Bud Selig commissioned a group of 14 to discuss on field matters a few months ago and one of the ideas that’s being considered is a floating divisional realignment to improve competitive balance, especially in the AL East.

As with most issues of competitive balance, floating realignment involves finding a work-around to the Boston-New York axis of power in the AL East. In the 15 seasons during which the wild-card system has been in use, the Red Sox and Yankees have accounted for 38 percent of all AL postseason berths. The league has never conducted playoffs without the Red Sox or Yankees since that format began — and in eight of those 15 years both teams made the playoffs. Since 2003 the Sox and Yankees have won at least 95 games 11 times in 14 combined seasons.

Okay, I’m with ya. Big market teams like the Yankees and Red Sox are dominating their division in a sport with no salary cap making it extremely difficult for any of the remaining 3 teams to even have a real shot at making the playoffs. This is a difficult problem to solve because any teams moved out of the division will be considered taking the easy way out and any team being moved in will be considered left for dead. Read the rest of this entry »

Last night at the Dbacks/Phillies game I was reminded of some of the stupid scoring rules that exist in the sport I spend too much time watching.  The situation went like this:

Man on first, top half of the inning, no outs, Jon Garland is pitching.  Garland makes a pickoff throw to first but tosses it like a little bitch and the ball skips away with the baserunner moving all the way around to third.  An error is charged to Garland and the runner eventually scores.  The run that scores however, is not charged as earned because of the error EVEN THOUGH GARLAND WAS THE ONE WHO COMMITTED THE ERROR.

Let me get this straight: you’re more than willing to give a pitcher credit for a team stat like a win or a loss but when he is directly responsible for fucking over his team he isn’t even charged with a run?

God, the old people who decided how to score this sport are so fucking stupid.

I’ll give you two shots at guessing both the league the suspended athletes play in and their nationality.  Oh, and I’ll even give you a little hint: last year, 42 of the 69 players suspended for steroid use were from this league?  Give up?  How about another clue?  Manny Ramirez returned to Dodger Stadium to cheers yesterday.  Still no guess?

Speaking of suspended Domincans, in light of the Manny suspension/minor league hoopla, Bud Selig is going to try to change the rules on how a suspended player reenters the baseball community after the suspension.

In an hour long Q&A with the BBWA Tuesday, Bud Selig announced that he is looking to change the way players who are suspended for steroids re-enter the baseball world.  His goal is to prevent them from playing in the minors during the duration of their suspension to avoid the circus that followed Manny Ramirez around this past month.  He said:

“I’ll let them work that out. I don’t want to do our negotiating here,” Selig said. “But it’s 50 games and then go do what you got to do to get back into (shape).”

Still no guess?  Really?

I’ve always been a guy who believes in following the “spirit of the law” as opposed to a “letter of the law.”  That is to say, I don’t always come to a complete and total stop at stop signs at 1am when I can see that there’s no one else around especially at intersections where I believe that the signs were put up to regulate traffic (as opposed to areas where they’re put up for the safety of the community.  I believe that laws are made to protect the people and not for the sake of making needless restrictions on personal freedoms and what not.

The reason I start there is because we had a little “letter of the law” altercation in baseball yesterday and I thought it was dumb.  As you undoubtedly have heard, Evan Longoria was removed from the starting lineup of the Rays/Indians game yesterday because Mr. Joe Maddon accidentally listed Evan Longoria and Ben Zobrist as both playing third base when it was obvious that he meant to put Longoria at DH.  Because of this the Rays forfeited their right to use the DH for the game and were forced to bat their pitcher third.  Now, I’m not arguing that the correct protocol wasn’t followed.  I guess I technically agree with the decision based on the letter of the law.  What does annoy me is that it was so obviously a simple mistake that there seems to me no reason that both teams couldn’t have agreed to allow the Rays to move forward with their original intention of batting Longoria as the DH.  Read the rest of this entry »

Could you repeat the question? Hopefully I'll come up with an answer if I stall a bit and scratch my head

Okay maybe the title of this post isn’t completely fair; the sport itself is fine. But he has bastardized the league. He’s all about making decisions based on what will result in the most supply of profits. To a certain degree, that’s fine. But Bud has surpassed that degree and then turned around and pissed on it. If Bud were the commissioner of the PGA, there’d be 10 major championships a year by now. Fuck Jack Nicklaus and his record, he’d have Tiger breaking it within a year or two. The PGA would be rolling in the money and Bud would be on television every other day bragging about how many profits he’s accumulated for the league and its sponsors, all-the-while pissing on its traditions. Don’t get me wrong, profits are a nice commodity. I had some profits once and it was working out well for my family and me until I turned around and traded them for a lifetime supply of tootsie rolls [still a good decision in my opinion, but not shared by my wife, who doesn't even like tootsie rolls. That shouldn't really be my problem though, should it? Who doesn't like tootsie rolls? Especially the orange one's]. But getting profits should not be the top priority if it means you have to bastardize your league to do it. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, Major League Baseball announced that they would be making several rule changes for the 2009 season.  Among them, playoff games will no longer be decided based on who’s leading after 5 complete innings if it is called due to rain.  Every game will be played to its completion.  Also, coin flips will not determine home field advantage in the playoffs anymore in the event of a tie.  Instead, head-to-head record will decide that.  In all, the changes were pretty minor.  Nonetheless, an old man would like to comment on the changes.  I’m sorry in advance. Read the rest of this entry »