Extra Wild Card Excitement?

I am not buying any added excitement from adding an extra wild-card team in baseball. 

In the AL if there had not been an extra wild card, the end result would have been exactly the same.  Since the Orioles and Rangers finished with the same record, the result would have been a one-game playoff like what happened.  The added wild card probably only removed drama, as the Orioles could see the Yankees winning early and knowing they were playing in a one-game playoff on Friday whether they won or lost.  Without the extra wild card, the Orioles could have been playing to avoid the one-game playoff.  Also the A's-Rangers loser would not have been guaranteed at least a one-game playoff, likely increasing the drama associated with that game.

In the NL, the extra wild card probably increased interest, though the Cardinals race for the last spot never got that close down the stretch, and the one game playoff was pretty dramatic.  Still I would take the un-manufactured drama of the A's-Rangers game or last year's final day over the manufactured drama of the Cardinals-Braves game.

Quick Rant on Assessing Pitchers

I like the website MLB Trade Rumors. However, I have been annoyed lately by every post on MLB Trade Rumors that has anything to do with a pitcher immediately breaking down to ridiculous arguments over whether said pitcher is "a #2" or a "an ace" or a "#4" etc. These arguments are worthless. No one has a real good idea what a "#2 starter" is. Is it the 31th-60th best starters in all of baseball? Is it what the 2nd best starter would look like on a good team? How about the second best on the Phillies? That one seems like it might be a pretty high standard. Can't the commentators just talk about how good he is relative to some fixed point like average or replacement level?

Sports Labor Unrest Links

1. 
   The drop-dead date for the NFL impasse to be resolved and still save some of the season is mid-November.
   
2. Contraction again? Ugh (H/T).
   

Baseball’s Blackout Policy

Yet another sign of spring, discussing MLB's idiotic Blackout policies for MLB.tv (H/T). Let me suggest one reason why the NFL gets their package right, and MLB gets theirs wrong. The NFL splits up the revenue amongst their teams evenly, so when they sell an additional package the money is split the same way as their national deal. However, MLB teams sell their games individually, so they do not want people to move from the local broadcasts to the national one.

Of course the biggest complaints are in the cases where fans are in a team's market and yet have almost no local coverage of the team. I have lived in the split market of the Royals and Cardinals for 10 years, and I have seen a grand total of one Royals game on here. You cannot even pick-up the radio broadcast until you get 20 miles north of where I am. Six teams split Iowa. There is no way that a fan in Des Moines will be able to watch every game of the Cubs, Cardinals, Royals, Twins, Brewers and White Sox on local TV. A more rational policy on blackouts would definitely be beneficial to MLB's worth.

The Dark Side of Moneyball

Bill Simmons and Brian Goff discuss the issue of excessively long baseball games. I concur that this is a problem. I also am in favor of the suggested solutions of eliminating the DH and reducing the time between innings (commercials). Also, steps to reduce the amount of time between pitches (particularly for Kyle Farnsworth) would help.

However, I want to focus on one additional element of the problem that Simmons mentions, the number of pitches per at bat. One element of the Moneyball strategy is that it encourages looking for a walk and taking pitches by the batter. However, this will lead to longer at-bats and thus longer games. Combined with recent concerns that high pitch counts will lead to more injuries, longer at-bats will also lead to more pitching changes, compounding the problem of longer games.

So here we have a strategy that increases the chance of winning for teams that employ it, but when used by everyone creates a negative impact on the sport as a whole. It reminds me of the neutral-zone trap that came into being in the NHL in the mid-90s. It helped teams win but certainly made for a less enjoyable sport to watch. The NHL eventually changed its rules to make it a less appealing strategy to use (eliminating the two-line pass and calling more obstruction penalties). However, there is not an obvious solution to solving the taking pitches problem. Even increasing the number of balls needed for a walk from 4 to 5 might have the perverse incentive of batters taking more pitches as pitchers have less incentive to throw strikes.

Florida Marlins and Pure Evil

As a Cubs fan I've always known that the Florida Marlins sold their soul to take away the 2003 NL Pennant from the Cubs. Now the devil has come to collect.

Instant Replay

I was not watching the "Perfect Game" last night by Armando Galarraga, because I was too busy watching the Flyers' 4-3 overtime win over the Blackhawks. What I am struck by is the discrepancy in instant replay rules between hockey and baseball. Baseball supposedly cannot have instant replay because it will break up the flow of the game. However, hockey which has a lot more natural flow to the game has instant replay. In last night's game there were two key calls that went to instant replay, one giving the Flyers a goal and one not giving them a goal in overtime. The first one went to replay after the game continued for a minute and a half. If hockey can have instant replay despite problems with the flow of the game, then I cannot see how baseball cannot. Admittedly hockey needs instant replay more in that both of the calls would have been impossible to necessarily get right without replay, whereas the ump in the baseball game should have gotten the play at first base right anyway.

P.S. After writing this but before posting, I found another argument along the same lines.