Bloody Sox Laundry - 8/25/09

that’s not a problem he has on the Mets.

And opposing batters were picking up on it by watching tape of him from yesteryear and comparing it to recent.

such that a batter can guess what pitch you’re about to throw.

It’s a stupid plan for a number of reasons.

(1) It doesn’t address the problem of division; it just reorganizes them. Divisional baseball favors geography over excellence by allowing weak division winners to make the post-season, while better second place (and sometimes even third place) teams miss out. This is somewhat mitigated by the Wild Card, but weak division winners still get an advantage over better WC teams in the post-season.

Here are some examples during the WC era: In 2000, the MFY won the East with the 5th best record in the AL. The Indians won 3 more games than the MFY and missed the playoffs. In 2001, the MFY won the East with 95 wins and had home field advantage over the 102-win WC A’s. In 2003, the NL WC team (the Marlins) had a better record than the Central winning Cubs, who choked away their home field edge. Similarly, the Sox in 2004 had 6 more wins than the Angels, who had home field because they won a weak division. Since the advent of the WC, two weak division winners have won the WS: The 2000 MFY (87 wins) and the 2006 Cards (83 wins). Three WC teams have on the WS: The 2002 Angels (99 wins), the 2003 Marlins (92 wins), and the 2004 Red Sox (98 wins). None of those were bad teams.

(2) If, under the "Showalter Plan," every team plays other teams 6 times (3 games at home and 3 games on the road), why have divisions? Do away with them and have the top four teams make it: the top record plays the fourth best, etc. As long as you have divisions, weaker teams will make the playoffs. However, if you’re going to have divisions—meaning geography will determine who makes the post-season—you have to play teams within your division more (it’s fairer).

Let’s look at Showalter’s Eastern (Babe Ruth) Division. Three of the best teams are there: MFY, Sox, and Phillies. In a Wild Card format, only two can make it to the post-season. No other division is as good. Thus, one team in the East will be screwed—and, by playing a balanced schedule, they’d have less chance to make up ground in their division.

(3) The Braves get screwed by Showalter’s divisional structure. Atlanta is on EST and every other team in their “division” is in another time zone.

(4) The balanced schedule means more travel. Playing the teams within your division as much as other teams, means each team will play more games outside of their time zone. I, for one, don’t enjoy west coast games that start at 10:00 EST. How does making the games harder to watch help baseball?

(5) While I understand the rationale for contracting the Florida teams, why not just contract the crappy franchises and move the Marlins and Rays? Both are competitive teams. Washington (Montreal), San Diego, Pittsburgh, and KC (to name a few) haven’t been competitive in years.