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Thread: Manfred Mann is the new commissioner

  1. #1
    "Just one more thing..." Northern Star's Avatar
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    Manfred Mann is the new commissioner

    I know his first order of business is to make ever-increasing piles of money, but I really hope it's not his only one. I really hope he'll work at some things to improve the game.
    Priorities:
    1. Yankees lose
    2. Red Sox win

    Quote Originally Posted by joeycaps View Post
    So shut up because you have no idea on what you say on anything as evidence of some of your ridiculous posts.

  2. #2
    Quote Originally Posted by Northern Star View Post
    I know his first order of business is to make ever-increasing piles of money, but I really hope it's not his only one. I really hope he'll work at some things to improve the game.
    And you know what I'd like to really see? I would like the to shit can interleague play. It has outlived its usefulness and takes away from the drama when the WS comes around.

  3. #3
    Your pal, Pal Palodios's Avatar
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    I hope we see the end of the MLB TV blackouts for sold-out games. That shit is stupid.

  4. #4
    Resident Old Fart Spudboy's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by seabeachfred View Post
    And you know what I'd like to really see? I would like the to shit can interleague play. It has outlived its usefulness and takes away from the drama when the WS comes around.
    Interesting idea Fred. I hadn't given it much thought because I don't mind inter-league play.

    However, the other night Keith Olberman talked about how baseball is ( my word ) dieing. There is a relationship between televised inter-league games and decline in MLB viewership. It seems that each year viewership of these games is declining at a precipitous rate. Right now baseball and the individual teams are benefiting from massive cable revenues. But these are going to go away very much sooner than people expect. When that happens, baseball as a whole will make far less money and only the healthy teams with strong local television ( cable ) deals will thrive. All other teams will suffer greatly.

    Baseball has many challenges. NBA is about to pass it in overall popularity ( Football is 1st ). Getting rid of inter-league games may need to be considered because it is suspected that viewers miss seeing only the teams that they normally watch ( within their league ) and have little interest in seeing the other league until playoffs and the World Series.

    I wish I could somehow copy paste the stats because they are quite vivid and alarming. Plus I'm not sure that I've articulated the urgency and nature of the problem accurately.

  5. #5
    Resident Old Fart Spudboy's Avatar
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    Of course the biggest problem is the decline in young viewership and fans. The demographics of baseball fans is pretty ugly now. Every year less and less younger groups are becoming fans while the average age of a fan in getting older. That is not a healthy trend.

  6. #6
    Your pal, Pal Palodios's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Spudboy View Post
    Interesting idea Fred. I hadn't given it much thought because I don't mind inter-league play.

    However, the other night Keith Olberman talked about how baseball is ( my word ) dieing. There is a relationship between televised inter-league games and decline in MLB viewership. It seems that each year viewership of these games is declining at a precipitous rate. Right now baseball and the individual teams are benefiting from massive cable revenues. But these are going to go away very much sooner than people expect. When that happens, baseball as a whole will make far less money and only the healthy teams with strong local television ( cable ) deals will thrive. All other teams will suffer greatly.

    Baseball has many challenges. NBA is about to pass it in overall popularity ( Football is 1st ). Getting rid of inter-league games may need to be considered because it is suspected that viewers miss seeing only the teams that they normally watch ( within their league ) and have little interest in seeing the other league until playoffs and the World Series.

    I wish I could somehow copy paste the stats because they are quite vivid and alarming. Plus I'm not sure that I've articulated the urgency and nature of the problem accurately.
    Getting rid of interleague play is not the solution. I would bet that younger fans are actually more interested in seeing stars from other leagues -- I recently saw Kershaw pitch in Milwaukee the other day, and I'd take him over Scott Feldman every day of the week.

    The biggest complaint you will hear among young people is that baseball is too friggen slow.We need to see a reduction in game time from 4 hours to 2.5-3 hours. It may be possible without changing the actual rules, but it needs to happen.

    Pitchers should not take 60 seconds between pitches. We also need to see limitations in what kind of pitching changes a manager can make in an inning -- 3-4 pitching changes is dumb. A baseball wide bullpen-trolley rule to get BP pitchers to the mound could save an extra few minutes per game. Getting rid of the DH would help too, but I'm biased against that one. Extra commercials for "premium" games like Red Sox v. Yankees is also a huge problem that may cost the game more than it gains them.

    A digital strikezone would limit argued ball/strike calls, and those dumb delayed "Striiiiiiiiiike" calls that waste time.

    It needs to be a baseball-wide effort.
    Last edited by Palodios; 08-15-2014 at 09:58 AM.

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  8. #8
    Resident Old Fart Spudboy's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Palodios View Post
    Getting rid of interleague play is not the solution. I would bet that younger fans are actually more interested in seeing stars from other leagues -- I recently saw Kershaw pitch in Milwaukee the other day, and I'd take him over Scott Feldman every day of the week.

    The biggest complaint you will hear among young people is that baseball is too friggen slow.We need to see a reduction in game time from 4 hours to 2.5-3 hours. It may be possible without changing the actual rules, but it needs to happen.

    Pitchers should not take 60 seconds between pitches. We also need to see limitations in what kind of pitching changes a manager can make in an inning -- 3-4 pitching changes is dumb. A baseball wide bullpen-trolley rule to get BP pitchers to the mound could save an extra few minutes per game. Getting rid of the DH would help too, but I'm biased against that one. Extra commercials for "premium" games like Red Sox v. Yankees is also a huge problem that may cost the game more than it gains them.

    A digital strikezone would limit argued ball/strike calls, and those dumb delayed "Striiiiiiiiiike" calls that waste time.

    It needs to be a baseball-wide effort.
    I certainly agree that baseball is too slow and that this is somewhat of a repellant among younger prospective fans. One problem that no one talks about is the loss of revenue associated with shortening the game. Fans in attendance are captive and spend money while at the ball park. Shorten the game = less money.

    Shorten the game means less time for commercials. Less money. Advertising done in the ball park will be less attractive too.

    Does anyone see the rich boys who control the game willingly taking a financial hit? I don't.

  9. #9
    "Just one more thing..." Northern Star's Avatar
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    Someone (was it here?) said that in a 3 and half hour game, there's 18 minutes of actual action. I think it would be difficult to cut down game times without severely changing the game. Years ago some solutions were floated, including making it 2 strikes instead of 3 which would be awful. I like that there's no game clock, I like that each game has its own rhythm. But do I want to spend almost 4 hours watching one? Do I want to start watching a playoff game on the East Coast at 8pm knowing it will go beyond midnight and I have work the next day?

    Getting youngsters involved and interested is paramount. They NEED to make the Saturday WS game an afternoon one. It will not kill them. Just take a step back, stop thinking of money and think of growing the game. How do you get more kids playing it, versus basketball or football? (I guess football is dwindling now because of head injuries). How do you get black kids to take up baseball when the number of black players has been dwindling for years?

    Since a significant number of people are giving up cable, they should be offering mlb tv without blackouts. Even if you have to pay more and use the cable channel's website if you live in market, I would do that. But I have given up on mlb tv for another reason, which is the technical drawbacks of DSL that make the picture freeze so often. A huge number of people complained about this. That touches on another unrelated issue, the poor quality of the U.S.'s broadband service compared to other countries.
    Priorities:
    1. Yankees lose
    2. Red Sox win

    Quote Originally Posted by joeycaps View Post
    So shut up because you have no idea on what you say on anything as evidence of some of your ridiculous posts.

  10. #10
    "Just one more thing..." Northern Star's Avatar
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    Oh, and as well as ending the ASG WS home field advantage bullshit, can we drop the every team must have a player and have the starting lineups play most of the game?

    The union would never go for this, but dropping the DH would speed up AL games a bit...
    Priorities:
    1. Yankees lose
    2. Red Sox win

    Quote Originally Posted by joeycaps View Post
    So shut up because you have no idea on what you say on anything as evidence of some of your ridiculous posts.

  11. #11
    Football's pretty lacking in action, and they don't have an issue with popularity.

  12. #12
    Your pal, Pal Palodios's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Spudboy View Post
    Shorten the game = less money. Shorten the game means less time for commercials. Less money. Advertising done in the ball park will be less attractive too. Does anyone see the rich boys who control the game willingly taking a financial hit? I don't.
    Here's the thing. Shorter innings doesn't mean shorter commercials. If we have 9 inning games, and commercials every half inning, would commercials every half inning get shorter? Probably not. Technically, they're only going to need to shorten the content. We would see fewer commercials if there is a limit to bullpen changes, but that might be one string of commercials per game.

    As far as stadium revenue, I don't think it would take a big hit either. Right now, your average fan doesn't get into the stands until the second or third inning anyway, and the average fan leaves immediately after Sweet Caroline. Cutting night games from 7-10:30 to 7-10 will mean that more fans get in the park on time, and that families and 9AMers are more likely to stick around for the whole game. It also means that stadium workers will be paid for fewer hours. Worst case scenario, beer goes from $10 a pint to $15 instead of the expected $14 hike.


    Quote Originally Posted by Northern Star View Post
    Someone (was it here?) said that in a 3 and half hour game, there's 18 minutes of actual action. I think it would be difficult to cut down game times without severely changing the game. Years ago some solutions were floated, including making it 2 strikes instead of 3 which would be awful. I like that there's no game clock, I like that each game has its own rhythm.
    I think the 18 minutes was actually referring to football. With baseball, its closer to 5-6 minutes . I had proposed a 3 ball rule in another thread, which would be a far more drastic and unrealistic change. More offense, more contact, fewer pitches thrown, less nibbling.

  13. #13
    Ending interleague play is impossible with 15 teams in each league.
    Hal sucks

  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by jacksonianmarch View Post
    Ending interleague play is impossible with 15 teams in each league.
    Good point Jacko. However, we could cut back drastically on that---perhaps dwindling down to ONE Interleague series a year----and go by rivalries as much as possible, such as Mets vs Yankees, Cards vs Cubs, Giants vs Dodgers.

  15. #15
    Your pal, Pal Palodios's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by seabeachfred View Post
    Good point Jacko. However, we could cut back drastically on that---perhaps dwindling down to ONE Interleague series a year----and go by rivalries as much as possible, such as Mets vs Yankees, Cards vs Cubs, Giants vs Dodgers.
    I don't understand the dislike of interleague play. The NFL, NBA, NHL all do it, and they play fewer games against their division opponents. Are 19 games against the Rays not enough? The other factor is that less interleague play means longer west coast road trips, and more games most of us can't watch. The only real problem with interleague play is parity -- the Yankees shouldn't get 3 extra home games where they get to play a bad team, while the Red Sox are forced to play the NL East winner every year.

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