KevFu
Registered User
A comment by a poster on my baseball team's message board triggered an idea in my head, so I wanted to throw it out here and see people's thoughts.
With regard to the rash of starting pitchers suffering elbow injuries this week, someone said: "if there was 4 games a week and they were 7 inning games, with like 24 teams instead of 30, teams wouldn’t be filled with a bunch of replacement players."
To which I responded: "If they cut down to 4 games a week, they'd want to ADD 10 to 18 teams to compensate."
Which got me thinking.
#1 - you keep AL and NL format (no radical geographic alignment).
#2 - You play 7 inning games, 4 days a week.
#3 - Those four days are either Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday (one league) or Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday (the other league).
That means:
- Pitchers have to throw a lot less (28 innings a week instead of 54-63)
- SPs would go deeper pitching once per week (not 4x every 3 weeks)
- You need fewer RPs because they can't pitch back-to-back days multiple times a week and only have to cover 4-12 innings a week not 28-32 innings a week.
You could set rosters at 8 pitchers per team. Which frees up 150 pitchers. Which is over 18 more teams worth!
So two leagues of 24 each.
There's 26 weeks from first week of April to last week of September. Each week is a four-game series.
2 vs 5 division teams (1 home, 1 road) = 40 games, 10 weeks.
1 vs 16 other teams (1 home OR road) = 64 games, 16 weeks.
One league plays Mon, Wed, Fri, Sat, and the Other League plays Tue, Thur, Sat, Sun.
This allows you to have MLB on TV every day, so the drastic reduction in games doesn't reduce TV revenue. You get a lot more fans paying to watch and a lot more TV money with 48 teams instead of 30.
But with the AL/NL format with no radical realignment, fans can root for one team in each league because they don't play on the same day (except for Saturdays). Which means your markets won't cannibalize each other and you can add like markets that are kinda close to opposite leagues.
Something like:
AL West - Seattle, Oakland, Sacramento, Las Vegas, Anaheim, Salt Lake City
AL Central - Minnesota, Chicago White Sox, Kansas City, Omaha, Austin, Louisville
AL South - Texas, Memphis, Tampa, Jacksonville, Charlotte
AL East - Toronto, Boston, NY Yankees, Cleveland, Detroit, Indianapolis
NL West - Vancouver, San Francisco, Portland, San Diego, Los Angeles, Colorado
NL Central - Milwaukee, Chicago Cubs, St. Louis, Oklahoma City, San Antonio, Nashville
NL South - Houston, Atlanta, Miami, Orlando, Raleigh, Cincinnati
NL East - Montreal, Hartford, NY Mets, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Washington
With regard to the rash of starting pitchers suffering elbow injuries this week, someone said: "if there was 4 games a week and they were 7 inning games, with like 24 teams instead of 30, teams wouldn’t be filled with a bunch of replacement players."
To which I responded: "If they cut down to 4 games a week, they'd want to ADD 10 to 18 teams to compensate."
Which got me thinking.
#1 - you keep AL and NL format (no radical geographic alignment).
#2 - You play 7 inning games, 4 days a week.
#3 - Those four days are either Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday (one league) or Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday (the other league).
That means:
- Pitchers have to throw a lot less (28 innings a week instead of 54-63)
- SPs would go deeper pitching once per week (not 4x every 3 weeks)
- You need fewer RPs because they can't pitch back-to-back days multiple times a week and only have to cover 4-12 innings a week not 28-32 innings a week.
You could set rosters at 8 pitchers per team. Which frees up 150 pitchers. Which is over 18 more teams worth!
So two leagues of 24 each.
There's 26 weeks from first week of April to last week of September. Each week is a four-game series.
2 vs 5 division teams (1 home, 1 road) = 40 games, 10 weeks.
1 vs 16 other teams (1 home OR road) = 64 games, 16 weeks.
One league plays Mon, Wed, Fri, Sat, and the Other League plays Tue, Thur, Sat, Sun.
This allows you to have MLB on TV every day, so the drastic reduction in games doesn't reduce TV revenue. You get a lot more fans paying to watch and a lot more TV money with 48 teams instead of 30.
But with the AL/NL format with no radical realignment, fans can root for one team in each league because they don't play on the same day (except for Saturdays). Which means your markets won't cannibalize each other and you can add like markets that are kinda close to opposite leagues.
Something like:
AL West - Seattle, Oakland, Sacramento, Las Vegas, Anaheim, Salt Lake City
AL Central - Minnesota, Chicago White Sox, Kansas City, Omaha, Austin, Louisville
AL South - Texas, Memphis, Tampa, Jacksonville, Charlotte
AL East - Toronto, Boston, NY Yankees, Cleveland, Detroit, Indianapolis
NL West - Vancouver, San Francisco, Portland, San Diego, Los Angeles, Colorado
NL Central - Milwaukee, Chicago Cubs, St. Louis, Oklahoma City, San Antonio, Nashville
NL South - Houston, Atlanta, Miami, Orlando, Raleigh, Cincinnati
NL East - Montreal, Hartford, NY Mets, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Washington
