Kuzul

Major League Baseball is going to add one wild card to each league next season, which will give teams a better chance of making the playoffs.

Bud Selig, whom sports and political expert George Will has called “baseball’s greatest commissioner,” is right on target, but he does not go far enough.

The only teams that should not make the playoffs are the last place teams in each league and the team with the worst record among the teams that finish next to last.

The fans’ excitement would be almost indescribable. At the beginning of each season they would know that no matter how good or bad their team is, the chance of catching lightning in bottle after the regular season could lead to the World Series.

How would it work?

Teams would play 154 games during the season. This would please traditionalists, who might be slightly upset with the new playoff format.

Barry Bonds’ single-season home run record would never be broken, even if a player had the temerity to use performance enhancing substances.

Based on the 2010 American League standings, the Baltimore Orioles, Kansas City Royals, Seattle Mariners and Cleveland Indians would be eliminated from the playoffs.

This leaves 10 playoff teams. The first round would be a best of three series. The higher-finishing team would play the first and third games at home. The three division winners and the second place team with the best record would draw a bye.

The New York Yankees had the best record among second place finishers.

The third-place Boston Red Sox would play the fourth-place Toronto Blue Jays , the second-place Chicago White Sox would play the Detroit Tigers and the second-place Oakland A’s would play the third-place Anaheim Angels.

Let’s say the Red Sox, White Sox and A’s win their first playoff round.

Tampa Bay had the league’s best record. They draw the remaining bye. Hey, rest is good. Great teams don’t get rusty. Money is more important than excellence.

There would be a great incentive to finish with the league’s best record, so the players could have a brief vacation before getting back to baseball.

Anyway, the Yankees play the first-round winning team with the best record, which was Boston, the Minnesota Twins play the A’s and the Texas Rangers play the White Sox.

These are best-of-five series.

The Red Sox, A’s and Rangers win their second-round series to advance to the third round.

Tampa plays the A’s and the Red Sox play the Rangers in a best-of-seven series.

The winners play each other in a best-of-seven series. The winner gets a chance to win the World Series.

One issue which would cause great controversy would be playing the World Series in either Los Angeles, Arizona or Florida, for obvious reasons. However, since the World Series wouldn’t start until the middle of November, it might be a good idea.

The above are merely suggestions, but they are excellent suggestions that expand Mr. Selig’s creative idea to make the game even better.

What do you think?

Reference:

George Will

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Playoff expansion has its pros and cons.

I think it is obvious that including more teams (within reason) would be beneficial for the game. The more teams that make the playoffs, the more revenue there would be for teams and more baseball for fans.

But it’s equally obvious that there are pitfalls, such as extending play deeper into the cold and rainy months of October and November.

If we look at this subject on a deeper level, baseball would have to consider either a one-game, winner-take-all approach or another series, likely a best-of-three.

The latter scenario not only adds more days to the schedule but more travel. It would likely be set up as a home-away-home format for the team with the better record (or for the winner of a coin toss, if records are identical). There would also have to be an off-day stuck in there, so we’re talking potentially four extra days and three travel days for at least one of the teams involved.

This could be avoided if baseball trims games off the regular season schedule, a highly unlikely scenario. For all these reasons a one-game playoff now becomes the best option for avoiding an extended wait for the World Series.

I feel that adding the wild card was great for the game, mostly because I don’t like divisions. We’ve seen wild-card teams with superior records to those of division winners. We’ve also seen teams with better records than division winners miss out because another team in their league got the sole wild-card spot.

For that reason, adding a second wild-card team would be a good thing; it would reduce the chances of deserving teams missing out because they play in tougher divisions.

Does a one-game playoff reward these playoff teams fairly though, and achieve the goals of baseball the business?

The Yankees won the American League Wild Card last season with a record of 95-67 in an extremely tough AL East. Had this new format been in place, the Red Sox would have been the second wild card, with a record of 89-73.

Hold the cries of agony about another Yanks-Sox game for a moment and consider that the Rangers won five fewer games than the Yankees (90) in a weak AL West. It wouldn’t be a shock if the Sox snuck out of New York winning that one game playoff.

While some will be quick to point out that this proposal aims to ensure playoff berths for both Boston and New York, thereby boosting television revenues, it could easily backfire were that even true.

Does baseball really want to risk having the Yankees bounced by a small market team like the Twins or Indians in a one-game format? In this scenario, is the potential addition of the Red Sox worth the potential premature bouncing of the Yanks?

A one-game format could actually cost baseball money and incur the wrath of fans. As a fan myself, I’d love to see a team like the Twins sneak in and make a run all the way to the Commissioner’s Trophy.

I don’t think small market ratings, however, are what baseball will have in mind when they decide on this.

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There was a time when the team with the best record in its league qualified to play in the World Series. It was called “winning the pennant.”

Starting in 1969, the team with the best record in its division qualified for a best three-of-five playoff series against its league’s other division winner. This led to some interesting results.

In 1973, the National League Western Division champion Cincinnati Reds won 99 games. They played the Eastern Division champion New York Mets, often referred to as New York’s most beloved team. The Mets won 82 regular-season games.

The Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants won more games in 1973 than the Mets. The Houston Astros matched the Mets’ 82 wins, but the Dodgers, Giants and Astros didn’t qualify to play for the pennant.

The Mets beat the Reds to win the pennant and took the Oakland A’s to seven games in the World Series.

Starting in 1994, each league consisted of three divisions. The division winners and the second-place team with the best record became the wild card. There were two rounds of playoffs.

The Florida Marlins (1997, 2003), the Anaheim Angels (2002), and the Boston Red Sox (2004) became World Champions after winning the wild card.

The regular season was compromised for money.

This week, former automobile salesman Al “Bud” Selig, who is now commissioner of Major League Baseball, declared that in 2012 there will be the opportunity for a mediocre team to qualify for the playoffs by “winning” a second wild card slot.

Why is there going to be an additional wild card qualifier? I’ll tell you why in one word, which is (surprise) “money.”

More playoff games, regardless of the level of play, means more money, both in tickets that can be sold and in television revenues. Adding an additional playoff round benefits the owners and some of their employees. It does not benefit the fans who must endure November weather conditions at the ball park.

Excellence is becoming an illusion. The truth is getting harder and harder to find.

One baseball executive, in a moment of what might have been weakness, said, according to Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports, “As a member of a club, you’re talking about extra chances to get into the playoffs and have your season look like a success…I make the playoffs, I keep my job.”

The executive continued, making an appealing point, especially to those individuals who play the lotteries.

“If you’re a fan, you don’t want your team to have a 6 or 7 percent better chance at making the playoffs? You don’t want to see games in October in your home stadium? You don’t want that?”

One baseball owner came right to the point, saying “our ideas aren’t as much what’s right for the sport as what’s right for revenues.”

In 2010, the Boston Red Sox, a team that won 89 games, would have been the second wild card. There would have been another playoff series between the Yankees and the Red Sox.

In the National League, the San Diego Padres, who led the San Francisco Giants by six and one-half games at the end of play of Aug. 25 and then lost 10 consecutive games, would have been the second wild team.

In 2010, Yankees manager Joe Girardi was more concerned with preparing for the playoffs than winning the division since the Yankees were assured of the wild card. It would be quite different if there had been a second wild card.

The Yankees and Tampa Bay Rays each had 95 wins. One would win the division, while one would be the first wild card.

The Red Sox won 89 games and would be a second wild card.

The Minnesota Twins and Texas Rangers each won their divisions with 90 victories. Now for the fun.

Neither the Yankees nor the Rays would want to be the first wild card because it means they would have to play the Red Sox in a best two-of-three series. As Joe Torre used to say, a best three-of-five series is a crapshoot. A best-of-three series is much worse.

The Yankees and Rays would be involved in a battle to win the division while the wild card Red Sox and division-winning Twins and Rangers could prepare for the playoffs.

The positive aspect is that there would be a real race to win the division, but the downside of penalizing the better teams, the Yankees and Rays, outweighs that.

There is no way to prevent a second wild team being added in 2012. The owners and the television executives run the game, not the fans.

It will be a rarity when baseball’s best team wins the World Series.

References:

Real Reason for Expanded Playoffs

Yahoo Sports

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It seems like an eternity since Major League Baseball finally got around to admitting it had a problem of the performance enhancing variety, but in reality it has barely been a half a decade.

Players once thought to be first-ballot Hall of Famers are struggling to garner more than a pittance of support from sports writers and fans alike as the sport carries on the best it can.

Attendance remains high—despite an ongoing quasi-recession—television revenue is streaming in and it appears that many of the measures taken by commissioner Bud Selig and his merry band of nitwits salvaged what little dignity this great sport had left in the wake of all that ugliness.

But alas, as always, looks can be deceiving.

I, for one, was more than a little bit surprised when MLB decided to include a ban on stimulants in its new drug program a few years back.

Now the use of uppers is neither new nor surprising in the baseball world, going back as far as the days of Willie Mays players have been using some form or another to endure the grueling demands of the 162-game season.

While steroids, and their artificial augmentation of baseball’s favorite play, the longball, have received most of the mainstream media coverage, anyone who really knows two shits about baseball recognizes that “greenies” have always been a much more pervasive part of the game.

Countless stories of large Ronald Reagan-esque like jars filled with amphetamines (as opposed to Ronnie’s trademark jellybeans) and pots of coffee labeled “extra-caffeinated” could be found without much effort at all.

A baseball season is a long & grueling one, after all. 162 games, packed into about 180 days, taking players, coaches and fans through a hot and humid summer can wear down even the best of men.  So for decades players have turned to “artificial means” to carry them through the dog days of summer.

I told more than one friend that it would be interesting to see who “faded down the stretch” and chuckled at the sudden emergence of energy drinks as sponsors for the big league clubs.

But I never could have imagined the thing that would catch my eye exactly one year later…and every year since.

When the league banned these drugs, an amazing thing happened. The number of players claiming and obtaining “therapeutic use” exemptions for stimulants nearly quadrupled from 28 to 103.

“Therapeutic use” means you can justifiably use the drug because you need it for a medical condition. If you didn’t have the condition, you’d just be a normal pro baseball player, and the attention-focusing benefits of Ritalin would be a form of “enhancement,” i.e., cheating.

Before the ban only 28 players had “therapeutic use exemptions” allowing them to take drugs such as Ritalin or Adderall.  Twenty-eight.  Then somehow magically that number jumps to over 100 as soon as the ban kicks in?

Color me suspicious but do they really think we are that dumb?

I mean how the hell can ADHD multiply fourfold in a sport in a single year? How can it become three times as prevalent in that sport as in the adult population? Is it contagious? Can Derek Jeter give it to Dustin Pedroia if he coughs on him as he slides into second base?  Of course not.

ADHD is a psychological diagnosis. Like post-traumatic stress disorder or bipolar disorder it’s open to interpretation in any given patient. Three doctors may say you don’t have it. A fourth may say you do.

It’s that subjectivity that should have led to the league having a more discerning eye. After all they had literally just caught the foxes trying to rob the hen house when they found over 100 major leagues had tested positive in their last round of anonymous testing.

MLB should have also taken notice of what pretty much EVERYONE else had when these numbers were first published, namely that among adults, the rate of diagnosis is between 1 percent and 3.5 percent. But among pro baseball players, the disease seems epidemic.  That means 8 percent of major-league players have ADHD—twice the rate among children and three to eight times the rate among adults.

But, of course, they didn’t.

They argue that once the number spiked up to 103 it “plateaued” and has remained at or about that same level since.  This is true, the numbers show there were 105 therapeutic use exemptions in 2010, up from 106 TUEs in 2008/2009 and 103 in 2007, but it still doesn’t address why there was such a sharp rise in the first place.

But then again, do we really expect more from Bud the Dud?

The World Anti-Doping Agency sure as hell doesn’t:

“My reaction is the same as last year and the year before that,” said Dr. Gary Wadler, chairman of the committee that determines the banned substances list for the World Anti-Doping Agency. “It seems to me almost incomprehensible that ADHD is so pervasive in baseball to a degree that it requires medicine.”

A frequent critic of baseball’s drug-testing program, Wadler said “these numbers really cry out for transparency in the TUE process in baseball — a good look-see at the process, not just the numbers.”

This ostrich-like ability of Selig’s, where he is able to shove his head in the sand for unnaturally long periods of time has long infuriated me frankly.

I only wish I could have been a fly-on-the-wall in the offices of Major League Baseball when the recent divorce proceedings of Kansas City Royals catcher Jason Kendall and his estranged wife Chantel have remained frequent fodder for internet gossip sites like TMZ and RadarOnline and even recently made the jump to websites not concerned with the latest atrocious parenting of Jon and Kate Gosselin.

While professional athletes ditching gold digging trophy wives is no novel concept, this one had steamy particulars involving the love triangle of a pro athlete, a smokin’ hot babe and the son of a rock-n-roll legend (Chantel is currently dating Sean Stewart, son of Rod Stewart).

The focus of the tittle-tattle involved Chantel accusing her husband of abusing the drug Adderall, which subsequently led to him both physically and emotionally abusing her.

Aside from accusations that he urinated & defecated on a pile of Chantel’s clothes after finding out she had been cheating on him, she claimed that he received a spurious prescription to take what is now labeled a performance enhancing drug otherwise banned by Major League Baseball.

While Kendall refused to answer the judge’s question about his use of greenies under the argument that (I. shit. you. not) Mark McGwire didn’t have to answer the questions he was asked in court about PEDs, he was very forthcoming about his prescription drug habits and more than willing to toss former teammates Brian Giles and Bobby Crosby under the bus, implicating them as fellow Adderall appreciators in court depositions.

One has to think that Bud was running around Manhattan looking for a schoolyard sandbox the shove his head in the moment he caught wind of these proceedings.

I am sure Selig is a good man. It appears he has a passion for baseball, and genuinely wants to do the right thing to help the sport.  But there is a problem—he is gutless.

For years he ignored steroids in baseball while the problem grew out of control.  Despite many fans knowing certain players were on steroids, even going back to the 1980s (for an example, a 1988 Fenway Park crowd chanted “Ster-oids” at Jose Canseco), Selig in February of 2005 said, with a straight face:

“I never heard about it.  I ran a team and nobody was closer to their players and I never heard any comment from them.  It wasn’t until 1998 or ’99 that I heard the discussion…I don’t know if there were allegations in the early 90s.  I never heard them.”

I remember reading those comments and thinking either this man is absolutely lying, or he is completely incompetent and oblivious.  Maybe it is a little of both, but either way, this man should not be allowed to run major league baseball.

Further, even if taken at face value, if Selig knew about steroids in 1998 or ’99, why did it take him until 2005 to take any action, and only after Congress forced him into it.

Sadly, I fully expect this same sort of blissful ignorance to plague Selig’s handling of this next round of PEDs in baseball.

Just as stories about players juicing were swept under the rug because of increasing television ratings and attendance due to historical records falling every year, this dirty little secret will go on flying under the radar.

Instead of looking out for the interest and integrity of the game, Selig will gladly keep trading it  away, piece by piece, for an increased revenue stream.

Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright;

The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,

And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout;

But there is no joy in baseball — the sport’s integrity is quickly running out.

This article is also featured on The Rantings & Ravings Of A (Formerly) Mad Mailman.

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As we just passed the two-year mark since commissioner Bud Selig launched his “Blue-Ribbon” committee to determine if the Athletics would be granted permission to move to San Jose, I decided I wanted to look back at the failed attempts to stay in Oakland. It was during this search I ran across an interesting blog post on baseballoakland.com that made me aware of some interesting articles written by the San Francisco Chronicle and San Jose Mercury news that I had previously forgotten about.

The revelation of those articles and the quotes that were hidden within their writing tell an interesting story of the Athletics stadium quest and Lew Wolff’s involvement, even before he owned the team.

Dating back to the 1990’s the A’s have sought a new stadium that would help them generate a revenue stream capable of competing with the “big-market” teams. The team has now seen two straight ownership groups that have acted disingenuously in their dealings with the city of Oakland, and have purposely deceived the very fan base they count on for support and to provide their revenue streams.

The Athletics’ change of ownership from the Haas family to Steve Schott and Ken Hoffman began the frustration that has now spanned into its third different decade.

During the Schott-Hoffman era, A’s fans were subjected to the yearly speculation that the team would move anywhere from Sacramento to Las Vegas. In fact it was Schott and Hoffman that first became interested with the idea of moving the team to San Jose.

Oakland fans became tired of the constant threat to move the team out of town and rejoiced when the team was sold to San Jose real estate developer Lew Wolff and San Francisco billionaire John Fischer. Wolfe had previously been appointed to help find viable ballpark options within the city of Oakland, and vowed that he would build a new stadium keeping the A’s in Oakland.

Then Oakland City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente told the San Francisco Chronicle back in 2005 that he was optimistic Wolff would deliver on his promise to keep the A’s in Oakland.

“He’s a guy who wants to get things done, and he can get things done, ” said De La Fuente at the time. “If Lew Wolff wants a new baseball stadium in Oakland, then it’s going to happen. He’s the guy to do it.”

I wonder if De La Fuente still feels Wolff is the guy to get it done? Or, I wonder if De La Fuente, like many diehard Oakland A’s fans, believes that Wolff’s interest in Oakland was really all for show, all along?

We of course know that the city of Oakland feels the A’s acted disingenuously in their prior dealings with the city, and new mayor Jean Quan does not believe Wolff is giving enough consideration to Oakland’s most recent attempts at finding a suitable stadium site.

Was Wolff ever truly committed to building a ballpark in Oakland though?

Seven years before Lew Wolff would become a majority owner of the Oakland Athletics, he outlined how he would move the Athletics to San Jose if he were the owner instead of Steve Schott and Ken Hoffman.

In 1998, Lew Wolff provided San Francisco Chronicle writer Steve Kettman with his thoughts on the A’s ballpark pursuit.

“If I was going to pursue a ballpark, I would certainly do it in San Jose, not depend on a vote outside of San Jose, and I would work through the mayor and the Redevelopment Agency,” said Wolff. “It’s the difference between a big-league city and a non-big-league city. I wouldn’t spend five minutes on any other city besides San Jose.”

Thirteen years have passed since Wolff made that statement. His statement to the Chronicle wound up being the exact path that he pursued.

Fast-forward back to 2005 when Wolff took ownership of the A’s, former Sunnyvale mayor Larry Stone, a key figure in trying to lure the A’s to San Jose, shared his thoughts on Wolff’s public pledge to keep the A’s in Oakland.

Stone says that Wolfe could “say, ‘I tried, I have to look elsewhere. We hope and believe that one of the places, if not the only place, is San Jose.’ ”

A year later in 2006, Wolff abandoned hope of building a stadium in Oakland and turned his sights to Fremont. Or did he?

Mark Purdy of the San Jose Mercury News outlined his belief of Wolff’s true intentions with the city of Fremont deal.

Purdy details a plan in which the Athletics ownership would pursue a move south to Fremont, the furthest city south before entering into Santa Clara County, and thus into the territorial rights of the San Francisco Giants. He would name the team the San Jose Athletics of Fremont, and draw on the South Bay corporate revenue stream without owing the Giants a penny of compensation. Then at the last minute, Wolff can go to the Giants ownership group and drop the hammer.

“Look, if I go to Fremont and call the team the San Jose A’s, the Giants get nothing. But if you agree to let me actually move the team to San Jose, you’ll get some compensation. How about it?” Purdy theorized.

Interestingly enough, when Wolff was asked about Purdy’s theory, he refused to rule any of it out.

Wolff then secured a financial pledge from Cisco Systems for 30-year naming rights to the A’s new stadium. What better financial partner than Cisco if you are going to drive home Purdy’s theory to the San Francisco Giants (allegedly)?

Do I truly believe the whole Fremont plan was a sham? I can’t say for certain, but its failure also worked in Wolff’s favor making a believable case out of Wolff’s claim that only in San Jose was a new ballpark possible.

Since Wolff took ownership of the A’s he hasn’t done exactly what he said he would back in 1998. He did spend ample time on Fremont before turning to San Jose, but he has made Larry Stone and Mark Purdy look prophetic. In the end, his sites focused on San Jose though, validating his 1998 proclamation that San Jose was the only city he would find suitable if he were the owner of the A’s.

While Wolff and San Jose have waited for Major League Baseball to issue their findings, the city of Oakland has put together a viable proposal for a ballpark near Jack London Square at a site named Victory Court.

The Victory Court location does not offer the same proximity to corporate finance as San Jose, but beside that there is little downside to the proposal. The proposed Jack London location would offer some of the most scenic backgrounds in baseball with views of the Oakland estuary, the hills, and the Port of Oakland cranes in the distance. The nighttime skyline would be lit up with downtown Oakland highlighted by the Tribune building all visible from the stands.

A collection of restaurants, bars and coffee shops are within walking distance of the proposed site thanks to a renaissance in the downtown Oakland area. BART, Amtrak, 880 and 980 (connecting to 580) are all in close proximity, as well as the San Francisco ferry for those cross-bay fans that prefer the American League style of baseball.

While Wolff has publicly claimed over and over (and over) that he has exhausted all options in Oakland, you have to wonder why he is so opposed to this plan at the very least as a suitable backup to the San Jose proposal?

After a long career in real estate development, Wolff has to be aware of the legal nightmare the city of Oakland could put the Athletics through with lawsuits designed to keep the A’s in Oakland by delaying their departure out of town. With new Governor Jerry Brown’s proposal to end redevelopment money, Oakland has a powerful bullet they have yet to fire which could essentially kill any San Jose plans.

Oakland has not needed to use their final weapon yet as Major League Baseball could very well decide they will not revoke the Giants territorial rights to San Jose.

This possible scenario is exactly what makes me wonder why Wolff would remain so adamant that Oakland is not a possibility?

Could there possibly be a hidden motive that we have yet to have presented to us?

In 2005 when Wolff took over the team and speculation first arose that Wolff’s real estate history in San Jose could lead to an eventual move to San Jose, Neil deMause of fieldofschemes.com offered up this theory:

“MLB commissioner Bud Selig would no doubt be happy to see Wolff use the threat of a move to bludgeon Oakland into building a new stadium.”

Add deMause’s theory to those of Purdy and Stone, and we could wind up with the eventual end result of this saga if the Giants’ San Jose rights are upheld and the A’s are forced to stay in Oakland.

Delving just slightly further into the conspiracy theory department, let’s revisit 1998 and some thoughts from Oakland’s most recent Hall of Fame inductee, Rickey Henderson:

“Oakland can support a big-league team, but it’s a city where if you want support, you have to spend the money and get good players,” Henderson said at the time.

“If you’re not putting a good team out there, you can’t expect people to come out. There’s so many other things to do. The Haas family put more into the community. That’s why they had the support of the community.”

Henderson made these statements long before Wolff was even considered to be in the running for the A’s ownership. His thoughts echo the opinions of many die-hard A’s fans though, put a winner on the field, and the fans will be there.

The A’s have in fact put together a team of “good players” this season, and with the end of redevelopment looming and no answer from MLB, perhaps the A’s ownership is quietly beginning to embrace the idea of staying in Oakland. Placing a winning team on the field could be the beginning of making amends with the fans they have angered the past five years.

Hmm, perhaps there was more to Lew Wolff’s playbook than Larry Stone and Mark Purdy foresaw.

Then again, probably not.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Pitchers and Catchers Report.

For many, those four special words signal the beginning of the end of the long winter months and the unofficial start of the new sports calendar. 

In the recent weeks, I have been compelled to think about the current commissioner, Bud Selig, and his impact on the game of baseball.

Few public figures are more polarizing than Bud Selig, as discussions about him are often in a tone usually reserved for politicians and prostitutes. However, very rarely does the average fan ever show support for Selig’s legacy; on the contrary, most people tend to attribute all of the bad things that have happened specifically to him while giving him little to no credit for the positive developments. 

This is a shame, because when one takes a look at the entirety of Selig’s legacy, it looks a lot better than anybody realizes.

Hear me out on this.

Payroll and Parity

Perhaps the greatest complaint toward the Bud Selig era has been the dramatic inequality of payrolls between the big-market and small-market teams, which has led to a belief that the game lacks parity. 

In terms of raw numbers, payrolls are uneven in MLB; the game does not have a hard salary cap (or salary floor), and an explosion in local revenue has given the Yankees a tremendous financial advantage over just about everybody. Last year, the Yankees’ payroll was six times as large as the Pirates, who had the lowest payroll among MLB teams. 

At the same time, people see the NFL’s hard salary cap and massive revenue sharing and assume that there is so much more parity in football than in baseball.

However, this issue is hardly new, as the Yankees have held a financial advantage over the rest of MLB for virtually all of MLB history; if recent trends are any indication, that advantage may be narrowing (see chart), particularly as greater attention is given to what is done with shared revenue.

And contrary to popular belief, MLB actually shares a lot of revenue—more revenue than ever, in fact. Their national television contracts—valued at approximately $670 million per year—is divided up evenly among all 30 teams, as is approximately $500 million generated by MLB.com and other online revenue streams (an idea pioneered by Selig). 

This accounts for about 16.7% of all MLB revenue and works out to about $39 million per team. Add in the $404 million handed out from luxury tax and shared local revenue (which is handed out according to need), and it’s easy to see where some teams could be receiving as much as $70 million in total shared revenue in a given season. 

Perhaps the question we should be asking isn’t why the Yankees spend so much, but why the Pirates spend so little.

Of course, all of this is largely irrelevant when talking about MLB’s parity. Truth be told, MLB has the greatest amount of parity of any team sport. 

Thanks to the sheer number of games in an MLB season, the maximum and minimum winning percentages are naturally going to be closer than in any other sport. As for the playoffs, MLB has had more organizations win the championship (nine) than any other sport; the same number of teams make the championship game as the NFL (14) and more final four teams than the NFL (22 to 21), even though MLB has four fewer teams make the playoffs.

As far as parity is concerned, the thing we should be telling Bud Selig is “Keep up the good work.”

Labor Issues

I’ll say this straight-out: The cancellation of the 1994 World Series is the third-worst stain in the MLB history books (behind the death of Ray Chapmen and the Color Barrier, respectively), and it is the one issue of the Bud Selig era that I find to be unforgiveable. 

At the same time, the damage of the 1994 strike was so great that it convinced both sides that they have a serious interest in working together to solve the game’s problems. As a result, MLB has gone longer without a strike (16 years and counting) than it ever has since Marvin Miller was hired to lead the MLBPA in 1966. 

Selig has never gotten credit for this: The 2002 and 2006 Collective Bargaining Agreements are the only ones in MLB history that were ratified without a strike or lockout, and the relationship between the owners and the MLBPA is as strong as it has ever been. 

As a result, baseball is booming. Last year, MLB pulled in approximately $7 billion in total revenue in 2010. Keep in mind that when Selig started, MLB was at $1.2 million.

Remember these facts during the next year, as the NFL and NBA are expected to have intense and damaging negotiation sessions that could lead to a strike, while the most contentious issues in the MLB negotiations involve the allocation of shared revenue and new bat regulations.

Bud the Innovator

Another faulty perception is that Bud Selig has been fiddling his harp as MLB was burning; in fact, the opposite is true. 

Think about all of the ways that MLB has changed during the Selig era: Both leagues went to a three-division format; the Wild Card was created; Interleague play was started; Jackie Robinson’s number was retired by all of MLB (and the anniversary of his debut was subsequently made an MLB holiday); the MLB network and MLB.com were launched; the All-Star game was given actual meaning in the form of deciding home-field advantage for the World Series; and the World Baseball Classic was created to help spread the game’s popularity internationally. 

Selig is also spearheading the discussion about how to improve MLB’s current playoff system with the goal of giving extra incentive to winning divisional titles, though it remains to be seen if any changes will be made in the near future.

Now, you may disagree about whether or not these changes are improvements (I, for one, don’t care for the All-Star game impacting the World Series), and certainly not all of these ideas are solely Selig’s—but you cannot say that Bud Selig is not coming up with ways to try to move the game forward. 

And if you are going to hold him accountable for the things you in the game, it’s only fair to give him credit for the things you like.

PEDs and Drug Testing

Of course, for many people, the one thing they can never forgive Selig for is the fact that MLB experienced a PED scandal under his watch, which has resulted in the game’s most cherished records being set by a PED user and deep mistrust for the previous generation of statistics. 

The general perception is that Selig drug his feet on the issue of steroid testing and had to be strong-armed in order to get it done, making him the one most responsible for the scandal.

However, blaming Bud Selig for the PED scandal is like blaming Germany for World War I or Gorbechev for the collapse of the Soviet Union: The seeds of the problem were planted long before he ever came along.

I’ve pointed out before that the issue of PEDs in baseball dates back as far as 1889, but it’s also important to keep in mind that steroids—the PED that people really care about—was first determined by the federal government to be widespread in the MLB ranks in 1973. The Mitchell Report makes no secret of this fact.

So why is Bud Selig any more responsible for the PED scandal than Bowie Kuhn, Peter Uberroth, Bart Giamatti or Fey Vincent, all of whom have held the title of MLB commissioner since 1973?

This brings me to another fact about Selig that nobody wants to acknowledge: He got a PED testing program put in place when no other commissioner before him was able to do so. 

It seems rudimentary by today’s standards: One year of “anonymous” random testing, then punishments (a ten-game suspension for a first offense) were implemented in 2005 after it was determined that over 5 percent of players were using. However, it was a testing program, and more importantly, it worked. 

More people were caught in the first year of testing than in any subsequent year, despite an increase in testing and punishments.

Conclusion

I am sure there is nothing I can write to convince people that Bud Selig has been good for Major League Baseball; there’s just too much polarization attached to his name. 

This is unfortunate, because Bud Selig’s total impact on Major League Baseball is right up there with Kennesaw Mountain Landis and Happy Chandler.  

MLB is in a great place right now, and Selig is a big reason why.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

In early February I wrote about the A’s stadium frustration and that the time for MLB to make its recommendation is now.

Unfortunately, I do not have an update on any progress Lew Wolfe and company may or may not have made in persuading Bud Selig to release the findings of the blue-ribbon committee that he commissioned to make a recommendation on the Oakland Athletics stadium issue.

I do, however, have some updates on the impact that Governor Jerry Brown’s proposal to end redevelopment funding will have on both stadium proposals in Oakland and San Jose.

Meant as one of many steps to attack the $25 billion deficit facing the state of California, Governor Brown has eliminated redevelopment funds and the agencies that control them throughout the state of California. All existing projects, bonds and deals will be honored.

The elimination of redevelopment only effects future projects. This means a sprint to the finish for both Oakland and San Jose to complete all steps necessary to secure the redevelopment bond before the programs are eliminated.

In neither case does this obstacle mean the end of a quest for a new baseball only stadium; however, it does put a deadline on completing key tasks in the preliminary process of building the A’s new home.

The city of Oakland is dependent on the redevelopment fund to complete studies, land purchases and infrastructure improvements. It is unlikely that all of these steps can be completed before the new budget goes into effect on July 1, leaving Oakland without the time necessary to get the bond issue on the ballot for voter approval.

Oakland needs approximately $100 million in redevelopment money to finish these tasks before the $450 million stadium could even begin to be built.

Meanwhile, San Jose is now in a rush to complete the land sales necessary to fund the purchase of the land where they have proposed the A’s build their stadium near downtown. Wolfe has offered to loan the San Jose redevelopment agency the money that it needs to complete the process in an attempt to keep things moving.

San Jose has an advantage over Oakland however in that their practice of land banking allows them to utilize money that has been raised over the past few years or even decades to help fund new projects or keep them going. This is exactly what San Jose is doing now by selling city assets to complete the land acquisition they need for the A’s stadium project.

Oakland is not quite willing to admit that Brown’s plan to eliminate redevelopment agencies and funding would kill their hope of building a new stadium in Oakland.

“I’m not saying we couldn’t overcome it, but it makes those projects a little more difficult and challenging,” City Council President Larry Reid said recently.

When combined with Wolfe’s repeated insistence that the A’s have exhausted all options of building a stadium in Oakland, it seems unlikely that Oakland would be able to overcome this obstacle. It would require Wolfe extending the same favor he offered to San Jose in loaning the city the money it needs to complete the project.

Wolfe recently had this to say about the Victory Court Location:

“With the same kind of detail the committee is going into, we don’t think we have any options available there. It has nothing to do with the fanbase or the City of Oakland. It’s just that our exploration is perhaps deeper than soundbites in the newspaper.”

It would seem unlikely that Wolfe would extend a loan to the city of Oakland to build a ballpark on a site he does not wish to occupy.

San Jose is now just $19.5 million short of completing the land acquisition of the two remaining parcels of land it needs to build the stadium. This is a much smaller amount than the reported $100 million that Oakland would need.

San Jose Redevelopment Executive Director Harry Mavrogenes says he expects Major League Baseball to approve the A’s request to move San Jose in time for the matter to be approved by San Jose voters before the July 1 budget goes into effect.

The Athletics plan to build a privately funded stadium which will not be affected by the redevelopment elimination once the land acquisition, all studies and voter approval are secured by the eventual winning city.

In the event that both current proposed locations, Victory Court in Oakland and the downtown San Jose site, fall through due to the elimination of the redevelopment agencies, where would the A’s wind up? Would they be forced to look for a new home outside of the Bay Area? Outside the state of California?

A’s fans can take solace in Wolfe’s words on this matter. In a recent interview with Rick Tittle, Wolfe had this to say regarding the possibility of an out of state move:

“I think what we’ve tried to do is to be one of the few teams in the history of baseball not to leverage by ‘you know we’re gonna move if you don’t do this for us’…So we have not sat around and thought about what our options are. We want to stay in the Bay Area. Our ownership doesn’t want to own a team in Omaha or someplace. We’re gonna make every effort to stay in the Bay Area and truthfully do not measure these other options.“

One thing is for certain though: the A’s can not continue for the next decade or two to share and play in the rundown Oakland Coliseum.

To repeat the theme from my first article on the matter, the time for MLB to decide the fate of the A’s future home is now. There simply is no more time to procrastinate.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

It has been 689 days since Major League Baseball began their review of the A’s stadium situation and options. There has been no report made public, and no clear indication of whether the A’s will make their new home near Jack London Square, or 40 miles South of the Coliseum in San Jose. Since their wait began, the only thing that has become clear is that the A’s can not wait any longer for an answer.

The Oakland A’s have long maintained that they need a new stadium in order to remain successful as a franchise both on the field and financially. The increased revenue that a new stadium would bring to the A’s could be used to retain some of their homegrown talent rather than losing them to free agency when they become stars.

The A’s argue that with a new stadium they no longer will lose players as they did when Jason Giambi, Miguel Tejada, Johnny Damon, Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder and Barry Zito all left town as either free agents or via trade because the A’s would not have been able to meet their contractual demands. Constant turn over of players has hurt the A’s ability to draw and retain fans.

Increased revenue from a new stadium could also help the A’s attract top free agent talent to help supplement their own homegrown stars of the future. Lately the A’s have repeatedly found their overtures to top free agents declined.

The A’s missed out on their top two free agent targets this season in large part because he did not want to play in the rundown Oakland Coliseum. Adrian Beltre turned down a six-year, $76 million contract to sign with the Texas Rangers, and Lance Berkman turned down the A’s two-year offer to sign a one-year deal with St. Louis.

Beltre’s agent, Scott Boras, was recently quoted in an interview that the stadium is the main deterrent in signing free agents. Boras said “You talk to players. It’s not the city. It’s not the team. It’s the ballpark.”

“When teams recruit against the Oakland A’s, they say, ‘Why do you want to play in an empty park?’ It’s not about the organization. It’s not about ownership. It’s about locale.”

Those last three words of Boras’ quote are the key to this argument however. Oakland or San Jose?

Oakland has recently stepped up their pursuit of keeping the A’s in Oakland. Oakland has identified a stadium location near Jack London Square, and ordered an environmental impact report to speed up the process of getting shovels in the ground if the MLB Blue-Ribbon Panel determines the A’s are to stay in Oakland.

Athletics owner Lew Wolfe has been less than receptive to this proposal from the city of Oakland. Wolfe maintains that the A’s have exhausted all options within the city of Oakland and determined that there is not a suitable site to serve the A’s long term interests.

The city of San Jose has been purchasing the parcels of land necessary to build a stadium for the A’s, and also attempted to place a measure on last year’s ballot to secure voter approval. The measure was removed at the request of Major League Baseball.

Both Oakland and San Jose could lose out in their bids for a new baseball stadium if no decision is made before Governor Jerry Brown freezes all local redevelopment however.

It is the role of MLB to determine if there will be a vote by the owners to remove the territorial rights to Santa Clara County from the San Francisco Giants to allow the A’s to move South. The Giants were granted territorial rights in the early 1990’s when the Giants were considering a move to San Jose, ironically enough because the A’s surrendered the rights to the Giants. The Giants of course now have their new stadium in San Francisco’s China Basin.

The Giants franchise would be effected by the A’s relocating to San Jose, there is little doubt that this is true. The Giants Single-A minor league affiliate currently calls San Jose home, and as a result of this there is already a Giants fan base in San Jose. An A’s move would challenge this fan base and also force the Giants to relocate their minor league team. (The A’s would front the bill for relocation however.)

Baseball’s owners would need to approve the move, and the Giants will undoubtedly fight the move until the end, but the Giants would find themselves well compensated in the event the move is approved. The precedent has been set by the move of the Montreal Expos to Washington DC and into the territorial rights of the Baltimore Orioles. Major League Baseball guaranteed the Orioles $130 million per year in revenue and a minimum sales price of $360 million.

Major League Baseball has taken too long to weight the benefits and downfalls of both Oakland and San Jose. The time is now to make a decision.

While East Bay fans of the A’s will argue that the team belongs in Oakland, a deeper look tells the story of why the A’s covet San Jose.

San Jose boasts the largest population in the Bay Area, and as a whole is more prosperous than Oakland. The benefit in season-ticket sales and walk up sales being drawn from within the city would be an instant boost to a franchise that struggles to draw fans to their current home, even during winning seasons in the early 2000’s.

San Jose businesses are another major advantage over Oakland. A downtown ballpark in San Jose would be hot real estate for corporate advertising and sponsorships. The A’s can not secure this level of advertising revenue in the struggling Oakland business environment.

A move to San Jose could arguably make the A’s a “Big Market” team that would be able to compete financially with New York, Boston, Anaheim, San Francisco and Los Angeles for top free agents. The A’s, annual recipients of revenue-sharing, would much rather contribute to the revenue sharing fund, and be independently successful as a franchise than to continue receiving an annual revenue sharing check from the big market teams.

This would be a positive development for Major League Baseball as a whole, increasing the values instantly of the teams that would no longer need to pay a portion of their revenue to the A’s, and increasing the revenue share that the other teams still on the receiving end would receive.

Oakland has argued that the A’s need to stay in Oakland to prevent the negative impact that their departure would have on the city’s unemployment rate and in essence, their overall financial well-being. Oakland believes that a stadium near Jack London Square at Victory Court would revitalize the area and bring new businesses into Oakland. They may very well be correct in their rationale.

It is not, however, the A’s responsibility to look out for the best economic interests of the city of Oakland. The A’s primary responsibility is to operate in the best interest of the A’s, to build a winning team to compete for World Series Titles that also operates as a successful business. This is a goal that can only be accomplished in San Jose.

In the midst of their often frustrating quest for a new stadium, the A’s have managed to build a team that stands an excellent chance at competing in the AL West this season. They made acquisitions of Hideki Matsui, Brian Fuentes, Grant Balfour, Rich Harden and Brandon McCarthy through free agency, and traded for Josh Willingham and David DeJesus.

These additions, along with their strong core farm system will keep the A’s competitive in 2011 and beyond. It sure would be nice if the A’s had a new stadium in an area with a fan base and revenue sources to retain this talent and give the fans familiar faces to cheer and form attachments with.

The right decision, for the Athletics franchise, and for baseball as a whole, is to allow the A’s to make the move South to San Jose.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Playoff and instant replay extension in Major League Baseball will have to wait at least one more season, MLB.com reports.

Commissioner Bud Selig told the website that, while talks have been “fruitful about it, they’re definitely off the table for this year.”

Mr. Selig, I have only two words for you – thank you!

When talking about expanding the playoffs in Major League Baseball, I am forced to ask “why fix something that isn’t broken?”  Sure, more games means more attendance, which means more money in the pockets of the owners.  But right now, baseball has the most exclusive playoff format of all the major sports.

Consider the NHL.  In hockey, in order to make the playoffs, you have to be better than half of the conference (league).  Half!  So where is the glory in making it into the postseason? 

In baseball, only four teams currently make the playoffs from each league.  That’s eight out of 30 teams.  That’s pretty darn special.  But Selig and MLB are proposing adding one more wild card winner to each league, meaning a total of 10 teams would be making it into October baseball (three division winners and two wild card winners from each league). 

Two wild card winners?  Why not just have the last place team make the playoffs too?  Remember a time when there was no wild card team?  Now we want two from each league?  The playoffs would become a joke. 

The two extra teams in 2010 would have been the Boston Red Sox, who finished with less than 90 wins and seven games back of the Yankees in the division (and six games back of the wild card), and the San Diego Padres who lost 10 games in a row during their playoff stretch.

Not to mention, one of the proposed changes to the playoff structure is to have the two wild card teams play in a best-of-three series to see who moves on in the postseason.  This would make a very tight playoff schedule even tighter. 

Granted, MLB has moved the start and end of the season earlier by about a week, which would alleviate teams playing past Halloween.  But still, what’s an already rigid playoff schedule could become even dicier with these proposed changes.

So, Mr. Selig, members of the union, and the rest of MLB – I urge you to reconsider this plan to ruin MLB’s playoff structure.  Worry about instant replay.  Worry about the time of the games.  But leave the postseason alone.  Thank you.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Spring training is getting closer. Top players have switched teams and fans patiently wait for America’s favorite past time to get started. 

There’s a lot of buzz going on right now as some recent deals have occurred. Clubs are signing key players and some are losing them.

Let’s take a look in to how these deals affect certain teams. As well as the latest rumors in the Major League Baseball world.

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