I like a lot of your suggestions. But how much of the problem is a change in attitude of the owners? I see this across all the sports leagues. So many owners view their franchise as money making machines. They decided the best way to do that is to cut costs, usually by refusing to pay good players, and riding TV deals. How many MLB front offices are actually trying to win a world series?
Please write it. I think this is a problem plaguing all of sports. It’s more obvious in the MLB because of the salary rules. But I think it's everywhere.
Very nice article. I like almost all of your suggestions. Do you really need wild card teams though? Baseball was pretty compelling when two divisions winners went straight to the LCS. 162 games should be enough to prove whether or not you belong there. The last year that format was used (1993), the Giants lost on the last day of the season and missed the playoffs despite winning 105 games. That last week in the NL West was as good as a playoff series. And the World Series winner tended to be the best team in baseball; now it's usually whatever above-average team is playing on a hot streak in October.
Consolidated divisions would revive some broken rivalries. The Phillies and Pirates had classic battles for the NL East throughout the 1970s and 1980s and now they're just teams that play each other six times a year or so. Other regions probably have similar stories.
Despite my traditionalist inclinations, though, I need to say that I LOVE the pace of games after the pitch clock reforms.
It’s great to read crisp and passionate analysis. There is a lot here to agree with. A 154-game schedule - yes. A return to just four divisions and four playoff teams per league - yes. Salary cap - a must. I’d love to see my Guardians return to the American League East if a salary cap was in place.
On the other hand… Even with 30 MLB teams, there could still be just four divisions. The extra inning runner on 2nd is great and works well, just as the universal DH works well. The extra inning runner should be included in post-season play as well.
I hope you endorse the pitch clock, because it is marvelous. And I greatly enjoy seeing the Guardians play everyone in the MLB. Throughout my childhood I often heard the NL was superior to the AL. Now it can be proven or disproven on the field.
So much to love here. Baseball is slowly dying on the vine and needs much out of the box thinking like this.
Let’s first start with a key problem you identify. The sudden use of rule book changes to alter the perceived aesthetic shortcomings of the game. Every year now, we see arguments in favor of increased and needless rule changes that are harming the flow and familiarity of the game. We’ve seen this multiple instances including the meaningless effort to ban the shift and the referenced ridiculous California Rule.
One I would strongly urge to be eliminated is the so called “two disengagements” rule with a runner on first. This is in truth a single disengagement rule since if you fail on the first attempt the risk associated with a failed second attempt is simply too high for another attempt since another failure guarantees the runner gets second base. Either remove this poorly thought-out rule or at a minimum increase it to three disengagements to create more balance. The additional time added to the game is negligible.
But let’s turn to your strongest point. Yes, baseball desperately needs contraction. I'm willing to go even deeper - to 24 teams - and include the likes of Sacramento/Las Vegas (my team) and a "pick 'em" team. As you point out, baseball has dramatically diluted its product and created mediocrity and confusion, leading to regular season apathy. Expansion will only dilute fan interest further and lead to poorer financials for existing teams.
That realization is not lost on ownership. A mere 10 years ago, MLB was firm in its intentions to expand by two teams by 2025 and another 2 teams by 2032. Now, the Commissioner strongly suggests that there will be no expansion during his remaining term, ending in 2029 and likely leaving expansion plans in doubt for the future Commissioner to resolve. Furthermore, beyond Nashville, it's not apparent that any other city is an obvious "yes" for expansion.
Many talked about cities (e.g., Austin, Charlotte) will dilute interest in the Astros, Rangers, and Braves) and will likely be met with fierce resistance. Same with cities like Portland and Salt Lake City. Other cities have shown little enthusiasm or energy for a baseball team - preferring to invest in an NBA or NFL expansion team down the road. When you hear that the massive failure just 20 years ago that was Montreal is now suddenly “an obvious expansion choice” you know they are grasping for straws.
What is missed in all the expansion exuberance, is that sports in general have become television products and not local spectator driven products. This is vastly different than when I was younger. Then, there was no internet, and even early cable only offered the Cubs and Braves for a time. So, following the "local" team in the papers and on the local channel was essential.
No longer. Today, many fans easily follow an out of market team via the internet and streaming. The disaggregation of media has become so pronounced that fans complain they don’t know what service is carrying their team’s game and complain loudly about local blackouts supporting failing local MLB networks…an approach that seem so positively 1970s and only alienating the shrinking fan base.
You see this shift in stadium design as well. Just 25 years ago or so at the height of the new stadium construction, baseball had an unwritten rule that any new stadium had to have a minimum of 40,000 seats. Today, stadiums are getting approved with 30,000 or fewer seats, and many of those are corporate luxury boxes for commercial customers. Even the Orioles discussed potentially leaving Camden Yards for a cozier locale.
Take the Cleveland franchise. In the mid-90s Cleveland sold out an astonishing 455 games in a row in a venue that held nearly 45,000 fans. Today? That facility (Progressive Field) holds fewer than 35,000...more than a 20% reduction in capacity. In addition, the average attendance is a mere 26,000 or so - leaving nearly 10,000 seats empty each home game. That’s a staggering 42% reduction in local attendance from the mid-90s for a team that has been quite successful recently and even gone to the World Series. Attendance and local viewership via local television networks have simply become much less relevant to the economics.
The world was vastly different 30 to 40 years ago when geographic expansion made sense to gain fan interest. No longer. As you note, contraction would strengthen the game in several key respects and increase interest. There are simply too many meaningless uncompetitive teams in MLB today. Providing more awful products at the buffet table won’t solve anything.
The postseason is its own a disaster. Baseball has added more meaningless teams to the mix which - again - dilutes the product at a time when there should be the most fan interest. This is yet again a misplaced local fan play when the game’s real draws have a national fan base accessible by TV. Getting the Twins or Royals into the postseason to be quickly eliminated does nothing for the health of baseball even if the local bars are more crowded for a few nights.
Take a good look at the postseason each year. How many teams have a realistic shot at winning the World Series? Two? Three? Last year, there were whispers that not a single AL team was a threat to win against the superior NL – a point later proven by the Yankees. So, the Playoffs are largely now about watching more games with mediocre teams unsurprisingly eliminate themselves while wasting everyone's time. There are no surprises.
This has led to a corrosive secondary effect - the trade deadline insanity. Each year we now see teams with no realistic shot at the World Series being "buyers" at the deadline to try and squeak into the postseason as cheered on by the mindless media and their ridiculous tracking spreadsheets. All teams that do deadline deals are hailed as “smart" and "aggressive” but ultimately do little in the postseason. Trading your future away in exchange for some middle of the road rental for 2 months does nothing for your franchise in the current year and ensures that your future is less bright. The competitive balance is weakened.
Reducing the postseason entrants will incentivize more teams to hold onto their prospects and draft picks to continue rebuilding with more upside. Remember when the media wildly cheered the Angels for trading away their future to try and retain Shohei? Yeah, not so smart after all.
Where I must part ways, however, is with the need for a salary cap. I’ve never been convinced that the correlation between spend, and winning is all that strong…less so with the explosion in pitching arm injuries (see LA Dodgers circa 2025). Sure, spending money can buy you a competitive team, but I’m far less convinced it will buy a trophy at the end. It can raise your floor but does not guarantee the ceiling. Since politics are local, are the Orioles better this year after spending more on payroll?
More importantly, the argument that increased spending has driven up fan prices is illusory and a tragic head fake when the next lockout happens. It’s one of those of things in life that “sounds” right – but isn’t.
Baseball has an inelastic supply of games – they are fixed. What a team can charge for their product is driven by local demand – not some arbitrary price set by the owner. If that were true, then Steve Martin’s standup joke about simply charging every audience member $1 million per ticket and then doing one show and retiring…wouldn’t be humorous.
Prices are set by supply and demand in the market – not the whim of the supplier. Furthermore, the demand for baseball entertainment is elastic – fans can easily not go to games and elect to spend their money elsewhere. Baseball is not insulin…fans can quickly choose to not spend a penny on it if they perceive it as too expensive.
Thus, if the price is set too high relative to demand, the owner gets LESS revenue as demand falls faster than the price increase…not more. High spend teams tend to have higher prices because they have more fan interest – more well-known players – and more demand for their product. I’m sure the Mets ticket prices went up this year, not “to pay for Soto” but to capture the incremental increased fan demand for a Mets team having Juan Soto in the lineup.
So, for similar reasons I do not favor a reduction in games to 154. Leave it alone and let the market control the outcomes for a bit. Again, too many rapid changes are negative…go slow.
Where you hit a HR, however, is with the suggestion that baseball needs a salary floor. Look at how little most baseball teams spend on their product, and you can quickly figure out why their attendance and ratings are so low, and why fan malaise is growing. By cutting costs, teams are likely increasing their profitability…but destroying fan interest except for the hardened few.
A salary floor would increase demand for players services and force laggard teams to truly compete with a better product to make money. A salary floor would increase the linkage between performance and profitability…and fan interest. It will force teams to increase revenues to improve profitability and not simply lazily cut costs.
A floor would force teams to win in the marketplace to become more profitable. Those that don’t will be financially punished. That’s unequivocally better for fans.
I love these suggestions. But I’m selfishly rooting for 1) the braves to not be in a “West” division (I can’t stand west coast night games and my kid can’t watch). And 2) I want an expansion team to come to Raleigh…
The relegation and promotion system used by European soccer is positively brilliant. Instead of rewarding incompetent/tanking teams with high draft picks, your major league team gets demoted to AAA.
I like a lot of your suggestions. But how much of the problem is a change in attitude of the owners? I see this across all the sports leagues. So many owners view their franchise as money making machines. They decided the best way to do that is to cut costs, usually by refusing to pay good players, and riding TV deals. How many MLB front offices are actually trying to win a world series?
Great question, maybe the topic of a future post!
Please write it. I think this is a problem plaguing all of sports. It’s more obvious in the MLB because of the salary rules. But I think it's everywhere.
Very nice article. I like almost all of your suggestions. Do you really need wild card teams though? Baseball was pretty compelling when two divisions winners went straight to the LCS. 162 games should be enough to prove whether or not you belong there. The last year that format was used (1993), the Giants lost on the last day of the season and missed the playoffs despite winning 105 games. That last week in the NL West was as good as a playoff series. And the World Series winner tended to be the best team in baseball; now it's usually whatever above-average team is playing on a hot streak in October.
Consolidated divisions would revive some broken rivalries. The Phillies and Pirates had classic battles for the NL East throughout the 1970s and 1980s and now they're just teams that play each other six times a year or so. Other regions probably have similar stories.
Despite my traditionalist inclinations, though, I need to say that I LOVE the pace of games after the pitch clock reforms.
Thanks for the reply!
It’s great to read crisp and passionate analysis. There is a lot here to agree with. A 154-game schedule - yes. A return to just four divisions and four playoff teams per league - yes. Salary cap - a must. I’d love to see my Guardians return to the American League East if a salary cap was in place.
On the other hand… Even with 30 MLB teams, there could still be just four divisions. The extra inning runner on 2nd is great and works well, just as the universal DH works well. The extra inning runner should be included in post-season play as well.
I hope you endorse the pitch clock, because it is marvelous. And I greatly enjoy seeing the Guardians play everyone in the MLB. Throughout my childhood I often heard the NL was superior to the AL. Now it can be proven or disproven on the field.
Thanks for the comment Alan.
So much to love here. Baseball is slowly dying on the vine and needs much out of the box thinking like this.
Let’s first start with a key problem you identify. The sudden use of rule book changes to alter the perceived aesthetic shortcomings of the game. Every year now, we see arguments in favor of increased and needless rule changes that are harming the flow and familiarity of the game. We’ve seen this multiple instances including the meaningless effort to ban the shift and the referenced ridiculous California Rule.
One I would strongly urge to be eliminated is the so called “two disengagements” rule with a runner on first. This is in truth a single disengagement rule since if you fail on the first attempt the risk associated with a failed second attempt is simply too high for another attempt since another failure guarantees the runner gets second base. Either remove this poorly thought-out rule or at a minimum increase it to three disengagements to create more balance. The additional time added to the game is negligible.
But let’s turn to your strongest point. Yes, baseball desperately needs contraction. I'm willing to go even deeper - to 24 teams - and include the likes of Sacramento/Las Vegas (my team) and a "pick 'em" team. As you point out, baseball has dramatically diluted its product and created mediocrity and confusion, leading to regular season apathy. Expansion will only dilute fan interest further and lead to poorer financials for existing teams.
That realization is not lost on ownership. A mere 10 years ago, MLB was firm in its intentions to expand by two teams by 2025 and another 2 teams by 2032. Now, the Commissioner strongly suggests that there will be no expansion during his remaining term, ending in 2029 and likely leaving expansion plans in doubt for the future Commissioner to resolve. Furthermore, beyond Nashville, it's not apparent that any other city is an obvious "yes" for expansion.
Many talked about cities (e.g., Austin, Charlotte) will dilute interest in the Astros, Rangers, and Braves) and will likely be met with fierce resistance. Same with cities like Portland and Salt Lake City. Other cities have shown little enthusiasm or energy for a baseball team - preferring to invest in an NBA or NFL expansion team down the road. When you hear that the massive failure just 20 years ago that was Montreal is now suddenly “an obvious expansion choice” you know they are grasping for straws.
What is missed in all the expansion exuberance, is that sports in general have become television products and not local spectator driven products. This is vastly different than when I was younger. Then, there was no internet, and even early cable only offered the Cubs and Braves for a time. So, following the "local" team in the papers and on the local channel was essential.
No longer. Today, many fans easily follow an out of market team via the internet and streaming. The disaggregation of media has become so pronounced that fans complain they don’t know what service is carrying their team’s game and complain loudly about local blackouts supporting failing local MLB networks…an approach that seem so positively 1970s and only alienating the shrinking fan base.
You see this shift in stadium design as well. Just 25 years ago or so at the height of the new stadium construction, baseball had an unwritten rule that any new stadium had to have a minimum of 40,000 seats. Today, stadiums are getting approved with 30,000 or fewer seats, and many of those are corporate luxury boxes for commercial customers. Even the Orioles discussed potentially leaving Camden Yards for a cozier locale.
Take the Cleveland franchise. In the mid-90s Cleveland sold out an astonishing 455 games in a row in a venue that held nearly 45,000 fans. Today? That facility (Progressive Field) holds fewer than 35,000...more than a 20% reduction in capacity. In addition, the average attendance is a mere 26,000 or so - leaving nearly 10,000 seats empty each home game. That’s a staggering 42% reduction in local attendance from the mid-90s for a team that has been quite successful recently and even gone to the World Series. Attendance and local viewership via local television networks have simply become much less relevant to the economics.
The world was vastly different 30 to 40 years ago when geographic expansion made sense to gain fan interest. No longer. As you note, contraction would strengthen the game in several key respects and increase interest. There are simply too many meaningless uncompetitive teams in MLB today. Providing more awful products at the buffet table won’t solve anything.
The postseason is its own a disaster. Baseball has added more meaningless teams to the mix which - again - dilutes the product at a time when there should be the most fan interest. This is yet again a misplaced local fan play when the game’s real draws have a national fan base accessible by TV. Getting the Twins or Royals into the postseason to be quickly eliminated does nothing for the health of baseball even if the local bars are more crowded for a few nights.
Take a good look at the postseason each year. How many teams have a realistic shot at winning the World Series? Two? Three? Last year, there were whispers that not a single AL team was a threat to win against the superior NL – a point later proven by the Yankees. So, the Playoffs are largely now about watching more games with mediocre teams unsurprisingly eliminate themselves while wasting everyone's time. There are no surprises.
This has led to a corrosive secondary effect - the trade deadline insanity. Each year we now see teams with no realistic shot at the World Series being "buyers" at the deadline to try and squeak into the postseason as cheered on by the mindless media and their ridiculous tracking spreadsheets. All teams that do deadline deals are hailed as “smart" and "aggressive” but ultimately do little in the postseason. Trading your future away in exchange for some middle of the road rental for 2 months does nothing for your franchise in the current year and ensures that your future is less bright. The competitive balance is weakened.
Reducing the postseason entrants will incentivize more teams to hold onto their prospects and draft picks to continue rebuilding with more upside. Remember when the media wildly cheered the Angels for trading away their future to try and retain Shohei? Yeah, not so smart after all.
Where I must part ways, however, is with the need for a salary cap. I’ve never been convinced that the correlation between spend, and winning is all that strong…less so with the explosion in pitching arm injuries (see LA Dodgers circa 2025). Sure, spending money can buy you a competitive team, but I’m far less convinced it will buy a trophy at the end. It can raise your floor but does not guarantee the ceiling. Since politics are local, are the Orioles better this year after spending more on payroll?
More importantly, the argument that increased spending has driven up fan prices is illusory and a tragic head fake when the next lockout happens. It’s one of those of things in life that “sounds” right – but isn’t.
Baseball has an inelastic supply of games – they are fixed. What a team can charge for their product is driven by local demand – not some arbitrary price set by the owner. If that were true, then Steve Martin’s standup joke about simply charging every audience member $1 million per ticket and then doing one show and retiring…wouldn’t be humorous.
Prices are set by supply and demand in the market – not the whim of the supplier. Furthermore, the demand for baseball entertainment is elastic – fans can easily not go to games and elect to spend their money elsewhere. Baseball is not insulin…fans can quickly choose to not spend a penny on it if they perceive it as too expensive.
Thus, if the price is set too high relative to demand, the owner gets LESS revenue as demand falls faster than the price increase…not more. High spend teams tend to have higher prices because they have more fan interest – more well-known players – and more demand for their product. I’m sure the Mets ticket prices went up this year, not “to pay for Soto” but to capture the incremental increased fan demand for a Mets team having Juan Soto in the lineup.
So, for similar reasons I do not favor a reduction in games to 154. Leave it alone and let the market control the outcomes for a bit. Again, too many rapid changes are negative…go slow.
Where you hit a HR, however, is with the suggestion that baseball needs a salary floor. Look at how little most baseball teams spend on their product, and you can quickly figure out why their attendance and ratings are so low, and why fan malaise is growing. By cutting costs, teams are likely increasing their profitability…but destroying fan interest except for the hardened few.
A salary floor would increase demand for players services and force laggard teams to truly compete with a better product to make money. A salary floor would increase the linkage between performance and profitability…and fan interest. It will force teams to increase revenues to improve profitability and not simply lazily cut costs.
A floor would force teams to win in the marketplace to become more profitable. Those that don’t will be financially punished. That’s unequivocally better for fans.
Thanks again for the terrific article.
I love these suggestions. But I’m selfishly rooting for 1) the braves to not be in a “West” division (I can’t stand west coast night games and my kid can’t watch). And 2) I want an expansion team to come to Raleigh…
The relegation and promotion system used by European soccer is positively brilliant. Instead of rewarding incompetent/tanking teams with high draft picks, your major league team gets demoted to AAA.
Consider it…
The National League should get rid of the DH
None of this addresses the game on the field, which many lifelong baseball fans like me simply now find boring. That’s why I’ve tuned out.
Interested what you find boring about the game? Thanks for the read and comment.
Oh just the usual stuff. Endless pitching changes. Few balls in play.
ETA: and the DH. I loathe the DH. My hometown team is an NL team and I detest that’s it’s been forced on us.