My Letter To Bill Simmons

Bill,
I noticed in your acceptance speech for the nomination as Oprah Obama's "Sports Czar" that one of your platforms was to reduce the number of MLB teams by two through relegation. Last spring, I wrote in my blog, http://fox4nxblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/what-ifmajor-league-baseball-was-like.html, about this very subject, but I took it several steps further. I wrote that MLB should be run just like the English Premier League. My idea was not just relegate two teams, but to send down five. My idea is to relegate the worst five teams by number of wins in MLB to Triple A. The best five teams in Triple A would be promoted to MLB.

The top 5 teams based on wins would join a "Champions" league and compete against the top teams from the top pro leagues from other countries. This would eventually lead to a true World Series between the two best pro teams in the world. The MLB champion would be the team with the most wins at the end of the year.

So by taking these ideas into account the following teams would be relegated:
Washington 59 wins
Seattle 61 wins
San Diego 63 wins
Pittsburgh 67 wins
Baltimore 68 wins

The following teams would advance to Champions League tournament:
LA Angels 100 wins
Chicago Cubs 97 wins
Tampa Bay 97 wins
Boston 95 wins
Philadelphia 92 wins
(The Cubs would be in second based on a better run differential). The champion of MLB would be the Angels.

As I see it, Bill, you put this idea on paper on November 13th, 2008. I put my even more advanced idea back last spring. If you don't believe me look at my blog. Unless you can show that you wrote about this before last spring then I will have to demand that you acknowledge that I developed this idea first.

Sell The BMW And Fire The Trainer

As I am flirting with the collective sports teams in Atlanta filing for divorce from me as a fan like A-Rod's wife (Hmm...Madonna or A-Rod's wife?) I submit another post focusing on Atlanta sports. I am also wondering who else out there may be planning to divorce me in the next few weeks. However, I am not worried I have a back-up plan to follow Rafael Nadal's groupie entourage around the globe for the next three years.

Today, the Braves announced that Jeff Francoeur was being brought back to Atlanta after spending the Fourth of July weekend in Mississippi, which is a version of hell that I would not ever want to endure. I spent a Fourth of July weekend in Panama City, Florida once and it was going through the eleventh ring of hell. Trust me. It was bad. Try standing around for three hours in 156% humidity waiting for fireworks with 2,000 beer slugging people straight out of Dawn of the Dead. The Braves also announced that they were putting three more players on the DL. So it's time to make a choice. It is July 8th. The Braves are 42-47. They are in fourth place in the division. They are 6 games out of the division lead and 7 1/2 games back in the wild card race. The trade deadline is looming. It's time for Frank Wren to make his first big decision of his GM career in Atlanta. Buy or Sell. Buy to try to make a run at the play-offs or sell assets and build for the future.

Let's read off the list of Braves players now on the DL:

Manny Acosta RP
Jeff Bennett RP
Tom Glavine SP
Mike Hampton SP
Anthony Lerew RP
Peter Moylan RP
John Smoltz SP/RP?
Rafael Soriano SP
Omar Infante IF
Matt Diaz OF

The players on the bench make up approximately 47% of the Braves $102 million payroll. There have been between seven and ten players on the DL most of the season and at one time half the payroll was on the DL. Chipper Jones has not been healthy all year and should have been on the DL on a number of occasions so far. Yunel Escobar also has been fighting nagging injuries all year. When over 40% of your payroll has been on the DL all year it's time to fire the trainer. Not the manager or a bench coach. The trainer and probably the strength and conditioning coach. Something is amiss off the field that has translated to injuries off the field. I know that Mike Hampton should go into the DL Hall of Fame (first ballot) and Smoltz, Glavine, and Jones are nearing the end of the line, but all of these young relief pitchers? What's going on with their training and conditioning regimen? It's like they all have turned into Lyle Alzado in his last years. Or Brit Spears after a cocaine and mocha frappuccino binge for three weeks.

Mark Teixeria was a trade deadline player and should be one this year...leaving Atlanta. The choice between buying or selling should be clear. It's time to sell and re-build. The Braves are completely beat up and snake bit (5-21 in one run games this year and 0-1,000,000 in road one run games over the last half-century). There are numerous players on the DL and players who should be shut down for periods of time to just get rest for next year. It is unlikely that the cheap bastards who now own the team (Liberty who???) will re-sign Teixeria. So use the one big asset that many teams covet to steal a number of young prospects from Pawtucket or Iowa (Red Sox and Cub Triple A teams respectively). This will allow the Braves to stock pile young talent on their roster to test the waters in September, to re-build for the future, to shut down players that need the rest for next year, and to allow the current young players to continue to mature in the big boy league. To try to buy now for this year will mortgage the future for a run that will likely result in more injuries and eventual failure. There are too many teams to climb over and the Braves need many of the players on the DL to come back, no one else to join the hospital ward, and for drastic improvement in players who have underachieved so far this year (yes, you, Frenchy). So sell the BMW to get several VW bugs to soup up later. It's the best play for the future.

Of course, you still need to fire the trainer and strength coach or the young players that the Braves should get will also end up on the DL.

What If...Major League Baseball Was Like The English Premier League?

Major League Baseball (MLB) has just started it's spring training. The season will not end until November. The season including the play-offs last close to seven months now. So the marathon has begun. Aside from the advent of the league championship series and the wildcard format, the format for the season and how the champion is crowned has not changed for 1,000,000 years. I am proposing a way to switch things up.

The English Primer League (EPL) is arguably the most competitive soccer league in the world. The Serie A in Italy and the Bundseliga in Germany are close rivals of the EPL. The EPL season starts in late August and ends in late May. So it is a lengthy eight month season so it is a horrendous marathon comparable to the MLB. Like the MLB, the EPL has the Big Four teams who spend the most money and are always close to the top. Those teams in the EPL are Arsenal, Manchester United, Liverpool, and Chelsea. Right now, these teams have the highest four salaries and are respectively are 1st through 4th in the standings. This where most of the comparisons between the two leagues end. The EPL has no divisions or conferences. The EPL has twenty teams and every team plays the other team twice in the regular season (one at home and one away). There are no play-offs to determine the champion of the EPL. The champion is decided by the best team in the league after the regular season is completed. The top five teams in the EPL are promoted to Champions League play where they compete on their own continent against other countries top soccer clubs in a tournament to crown a European Champion (a highly coveted trophy). All of the EPL teams play with all the other professional clubs in the "minors" in a tournament to crown the F.A. Cup as the best team in England (the highest coveted trophy in English football). The bottom three teams in the EPL are regulated down to the minor leagues while the top three clubs in the minors are promoted to the EPL.

So let's apply the EPL format to baseball in the States. The first thing that I would do is lower the number of games from 162 to 118. This would cause each team in MLB to play every other team in MLB a two game home and away series each season. So, for example Atlanta would play Baltimore two games at home and two games on the road every season. Each team plays every other team in the league four times. Now, before anyone complains they are short changed 42 games I'll explain how to resolve that issue in a minute. By playing all the teams at least four times each every year this eliminates the whole strength of schedule argument. Fans will be guaranteed to see every other team in MLB at home at least twice a year. Using EPL tables to the 2007 MLB regular season standings reveals the following:

1. Boston 96 wins (+210 run differential)
2. Cleveland 96 wins (+107 run differential)
3. New York Yankees 94 wins (+191 run differential)
4. Los Angeles Angels 94 wins (+91 run differential)
5. Colorado 90 wins (+102 run differential)
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6. Arizona 90 wins (-20 run differential)

The top five teams (place was separated by run differential which is the same as the goal differential in the EPL) would qualify for the Champions League title with the top teams in the top leagues in the Northern Hemisphere. The championship series could be called the "true" World Series (I know, that is a stretch but a small one). By the way, the winter leagues do this already. The MLB Champion would be Boston as they had the most wins and the tie breaker of having the best run differential. As you can see the championship race between the top teams would have been extremely close. Very exciting all the way to the end of the season. The bottom five of MLB baseball reveals the following:

25. San Francisco 71 wins (-37 run differential)
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26. Florida 71 wins (-101 run differential)
27. Baltimore 69 wins
28. Kansas City 69 wins
29. Pittsburgh 68 wins
30. Tampa Bay 66 wins

The bottom five teams would be relegated to Triple AAA status (I choose five as it is a larger league). Now, who hasn't wanted to kick out these five teams over the last five seasons or more? These franchises have not cared about winning for years and since there is no punishment for losing in the current format, the EPL format offers relegation for those teams who don't compete to get out of the relegation zone. Again, very exciting (in a weird way) all the way to the end. On the Triple AAA side, five teams would be promoted to the MLB. If we applied last years win totals in Triple AAA for last season the following teams would make the promotion: Nashville, Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, Sacramento, Toledo, and Durham. How exciting would it be for these cities to have a shot at playing in MLB for at least a season? Imagine the home series between the NY Yankees and the Durham Bulls? It could happen in this format. One major way to make this work better in baseball under this format is to eliminate the minor league affiliations and make every team independent of each other. Players would not make it to the majors unless they were moved in the transfer window (traded) or their team gets promoted to the majors. Now to make up some of the games the MLB fans would lose during the regular season in this format I would propose a major trophy be given to the best professional baseball team after a tournament that would involve every professional team playing each other in three-game series (seven for the finals) until the best team is decided. This could add a significant number of games throughout the season. After each round (just for giggles) put each remaining team in a lottery and pick the match-ups through a ball drop lottery.

Am I crazy or would this work?