MLB's "One Baseball" Plan a Landscape-Changer

Thanks fo rsharing, I enjoyed the article. 

Is that article written by mlb PR department? 

I don't see it quite as positively. Imo the biggest aspect of those moves is cost reduction. Minors and draft shrink permanently and players stay longer in unpaid amateur ball and semi pro independent leagues before they need to get paid by mlb. 

Basically mlb is outsourcing player development and let someone else pay for it which won't bode well for the players financially.

Overall the development is very worrying for amateur players. Draft likely will stay reduced and those mlb affiliated amateur leagues probably mean even less money when mlb can keep the players in that system before signing with clubs.

If they eliminated all the rules, meaning eliminate the draft, the age requirements, the three year ineligibility if you go to a four year school rule, geography requirements, 40 man roster, size of minors, the system would align itself to a better system than today's for both the players and the teams. All contracts negotiable at all levels, for amount and length.

And have two leagues of teams, a Major and a Minor.  Major league plays only major teams. Major league plays for the World Series. Minor league plays only second. Last four (or whatever) teams in the Major league get replaced by the top four teams in the Minor.

Moving to a club to a new city is completely up to the owner of the team.

You know, like soccer?  Why is it the socialist countries have the most democratic/meritocratic of sports structures and the democratic country has the most authoritarian of sports structures?

BTW, my hookah lounge just got wifi.

Which socialist countries? There are hardly any socialist countries left in europe. Most European countries these days are governed by conservative or neoliberal governments in these days, even notoriously leftist countries like Sweden are not nearly as leftist as they were 20 years ago. 

And even the left parties did shift over to the right quite a bit the last 20 years and are now more liberal than left.

Didn't want to get political but it is quite a myth that Europe is so leftist as europe did shift over quite a bit to the right in the last 15-20 years.

@Dominik85 posted:

Which socialist countries? There are hardly any socialist countries left in europe. Most European countries these days are governed by conservative or neoliberal governments in these days, even notoriously leftist countries like Sweden are not nearly as leftist as they were 20 years ago. 

And even the left parties did shift over to the right quite a bit the last 20 years and are now more liberal than left.

Didn't want to get political but it is quite a myth that Europe is so leftist as europe did shift over quite a bit to the right in the last 15-20 years.

 

 

errr, ahh, okay. I guess a debate on semantics of European government structures through time was the last thing I was thinking about.

During my years [1987-2004] with the Area Code Baseball, I presented this idea to the MLB.

We had our California teams play a summer schedule prior to the AC games in August.

The players were coached by Pro Scouts.

They "learned the game".      40% of the players played in the ML.

Bob

Baseball has to envy Football and basketball having created minor leagues with the NCAA.  The NFL in particular has boxed out players until they are 21 and have shown the ability to function on their own for three years at a minimum before they have to weed through them.

The move I'd like to see MLB make is to get teams in Asia into MLB.  Fold up 6 US based teams and expand to 32 and create an 8 team Asian division in Japan, Korea and Tiawan and maybe China.   If I owned the Pirates or Rays and could lay claim to MLB in Tokyo I'd be there in less than a heartbeat.

Pretty easy folds Pitt, TB, Cincy, KC, Clev. and Miami.  All would land in huge cities with a massive love of baseball.  The money that would rain in as well as the jolt to the fanbase would be huge.

With 4 8 team divisions you could play 32 against other division in your league. 98 against division (14 x7) and 30 interleague.  Tinker with that and you'd get about 2 long roadies of 15/16 games per year.

Better yet play 126 in division and only 36 out of division and you can limit the long roadies to 2 per year of 10 games or so.

@luv baseball posted:

Baseball has to envy Football and basketball having created minor leagues with the NCAA.  The NFL in particular has boxed out players until they are 21 and have shown the ability to function on their own for three years at a minimum before they have to weed through them.

The move I'd like to see MLB make is to get teams in Asia into MLB.  Fold up 6 US based teams and expand to 32 and create an 8 team Asian division in Japan, Korea and Tiawan and maybe China.   If I owned the Pirates or Rays and could lay claim to MLB in Tokyo I'd be there in less than a heartbeat.

Pretty easy folds Pitt, TB, Cincy, KC, Clev. and Miami.  All would land in huge cities with a massive love of baseball.  The money that would rain in as well as the jolt to the fanbase would be huge.

With 4 8 team divisions you could play 32 against other division in your league. 98 against division (14 x7) and 30 interleague.  Tinker with that and you'd get about 2 long roadies of 15/16 games per year.

Better yet play 126 in division and only 36 out of division and you can limit the long roadies to 2 per year of 10 games or so.

More money to be made? Sure, but I strongly disagree with everything else. 

What free agent is going to leave America and go sign with a Chinese team? How do you convince a 17 year old high schooler to sign with the Taiwan Thunderbirds instead of waiting a few picks and signing with the Tigers. 

I don't know where the idea that baseball has a money problem comes from. Baseball has a boring problem, not a money problem. 

PA

I understand why you'd think the way you do.  Baseball has the least amount of imagination especially when compared to the NFL and NBA.  The only significant rules changes in the last 100 years were tinkering with the height of the mound and the margins of the strike zone.  They did invent the Looguy which is a stain on the human race that Manfred is thankfully trying to kill. 

You are absolutely correct about boring.  In the places I named they all have had long stretches of being uncompetitive due to budgetary constraints.  Losing and bad baseball is the worst kind of boring.  It is hard to envision how they could be worse with cities of at least 2 Million people that are some of the richest in the world. 

As for Free agents - I am not sure that Latin players would consider Asia any better or worse than the US.  Player agents may even steer players there in the hopes they become Stephan Marbury.  Surely a team in Tokyo would have more than a 70MM salary budget some of these teams have.  Would somebody take 30/40 million less plus potentially big endorsements to play in Philadelphia vs. Shanghai?  Have to think some of them might take the plunge.  I can see a bunch of very good players might make a million or two more in Asia taking the money rather than staying in the US. 

Imagine how interesting the Yanks or Dodgers landing in Tokyo to play the World Series would be.  If you can't then you might be a baseball fan.  Baseball should be a global sport controlled by MLB.

FWIW if I owned a team I'd want the Billions that would be available in Asia's best cities  vs. the 10's of millions available in 2nd tier US cities. 

I'm not sure the Asia idea is feasible as it would mean tons of extra travel but I do think it would be not unattractive to play there.

If I was a young player I think Shanghai or Tokyo would be more attractive than Pittsburgh, Tampa or Oakland, wouldn't it?

The inclusion of Osaka and Tokyo has been considered for 10 years, however the current virus will delay any decision. After a decision, the Osaka Stadium would need a "up grade". A 2 week Hotel quarantine is in effect now in Japan.

There is the question of income tax for visiting players in both Japan and USA.

Visiting teams because of the 24 hours flight from East Coast would need to play a 6-7 game series in Japan in 2 Cities. Our American HS teams have played the Korean and Japan National team for 17 years.

Bob

Dom

That is why I was thinking more like 8 teams in Far East.  2 Long road trips to 4 cities. 

The 8 team division with 16 games is 112 division games.  The balance of schedule 50 games would be split 25 on road and 25 at home.  Those long trips for asian teams would be 12/13 games probably over 15 days.  Rough but not completely nuts. 

If you bump division games up to 18 you get 126 leaving 36 for long road trips.  You could make that 1 three week trip of 18 games or 2 trips of 9 each.  

Anything less than 8 teams probably makes the travel more of an issue.

@Dominik85 posted:

I'm not sure the Asia idea is feasible as it would mean tons of extra travel but I do think it would be not unattractive to play there.

If I was a young player I think Shanghai or Tokyo would be more attractive than Pittsburgh, Tampa or Oakland, wouldn't it?

Tampa? If I were a young player I’d love to play there. The attendance and stadium would stink, but the city is great for younger people. Plus, they have good player development and opportunities to get to the bigs. 

Tampa has a fan issue, not a baseball issue. They need to move somewhere lacking pro sports. I always thought Nashville, Raleigh, Vegas. Look how well the Knights are doing. Austin possibly another option, but a Texan would have to weigh in and give their opinion. I don't know if that is far enough from Houston/DFW. 

# 1, I don't see any reason why the rest of us should cooperate with any effort to monopolize the baseball pipeline.  You can expect any such effort ultimately to lead to an enhancement of the value of MLB franchises at the expense of players.  And the current spectrum of choices available to young players and their families will be greatly diminished.

# 2, The draft is a function of the MLB franchises, acting as a cartel, to restrict the negotiating power of players who are not yet governed by the CBA.  Anything that relates to the draft can never be fully understood until this is first fully appreciated.

That's why, in the same year, Stephen Strasburg had to sign for roughly half what Aroldis Chapman got. 

I suspect a lot of what undergirds all this is the ultimate desire to force foreign players into a common pipeline and therefore, into the draft as well.  In other words, MLB looks at the Strasburg/Chapman situation and thinks, "Why did we have to pay so much for Chapman?  We need to fix that, like we did with American-born kids."

I would also expect MLB to face antitrust litigation from MiLB franchisees and others who would be run out of business if it tried to pull all this off.

Yeah, the players will definitely not benefit from that, less choices and less leverage.

I doubt however that mlb can be stopped. Amateur players and new pro players just are the easiest way to save money as they have no leverage unless they are multi sport stars (which is extremely rare).

Also the notion that it is about the quality of the game is probably wrong. Mlb doesn't care about quality of the game as long they have the best players, quality of play is better now than 30 years ago and there are less fans, pitchers averaging 97 instead of 93 won't draw more fans.

The reason  really  is saving money.

I suspect PG, PBR and others will not simply let MLB run them out of business without a fight.

Those collegiate summer teams, by the way, are also privately owned.  Or at least, a lot of them are.  And while for most owners, they are labors of love, I still don't see them just handing over the keys.

That doesn't mean quality of play is not important but it only matters in a sense of a competitive advantage, absolute quality of the game is really not much of a money factor once a certain base quality is reached (sure if pitchers threw 78 people would notice but 93 vs 96 is not different for fans).