selig was doing was destroying two franchises. This is both unnecessary and unfair. You can have contraction without hurting any teams, and might even create better jobs for ballplayers at the same time.

I think the best configuration for a league is 12 teams, two 6 team divisions. (The AL 1969-1976 was an example of this, as was the NL from 1969-1992). This way, you play your division foes 18 times each (90 games) and the teams in the other division 12 times each (72 games). None of this interleague stuff. Save that for the World Series. Right now, we have 30 teams, which very nicely form five six-team divisions. All we need are 6 more teams.

I know what you are thinking. He wants another expansion! Nothing of the sort. The problem with MLB right now is that you have at least 6 teams that are not capable of competeing for a championship because of:

• Lack of money.


• Lack of a fan base.


• Incompetence

So rather than destroying franchises, let's recast them as a super-minor league. We can take 6 top AAA teams (like Buffalo and Louisville) who want to be in the majors and promote them to this super minor league. These teams would not be farm teams; they would compete for players with the major league teams. They would have farm systems. They would just be a smaller (cost wise) league.

Here's how I see it working. There would be one draft. ML teams get the first 24 picks, so you concentrate talent in the majors. The Super Minor (SM for short) would get the next 12, and each round would go on like that. There would be a separate labor agreement with the SM, with a lower base salary, but otherwise the same rules regarding free agency (and maybe they'll be smart and avoid arbitration by having a shorter period before free agency takes hold). They would respect the same commissioner, unless Congress gets smart and overturns the anti-trust exemption. I would expect all 36 clubs to trade with each other, and I would expect the SM clubs to sell players to the majors. National TV revenue would go the ML clubs; the SM would be free to sign it's own TV deals.

The AL and NL would go back to two rounds of playoffs. The SM would have one playoff round to determine it's champion. Every year, the SM champion would be given the option to move up to the majors, replacing the worst team in the majors. This way, if an SM teams decides it wants a piece of the ML television money, if it's stadium is selling out, if it develops a loyal and large TV audience, it can spend a lot of money and make it self into an ML team. This would be a great incentive for teams to be good, rather than trying to get rich putting a lousy, cheap team on the field and pocketing all the money. It also gives a great incentive to ML teams not to be bad. If they start losing, they may lose all that TV money.

I think this solutions helps everybody. It creates more jobs at a higher salary for players than they would get in AAA. It gives some place for veterans to go as their careers decline. It gives the small markets good, independent teams that can be competitive. It makes travel and scheduling much easier for the remaining ML teams, and gives them a financial boost by allowing them to keep a bigger slice of the TV pie. That will lead to higher salaries for stars, which will make the union happy. Andrew Zimbalist, who wrote Baseball and Billions, believes that baseball could easily expand to 40 teams. I don't thing 40 ML teams is feasible, but 24 ML teams and 12 independent minor league teams is.

This isn't that hard a problem to solve. The people running baseball need to show a little creativity, something that has been sorely lacking there.