OT: MLB's declining interest

[AtlantaWhaler]

Overreacting? So, with all the weather problems, you'd think MLB should wait until May to start the season.

 

[Beerfish]

If the NHL went back to the non cap era and the have teams had 90 million payrolls and the have nots had 40 my interest in the league would wane as well.

 

[tarheelhockey]

I know that. I did the conversion and wasn't sure how 8C overnight lows could be considered "cold"

Well if the temperature is, say, 60F during the day you're probably going to go out in the morning wearing a light jacket at most. People with indoor jobs might wear short sleeves. So when you end up outside after sundown, seeing your breath, that gets pretty uncomfortable after 3 hours.

 

[throatguzzler]

Overreacting? So, with all the weather problems, you'd think MLB should wait until May to start the season.

This, and it should also end earlier. 30-40 games off the schedule wouldn't harm the game at all.

 

[Brodie]

Other than Indian expatriates nobody will ever give a crap about cricket in America. Even their kids are baseball fans.

Anglophone Caribbean immigrants and their children. Which is why we now have this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/03/nyregion/03cricket.html

On Wednesday, the Department of Education inaugurated cricket as its newest league sport, with about 600 high school students playing on 14 teams during a 12-game season. The first matches, held in Queens, featured teams from John Adams, Richmond Hill, Aviation and Newcomers High Schools.

Every team makes money except the Tigers. The ONLY reason the Tigers lose money is because they run a top 5 payroll in a depressed dump of a city because Mike Illitch thinks it's a public service. Even the Rays and A's turn a profit every year.

Right. It has NOTHING to do with the fact that the team is only mediocre and constantly chokes the second half of the season away... it's because Detroit is a "dump of a city". Please shut up. If the Tigers were actually winning to match their payroll, they'd be profitable. But a losing team with a $100 million payroll is just a ****ing joke.

 

[AtlantaWhaler]

This, and it should also end earlier. 30-40 games off the schedule wouldn't harm the game at all.

Seems like that is quite a major change. If this is what baseball should consider, how is this this thread based on an overreaction?

 

[412 Others]

If the NHL went back to the non cap era and the have teams had 90 million payrolls and the have nots had 40 my interest in the league would wane as well.

agree 100%. the nhl became a joke in the mid to late nineties up until the lockout. having the same 4 cities in the market for the big FAs every year is insane. NY does not run their franchise better than edmonton, yet they could outspend them in any situation (due to population). the rangers destroyed other markets (who lost marquee players) moreso than they helped themselves. glen sather just didn't know how to build a team.

 

[throatguzzler]

Seems like that is quite a major change. If this is what baseball should consider, how is this this thread based on an overreaction?

This has been an overall view of mine for the past decade or so. I didn't form this opinion out of the blue as soon as I read your post. Baseball is alive and well, the spike at the start of the season's most likely due to the weather is all I'm saying. Look at past trends, this is no surprise.

 

[spintheblackcircle]

I can't find anything on the web, but I heard on Mike and Mike that the TV ratings for the 1st week of baseball are way up.

 

[MaskedSonja]

I can't find anything on the web, but I heard on Mike and Mike that the TV ratings for the 1st week of baseball are way up.

Maybe the argument isn't so much of baseball's popularity in general, as opposed to its LIVE popularity (going to games) vs Television (home viewing) popularity?

There's been a lot of talk in the thread about how empty the seats are-I'd like to see more television ratings.
As someone already pointed out-it's easier to have the game on TV, and you go about doing other things in the home-compared to sitting in a stadium for 3-4 hours.

I wonder if in our current "busy-busy" culture-we don't HAVE 3-4 hours anymore to sit in one place and do one thing (mind you, the argument gets flawed when you look at NFL, where the stands are PACKED for each home game-but they only have 9 home games a year, so going to an NFL game for 4 hours is more an event if you include the tailgating, ect)

 

[Ogopogo*]

The biggest supported teams have the most money. Baseball's a meritocracy in that way. If San Diego wanted to keep Adrian Gonzalez they could have done two things:

1) Actually tried to keep him (they didn't, and are running an artificially low payroll to collect revenue sharing checks).

2) Marketed their team better so that when they were in a tight pennant race in the National League west with the Giants, they weren't getting 22,000 people for games, at least half of whom had flown down from the Bay Area to root for the Giants.

Getting young players, who are the most valuable commodity in baseball (moreso than free agents, who are fool's gold) and marketing the hell out of your team will turn almost any team into a "big market" behemoth after a while.
The Phillies got a revenue sharing check in the past decade and look at them now. The Rangers and Giants are now big players and seeing the money roll in.

Completely disagree.

Philadelphia is big enough to compete as a big market team, San Diego will never have that ability unless the owner is willing to lose his shirt. A city the size of San Diego cannot produce the revenue required.

You are missing the point - baseball is MUCH more than a gate driven league. Local TV revenues are a huge part of the equation and, with the NY area having 16 million people and SD having maybe 1.2 million, there is no chance the Padres ever come close to being able to compete as a big market team.

 

[krudmonk]

Disregarding my own personal biases against baseball these days, I find it funny that the growing apathy mirrors that toward the game of cricket in some commonwealth nations. I think the desire for faster sport is tied to the general pace of the world these days, which is why they came up with Twenty20.

 

[edog37]

Can that be broken down in terms of team payroll compared to rest of league for their winning season? My guess is most of them were in top 10.

also, a vast majority of those teams come from large markets....

 

[edog37]

No idea what this thread is about...haven't read a word of it.

Just wanted to say....I watched SportCentre tonight on TSN....and amazingly I didn't flip the channel when the baseball highlights came on.

I think they showed over 10 game's highlights.....I swear in that time I saw about 4,000,000 empty seats in the highlights. How on earth does that league make money with the payrolls they have?!?!

They must have one honey of a TV deal......

they do have a huge TV deal....

 

[IU Hawks fan]

Yeah, Just like the NHL in the 80's

Umm...the 80's were a 10 year span, not 30 years, no?

 

[tarheelhockey]

I think the desire for faster sport is tied to the general pace of the world these days

More specifically, it's tied to the experience of viewing the game in your living room rather than in person.

 

[Ogopogo*]

Baseball is more like chess than checkers. So many people in our world are checkers type of people that need constant action. Some of us like the chess type strategy of baseball.

 

[tarheelhockey]

Baseball is more like chess than checkers. So many people in our world are checkers type of people that need constant action. Some of us like the chess type strategy of baseball.

I like the chess-type strategy, but MLB takes it to a completely different level. The fact that a team will bring a pinch hitter in just to face a specific pitcher from a particular side of the plate, then the other team will switch pitchers just to correct that matchup, then both of those players will be replaced before the start of the next inning... it gets annoying after a while. I'd rather see the same 8 fielders and maybe 3 pitchers throughout the game, with the micro-management saved for the times when it really truly does affect the outcome (such as bringing in a base-stealer after your slow 1st baseman hits a single in the 9th).

IMO, one of the things that makes it hard to like MLB is that the players constantly cycle between teams, and during the game there is a constant cycle of players in and out of the lineup, so it's very difficult for a younger or more casual fan to sit down and identify with the 9 guys on the field for their home team.

 

[MoonlightGraham]

Baseball is going to have to do something to help the smaller market teams (basically anyone other than Boston, New York, Philadelphia and a few others). It's obvious the majority of the teams don't have the budget to compete with them, and are bound to lose a good number of free agents to the rich teams. Sure the other teams might still be content making reasonnable profits, but if the interest doesn't pick up they'll be making less and less profit every year, and will eventually start to lose money. I don't understand why the owners of the "normal" teams don't stand up to the owners of the few wealthy teams and demand change.

 

[Drake1588]

While I believe the OP's thesis is sound, he is ignoring that April baseball sucks.

You can trot out assorted stats and arguments, but I'd challenge anyone to come up with a more compelling reason than that for why people aren't going out in droves to watch a Tuesday afternoon baseball game in 43 degrees and drizzle all up and down the East Coast. Why? Because April baseball sucks. Schools are not out yet, the weather is terrible, opening day is past, and no one's heart is in it yet.

 

[Acesolid]

Baseball's very slowly dying, but there's time for correction. However, that will mean some changes that might upset traditionalists (me), who grew up playing baseball first and still think Dizzy Dean is a folk hero.

One big change I want asap, ban all metal bats from organized baseball, period. The expense is unnecessary and can exceed $250, plus it arguably harms baseball development. And most importantly, people don't like metal bats. Once I held a wooden bat, I hated metal and always will.

A second point is to make sure the games end earlier during weeknights, so you can get more kids attending them. Speeding up the game can be done via minor tweaks, not insane rule changes like a 10 second pitch clock. Limit pick off attempts per inning, for instance, and require all umps to keep things moving quicker. Work with ballparks to reduce the walk up time of each hitter (get rid of music for each batter, maybe? It didn't exist 100 years ago!). Little things could do a lot of good.

I do wonder by the way if some day the NHL will limit the materials that a stick can be made of if some "super composite" stick is invented...

And I agree that some form of pitching time limit should be implemented, but it definitively should be more then 10 seconds!

 

[krudmonk]

Baseball is more like chess than checkers. So many people in our world are checkers type of people that need constant action. Some of us like the chess type strategy of baseball.

This is one thing that really turned me off of baseball: the idiotic notion that anyone who finds the sport boring is merely a simpleton. Please elaborate on the strategy behind hitting the ball so it's not caught. The only complicated part of baseball are the arcane rules, like being able to run through first base only, the infield fly (which does serve a purpose), foul tip into the catcher's glove is an out only on the third strike, striking out but getting on base because of a passed ball or wild pitch, etc. It's a hodge-podge mess of rules, not a grand scheme for brilliant minds.

 

[Dado]

the rangers destroyed other markets (who lost marquee players)...

How did they destroy other markets when it was those other markets winning championships the Rangers couldn't win?

 

[BeachBolt]

5) Borrow a page from basketball and institute a "pitch clock" (maybe 30 seconds). Like the "shot clock" in basketball, this will serve to keep the game moving. If the pitcher doesn't deliver a pitch when the pitch clock expires, it's counted as an automatic ball and the clock resets. If the batter is out of the batter's box when the clock expires, it's an automatic strike instead.

College baseball started that this year, except it is 20 seconds. So far it has shortened games by roughly 20 minutes on average.

 

[yotesreign]

While I believe the OP's thesis is sound, he is ignoring that April baseball sucks.

You can trot out assorted stats and arguments, but I'd challenge anyone to come up with a more compelling reason than that for why people aren't going out in droves to watch a Tuesday afternoon baseball game in 43 degrees and drizzle all up and down the East Coast. Why? Because April baseball sucks. Schools are not out yet, the weather is terrible, opening day is past, and no one's heart is in it yet.

reminds me of Ryne Sandberg. iirc he was like a career .280 hitter but his usual April batting average was closer to .220 than .280

When I lived in Chicago, other than a traditional opening day trek to Comiskey and Wrigley with my friends you wouldn't find me at any games before Memorial Day.