Time for MLB to Consider 140-Game Season
Snow. Literally, snow on my roof Sunday morning. We’re three weeks into the baseball season, and there has been more canceled dates than a Guns N’ Roses concert. Zing. Mother nature is giving us the Mark McGwire treatment.
Growing up in New Jersey, we were used to the cold. Our baseball seasons were shorter in youth leagues, which means less exposure for players as well as reasons to doubt their potential. That’s why guys like Mike Trout get drafted 25th overall instead of in the top five. That aside, living in a cold-weather city, you know April and October are going to be miserable; but you grit your teeth and deal with it. But why should we deal with it? We all understand baseball players are the “Boys of Summer,” not the Boys of November Rain, and Spring Training is played in welcoming weather to get players ready.
Sidenote: The folks at Scoutee, who created an app and product that turns your smartphone into a radar gun/scouting tool, wrote an interesting piece on the origins of Spring Training. Having players in Florida and Arizona for months before sending them to cold-weather cities to start the season is insane. Anthony Rizzo beat me to it, but it’s something I’ve advocated for years: The baseball season needs to be shorter.
I spent three seasons calling minor league baseball games, and two seasons working for the Philadelphia 76ers, so I understand the difference between the grinds of each season. In baseball, each season we played 140 games, which lasted from mid-late April to early September. In those five-and-a-half months of baseball, we averaged around 10-12 days off. To put that in prospective, the typical Monday-Friday job has eight days off per month. Take into account the people that work for the team from sales to stadium operations, especially in MLB and Independent Leagues, are working 12-15 hours every day.
So if we want to make the season shorter how do we do that? Well, let’s look at the schedule breakdown. Each team plays division opponents 19 times per season for a total of 76 games. They play the other 10 teams in the league six or seven times. The remaining 20 games are against interleague foes.
If you’re a believer in the 140-game schedule, cut the division games to 15 per team, six games per remaining league opponent and 20 interleague games. In this scenario, you can have five three-game series against your rivals, a home and home with the remainder of your league and whatever cockamamie formula they use for the interleague games. I can already hear people complaining about the lack of division games, which hurts the drama, blah, blah, blah. I love the Yankees. Punching Red Sox in the face is fun to watch. I don’t care about seeing them for seven different series.
But that doesn’t solve the weather issues. I say push Spring Training through Mid-April. The first two weeks of the regular season, all Dome teams and warm-weather cities host the cold city teams. That brings us to May. We can leave the season the same and have it run through September with more off days. Or, give teams their average of three days off per month and end two weeks earlier, which would be great for October baseball. Jorge Solar still haunts my dreams.
I’m realistic in knowing owners are going to lose so much money by cutting the season to 140 games. I heard a couple of pundits estimating the value of an home playoff game in the NBA at about $1 million. Here’s some solid numbers if you want to do the math for MLB’s formula.
Owners will argue that players have to take pay cuts to make up the loss. The reduction will likely be outrageous, so players probably will likely balk.
It’s an exercise in futility, but it’s one that needs to be made. I wanted to buy White Sox tickets this year because I think they’re going to be awesome very soon, making it a worthwhile investment. However, I couldn’t get a group together to purchase tickets. One of the biggest arguments was people knew they’d eat a ton of tickets early on. Who wants to go to these games? And even if you have tickets, you’re working the secondary market for the makeup games and dealing with all kinds of headaches.
Baseball, take a cue from football. People clamor for it, not just because of its TV-friendly structure, but because less is more. People always have and always will want what they can’t have.
At the very least, no cold-city team should set foot in their state until May. It’s insanity the Yankees were scheduled to play 17 of 28 games at home in April. Yeah, it’s an advantage for teams to start the season at home, but it’s better than seeing the Braves crap their way through an inning giving up nine runs in the freezing rain.
You’re not tougher for sitting in the stands of a freezing game, or more of a fan. You’re just sitting in miserable weather with a 1,000 other people. Baseball owners, isn’t it worth cutting those games for the health of your players? For the health of your concessions and your pockets?
