Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
April 26, 2004
Three Weeks

The season is about three weeks old (I guess I'm counting the first Monday as true opening day here), and what impresses me is how tight things are. It's common to have a team get off to a fantastic start and leave others in the dust, but that hasn't happened in any division. The biggest division lead right now belongs to the Dodgers; they lead San Diego by 2 1/2 games. The biggest deficit belongs to the Expos at 7.5 games. But there is no team that is so far out that they could not turn their season around with a good hot streak.

One big reason for these close races is that few teams appear to be doormats this year. The Reds, Brewers, Pirates, Padres, Rockies, Rangers, Tigers, Orioles and Devil Rays are not push overs this year. Even Kansas City, starting 6-11, has really just gone through a streak of bad luck, as they've only been outscored by five runs.

And what was that about 1/2 the teams not being able to make the playoffs? This was bud after the 2000 World Series:


''At the start of spring training, there no longer exists hope and faith for the fans of more than half our 30 clubs,'' Selig said. ''It is my job to restore hope and faith. I can assure you this system will be changed.''

The change was to institute a luxury tax, which only the Yankees appear to pay. The tax was designed to put a drag on salaries, but it appears that what it really is doing is supplying teams with cash that they have used to improve their rosters! So one could argue that the Yankees, by spending all this money on high priced talent, are making the majors more competitve, not less.


Posted by David Pinto at 09:37 AM | Standings | TrackBack (0)
Comments

I'm not buying the idea that the likes of Detroit or Pittsburgh or Tampa Bay has any chance at all to contend for a playoff spot. But even in a perfectly healthy system, there should be around a third of the teams in any given year that have only the longest of longshot shances at a playoff run.

Posted by: Crank at April 26, 2004 11:08 AM

Hot starts for teams like the DRays and the Tigers means more fans coming to games through May, which in turns means more revenue, which in turn should mean more competition.
But I don't buy the argument that money has anything to do with competition. If we expanded the playoffs to six or eight teams, like the other sports, suddenly baseball looks as balanced as any other sport. Teams that seem typically on the cusp until mid-August would have much more hope than they do now. As a purist, I actually think this would be best for baseball--shorten the regular season and add two more playoff teams in each league.
Whenever that suggestion is made, however, I always read about how that would destroy pennant races: but is that true? Sure, division races mean less, but there are always teams fighting to get in, regardless of how many teams are admitted. So if we expand to six teams, instead of the Yanks and Red Sox duking it out, we have the Royals and White Sox fighting for their playoff lives; isn't that what we want? Playoff races generate fan interest, and if we expand the playoffs to the mid-size teams, teams like the Tigers would see actual pennant races, and the fans that are coming out to see Detroit now would be going to see them in August.

Posted by: Daniel at April 26, 2004 12:38 PM

However, adding two teams to the playoffs would also reduce the quality of postseason teams. I enjoy having only the best of the best playing in October. An example of a playoff system gone horribly wrong is the NBA, which has the likes of New York and Boston in the playoffs - two truly bad teams. Perhaps this would generate more revenue, but at what cost to the quality and purity of the game?

Posted by: Joe at April 26, 2004 06:54 PM