8 Simple Rules for Irritating Me

Business Insider's Nicholas Carlson recently released an article about eight simple ways to save baseball from...well, something.  I don't know.  Maybe he's being ironic.  Maybe it's opposite day, and I happened to miss the memo.  Either way, his ideas are pretty bad.  They come off as inane, contrived, and poorly thought out.  Never fear, I'm here to break it down.

1.  MLB needs EPL-style relegation.

For those who don't know, EPL stands for English Premier League.  Basically, Carlson believes it would be a great idea to penalize the three or four worst teams every season by demoting them to some sort of lower level league made up of independent minor league teams.  This is just a terrible idea.  First of all, in order to make this work you would need to either (a) demolish the minor league affiliate system, which would force Major League Baseball to completely revamp the process for building, developing, and acquiring young players, or (b) create an independent minor league system that would compete with the current affiliate system, thereby causing there to be two different minor league teams in the same city.  Most minor league cities have trouble drawing enough fans to one team.  Having two teams in the same city is just stupid unless it's New York, L.A., or Chicago.  There are many other logistical problems, but if I write about all of them now, I'll never get to the other seven ideas.


2.  The World Series should be the only playoff series.

This is a really nice thought, but it's completely unreasonable.  The great thing about the current system is that the Wild Card creates excitement.  More teams are involved in the playoff hunt later into the season.  By only allowing the teams with the best record in their respective leagues into the playoffs, you'd effectively be ending 10-12 teams seasons by July 1st, with another 10-12 being over by August 15th.  While it would certainly put greater importance on the regular season, this idea effectively keeps people from coming to the ballpark or tuning into the game on a team's regional network.  It's a league and team revenue killer.  Who wants to watch a team that has no chance of making the playoffs half way through the season?

3.  No interleague play until the World Series.

You know who else had this idea?  My grandpa--and every other person currently eligible for collecting Social Security.  Fans love interleague play.  It's created tons of revenue for baseball.  Sure, there are problems, but it's been going on since 1994.  Eventually, you just have to learn to accept change.  

4.  The baseball season needs to be shorter.

Another super original idea.  Any suggestions on how many games MLB should cut from the schedule, Mr.  Carlson?  Of course not.  I find it comical how he discusses how the owners will eventually adapt to the loss in revenue.  I think Business Insider should start paying Mr. Carlson on a per article basis rather than on salary.  Then, his bosses at Business Insider should cut down on the number of ridiculous articles he writes.  I'm sure eventually Mr. Carlson will adapt to his loss in overall revenue...

5.  The World Series should be played in 10 days or less.

As the schedule is currently constructed, the World Series (a best of seven series) takes no more than nine days to play unless there's a delay due to extreme weather conditions.  Yes, there used to be an additional off day between games four and five last year, but even then, the World Series took a maximum of ten days.  Shouldn't someone who follows baseball enough to write an article about it know this?

6.  If you hate the no playoffs but the World Series idea, let's try a month long World Cup style round robin.

Two problems with this.  One, you were just complaining about how long the season was.  Now you want a month long World Cup style playoff?  Two, you can't do the, "Hey, if you don't like this idea, try this one."  You just finished lamenting about the regular season's lack of importance due to the eight team playoff, and now you're suggesting some sort of super playoff season?  You can't have your cake, and eat it too.  It just doesn't work that way.

7.  A real World Series after the World Series.

Don't we already have this?  It's called the World Baseball Classic.  It's similar to that awful World Cup idea you had.  Guess what, no one cares about the WBC.  My guess is that no one will care about the Philadelphia Phillies playing the Nippon Ham Fighters in the "real" World Series either.

8.  Pitchers should get 15 seconds in between pitches.

This idea has the most merit, but even that comes with issues.  Forcing pitchers to throw a pitch after a certain amount of time takes a lot of strategy out of the game.  While it's not exciting watching a pitcher check a runner at first, or watch a batter step out of the box, it's part of game strategy.  You take that away, you lose a little bit of the game.  You can put some restrictions on those things, but you can't create a hard and fast rule like forcing a pitch every fifteen seconds.  It's a slippery slope.