How To Fix Baseball

I have been trying to figure out a way to fix baseball. A sticky wicket if ever there has been one. My first issue is with the DH. I don't hate the DH like many people. I think it is a great idea, when used in a good way. The good way to use it is to rotate players in and out of it. The sox do this when they give Manny a day to DH so he doesn't have to play defense. The next day you might have Nomar DHing so he doesn't have to play SS for the day. Allowing a guy the day to just hit allows him to get essentially a day off, but you don't lose his bat. I am not as big a fan of using one person solely as the DH, such as they do in Seattle with Edgar Martinez. It has worked for some teams and some players to be full time DHs. I just think that having a full time DH is not worth it for the most part. There have been some people that just can't play in the field anymore but are still dangerous hitters( Dave Winfield with he blue jays, Harold Baines for a while, soon Barry Bonds with some team). Only some hitters are truly worth being full time DHs. Of course on the flip side, I love watching pitchers hit. It is a perverse obsession I have. I don't care if the bunt, or hit a homer. I just think its part of baseball fro the pitchers to hit. So I have decided upon a compromise that the MLBPA would endorse. Add a DH to the National League and let the pitchers hit in the American League. What is so bad about a 10 hitter lineup? This is truly the best of both worlds. Pitcher hit and so are responsible for when they throw at other batters, yet you still have the DH. The union should ok this because it would add about 15 extra spots for veterans to play. Guys with good bats but shaky gloves could now stay in the NL and DH. I still have not found a good argument against this plan.

My other idea for baseball does have flaws that I am still trying to work out. I think it would be in baseball's best interest to allow more teams to compete in the post season. I think that baseball should do some realignment first off. They really need to even out the divisions and get equal numbers in all 6 divisions. Actually I think they need to divide back into 4 divisions, as this would make my plan easier to add 4 teams to the play offs. We go back to a balanced schedule for all teams in the same league. Then we figure out how inter-league play is going to work. We either drop it or fix it so everyone plays the same number of games in the cross league. There will now be 4 division winners (2 in each league) and 8 wild card (4 in each league). The real question is do we allow the 4 wild cards to be the next 4 teams with the best records or the 2 next best records in each division for more interesting play? Now this would actually make for an opening round series of wild card series. To make these series shorter and wilder (and to give the division champs less time off) a 3 game series could be used, but more likely (for TV) a 5 game series. Then the winners go on to play the division champs (who of course have home field advantage due to being champs). This setup would make more teams in pennant races, and that seems to be what baseball is all about. I think this may work. Combine that with the above DH/P batting rule and we might have some good baseball left in this country

Have I mentioned a salary cap too? That might be a little harder to get the union to sign off on. More on that later ....

Labels: Sports