JOSE CRUZ WEEPS: Major League Baseball has confirmed that the Houston Astros will move to the American League West in 2013, joining the Texas Rangers there, and as early as next year (but no later than 2013) there will be a second wild-card team added to each league, with the two wild cards facing in a one-game playoff.
I'm actually fine with the latter, because I like the idea of creating incentives for winning one's division, but a pair of 15-team leagues? Ugh. Interleague play should be a rare midseason treat, not something which occurs every week of the year. From what I've been able to piece together, we're likely instead looking at 18 games against each divisional rival (total 72), 6x each for the other 10 teams in the league (60), and 30 interleague games -- basically, doubling the number of interleague games and inexorably leading us to the destruction of the American and National Leagues as distinct entities and the introduction of the designated hitter into all games. Boo!
But on the bright side, considering the NFL and NBA, baseball labor peace!
ReplyDeleteBoo! We hate it when all slots in the batting order are filled with people who are professional hitters! We prefer every ninth hitter for two thirds of every game to be utterly incompetent! We especially like it when managers instruct those hitters to leave their bats on their shoulders, the better to avoid injury or double-plays! So exciting for the fans! Every loaf of offensive drama should be leavened by a morsel of farce or, at the manager's risk-averse discretion, of intermission! Mixed metaphor!
ReplyDeleteWe love to watch pitchers hitting, or "hitting"! It's like chickens playing tic-tac-toe and bears riding bicycles and managers wearing uniforms tailored for athletes decades younger than them! You do not expect that! Ha, ha, they are not good! I am better at tic-tac-toe than most chickens! We also believe that 11% of pitches per game should be thrown by infielders, and that one fan should be selected to be the third-base umpire for one inning each game, and that from time to time a "batter" should approach the plate holding a ball, and the "pitcher" should throw a bat at him! Those changes would really open up the game to such managerial strategies as: making two substitutions at once; and having somebody stand somewhere where the ball won't come to him so that somebody else can do something for a little while!
We kid! We do not like those things! Because we think baseball should be exactly the same as it was when it was invented! No mound! Cigarettes in the dugout! White people only! Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis for everybody! Yankees win every year!
And boo, Houston Astros moving to the AL! America's most venerable team! Founded the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis! Originally named after a gun! Renamed after baseball's first domed stadium! It is just wrong to think of the NL without the team that pioneered concrete domed stadia!
"...<span> </span><span>and the introduction of the designated hitter into all games."</span>
ReplyDeleteWell, at least one good thing will come out of it.
Damnit, I was just coming in to say this!
ReplyDeleteNamed new ballpark after Enron! Wore jerseys with half a dozen different orange colored stripes!
ReplyDeleteI am ok with the dh for the nl as long as we also do so for catchers and shortstops.
ReplyDeleteI did not start this website nine years ago today to be mocked like this by a supporter of a baseball team whose legacy is even shorter and less distinguished than the Astros.
ReplyDeleteOne need not regard said history as important to recognize the inconvenience it causes young Astros fans to have an increased number of the team's away games shifted outside the Central Time Zone and to one two hours later in the day.
I'm beginning to think this sport deserves Joe Morgan and Tim McCarver.
ReplyDeleteYeah, but now that it's happened, admit it, you kinda like it.
ReplyDeleteps- I will take the legacy of Ichiro, Edgar Martinez's double, 114 wins, etc. over the 1986 playoffs any time.
--bd
pps - You want a real timezone tragedy? Try the Red Wings in the Western Conference. They're playing right now and I can stay up to 1 am if I care to watch. Playoffs series vs. Vancouver, Anaheim, San Jose just plain suck. God I hope they get to go East next year due to the Thrashers becoming the Winnipeg Jets.
Eh, back when I was a kid, the closest MLB team to me in Knoxville, TN, (Atlanta Braves) and the second closest team (Cincinnati Reds) played in the same division as three, count 'em three, California teams. And I had to walk uphill both ways in the snow to listen to the game in the house of the one family who had a coal powered radio.
ReplyDeleteHow about being mocked by a fan of the team that beat said Astros in 2005, the team with one of the greatest histories in baseball, the Chicago White Sox?
ReplyDeleteGo DH. The abomination of the NL continuing to play retro ball is almost to an end.
As a native Houstonian, I feel like I don't even know them anymore.
ReplyDeleteSame with the Rams playing Seattle, San Fran and Arizona? They aren't in LA anymore. Just like the Cards aren't in St. Louis anymore (you know, the other ones).
ReplyDeleteI too am fine with the additional WC and the one-game play-in. And it seems to me that the benefits of a more balanced schedule should not be overlooked. If they also do away with the interleague "natural rivalry" series (which often winds up either being stupid - Padres vs. Mariners? - or lets a superior team beat up on an extra inferior one every year - ahem, Yankees-Mets), and just more evenly distribute the interleague matchups, then that would be an improvement, notwithstanding my disdain for the inexorable movement away from distinct league identities. It seems that several of the original "rivalries" have been abandoned over the past few years anyway, so eliminating this scheduling quirk should be a no-brainer.
ReplyDeleteHard to accomplish full balance with only 30 interleague games, as I imagine no one would be enthusiastic about playing fifteen 2-game series. But let's at least make it so that each year, every team in a division plays either one 3-game series vs. the same 10 opposite-league opponents (3 games x 10 common opponents), or against the same opposite-league division for home-and-home 3-gamers (6 games x 5 common opponents).
Boo fucking hoo on time zone shift. A person living in the Central or Eastern time zone can always watch any away game on TV. All you have to do is stay up a little later. When a West Coast team goes east for games, a person on the West Coast has to choose whether to watch the game or to have a job. East Coast/Central beauty sleep frankly is not that important to us.
ReplyDeleteAlso, "less distinguished"? The Mariners share the record for wins in a season, beat the Yankees in the greatest playoff series of all time, and have a higher hall-of-famer-per-season-played ratio than the Astros.
ReplyDeleteNot disagreeing with anything here (especially the part about San Diego-Seattle being a "rivalry," something that Lookout Landing heckles every time it comes around), but the teams that are in the race for the wild card and have to play the AL East are going to be pissed.
ReplyDeletewhich is i assume why you people invented the tivo.
ReplyDeleteI should also have said that while neither the Astros nor the Mariners have won a championship, the Mariners fielded the greatest team not to win a championship (the 2001 squad) and what some others have argued was the greatest sustained series of teams not to win a championship (the mid-to-late 1990s teams that featured Griffey, Johnson, Rodriguez, and Martinez).
ReplyDeleteGreat. So you're the Russell Hantz/Lebron James of baseball teams.
ReplyDelete(Also, I don't think you're right -yet- on the HOF question, and after Bagwell/Biggio get in ...)
I think the two game series idea is feasible. The key is to schedule two series in a row and keep them close to each other. An AL team from the east could fly into LA, play the Dodgers for two, Padres for two, then Anaheim for three and never have to leave the hotel for a week.
ReplyDeleteShort commutes can also be made in Chicago/Milwaukee/Detroit/Cleveland, Cincinnati/Pittsburgh, Wash/Balt/Phil/NY/Boston such that the move from the first to the second city is not too hectic. It may lead to some Tuesday afternoon or Friday afternoon baseball, but that's what summer is for.
To balance the home/away thing, one of the 15 serieses would be a home and home with your nearest cross-league team. Yankee Stadium on Monday, Citibank Field on Tuesday. Probably would have to send Seattle to Colorado (or San Diego, ha!) at that point.
Yes, it would be more of a travel drag than the three game series method, but it would be way more fair with regards to schedule balance. The more I watch European soccer, the more I like the "you play everybody twice, one home and one away" balanced schedule. If anything, I would back off of the division schedules even more. I am so tired of the Central division. How many time do we need to see the Kansas City Royals anyway?
--bd
Yup. And the new system guarantees that someone will always be playing inter-league in the last series of the season, which just seems weird.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'd also point out that if we had the extra WC team this season, there wouldn't have been any of the awesomeness of the final days that were so lauded on this very blog.
Well, the Astros have 15 more years than the Mariners. Both teams currently have zero players in the HOF wearing their team's insignia. Let's assume Bagwell and Biggio get in -- they'll wear Astros caps. Griffey will get in with a Mariners cap. Johnson will get in, and I would argue very strongly that he should be wearing a Mariners cap. If that happens, then the Mariners will have more HOF per team season (same number of HOFs, fewer team seasons). Also, Rodriguez will get in, and I guess he'll probably go in as a Yankee, though both the Yankees and the Mariners probably would argue that he should wear a Mariners cap, and his value as a Mariner was greater than his value as a Yankee. Martinez should get in, and I'm tempted just to pretend from now until the end of time that he already is in, and he never even played for another team.
ReplyDeleteYeah, but the extra WC is just there so that the third-best team in the AL East can't bitch and moan about that division any more.
ReplyDeleteIf MLB wants to deal with whining about a loaded division (which could/should be fleeting as different teams cycle through boom/bust years), then maybe 3 games x 10 common interleague opponents is the most workable option, as it would spread the pain and minimize the number of games against perceived powerhouses.
ReplyDeleteNot much you can really do about the final series of the season problem that Scott notes -- just have to hope that no one turns it into a farce. Maybe add a rule that interleague games during the final week of the season have to be played under the DH rules of the team facing playoff implications, regardless of home field (unless, of course, both teams are in a playoff race, in which case home field would govern).
I'm surprised you don't have Ichiro on your HOF list. Sure, he's fading and will probably fall short of 3,000 hits, but he should at least get some credit for his career in Japan as well, no?
ReplyDelete--bd
Having a real hitter in every spot of the order makes Sox-Yankees games interesting, and is the way to go.
ReplyDeleteA 2nd WC is not. Just take the top 4 from each league for the playoffs. Rivalries from playing are more interesting than ones from artificial divisions.
I only included people who are no longer Mariners. I didn't include Felix either, and I suspect that when all is said and done there will be a case to be made for him. I suppose Ichiro's career is in enough of a decline that he can be fairly evaluated already (or maybe he just had a down year?) but I didn't want to get out ahead of anything.
ReplyDeleteYou know, if you make that last series of the year Yankees vs. Mets or Cubs vs. White Sox or Angels vs. Dodgers or Giants vs. A's, then I think those fan bases won't complain. It will only suck if it's like Mariners-Marlins or something that nobody can get excited for.
ReplyDeleteHe's more likely in than Roy Oswalt, who I guess is the next-most-likely Astro. Nolan Ryan played more games in Houston than Arlington, but chose the wrong cap for his plaque.
ReplyDeleteWell, HE didn't; the HOF did.
ReplyDelete<span>Having a real hitter in every spot of the order makes Sox-Yankees games interesting, and is the way to go. </span>
ReplyDelete<span>Each </span><span>g</span><span>ame i</span><span>s </span><span>the mo</span><span>s</span><span>t excitin</span><span>g</span><span> five hour</span><span>s</span><span> in </span><span>s</span><span>port</span><span>s</span><span>! </span>
No, this was back when the inductees chose it. Ryan said he did it because he had two no-nos, his 300th win and 5000th K as a Ranger.
ReplyDelete