Quote:
Originally Posted by Swaggs
No way they cut games. They earn so much media revenue at this point that cutting games down by even 10% would be significant. They could make some of that back up by expanding the playoffs, but I can't see them cutting their media inventory unless they could more than make it up with additional postseason games and then they are competing more with the NBA and NFL. I do agree with Jim about the injuries and now that we know so much more about the risk factors, I again come back to thinking about having a taxi squad of extra players. A 5-7 man taxi squad would allow teams to carry an extra catcher around (let's face it, it feels like 80% of catchers are 30-35 year old journeymen that can't hit anyway - they aren't going to be missing out on development time in the minors), let them rest nicked up players that could benefit from rest without going on the DL, and rotate pitchers in and out a little more.
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They won't cut games, I agree. But as baseball evolves, the more pitchers they need. This increases the talent range of the league staffs. Who is on these taxi squads? Guys who would ordinarily never make it past AAA.
This has been a long transition. Complete game percentages have dropped steadily throughout the history of the sport - now they're about 1% of all games. Around the turn of the century it was 5%. In the '80s, it dropped from 20% to 10%. In the '50s, from 40% to 30%.
More alarming is the increase in strikeouts over the last decade. If that's a function of more pitchers throwing harder, maybe the ideal maximum number of innings with this schedule is more like 100 to avoid excessive injuries. But it's a different, slower game.
The season numbers may seem sacred, but much of that changed with the steroid era. Is baseball broken right now? If they feel the need to adopt college softball extra-inning rules and seven-inning games for double-headers, maybe it is. Or maybe all games should be seven innings and a tie is a tie in the standings?