I want to reconfigure MLB as follows:

[OmahaBlueDog]

1) 100 Game season starting at the same time and ending at roughly the end of July.
2) All Star Game becomes a double-header, and is played at the end of the season. In a new twist, in game 1, the baseball players vote a normal sized roster of non-pitchers, and select two starters and 4 relievers for each team; for game 2 the fans pick two managers, who then pick teams "playground style" from those who weren't picked for game 1.

3) 24 team playoff starts.It's th best 24 teams with no regard to which league they are in. Everyone plays a 7-game series, and each series should take about 10 days
-first series is the 9-24 seeds
-second series is seeds 1-8 versus the winners of the first series
-third series is the remaining 8 teams
-fourth series is the remaining four teams
-fifth series is the World Series. It's no longer AL v. NL -- it''s the two best teams left standing. Let's do this in 9 games.

Even given that the playoffs wouldn't start until 8/10, that should get the entire baseball season done by the first week of October. Far fewer meaningless games are played August-September, and the World Series is done before everyone's interest is fully invested in college football or the NFL.

[Crowman1979]

1. Ok, the shortened season sounds great but....

I would go back to only having two divisions in each league until their are more than eight teams in each one. That way the league championships can be played in September as a best-of-five. Then play the World Series right when October begins, when its not freezing cold yet.

[OmahaBlueDog]

2. Getting the World Series back to October is a must

Even if they did nothing else I suggest, MLB would do well to simply cut 30-40 games out of the schedule.

An alternative to the multi-tier NHL style playoff format: Schedule the first half of the season normally. At the All-Star break, tell the bottom 1/4 of the league their year is done, and reconfigure the schedule based on the remaining teams.

[OceanEcosystem]

3. A 100-game season sounds great......

...but having 24 teams in the playoffs really sounds like too many.


Playoff qualification should be about rewarding the teams that are good, and having more than half of the league qualifying for the playoffs would kind of defeat that.

[OmahaBlueDog]

4. I see it differently

I see the playoffs as a chance to start paring out the weak teams to end up (eventually) with the two best. My problem with MLB as it exists now is that bu 8/1, the bottom third of the league is plays a lot of meaningless games against one another. And does it prove anything if a division-leading Yankees team plays a Mariners team that is 30 games out of first? Let's just end that nonsense, and start making every game after Game 100 meaningful.

[theHandpuppet]

15. I agree

I have no interest in watching a bunch of bottom feeders in a playoff. But the regular season should be shortened by 30-40 games.

[Aquavit]

5. A FIFA-style arrangement would be ideal IMO!

One league of 30 teams. Each team plays a home-and-away series against every other team, and all games are played Friday-Saturday-Sunday. Each game is nine innings long, period, and a team gets 3 points of a win, 1 point for a tie, and 0 points for a loss. The team at the top of the standings wins the title, and ties are decided by run differential first and away runs second. The bottom five teams are automatically dropped to AAA (and the five best teams from AAA, AA, A+, and A are all moved up a league automatically), and the sixth-bottom team from each league has to play the sixth-top team from the next league down in a home-and-away relegation playoff. Oh, and in this format there would be no such thing as the designated hitter.

[OmahaBlueDog]

6. ..so then we'd play the World Series every four years, like the World Cup?

[Aquavit]

7. World Baseball Classic

The World Cup equivalent is really already in place, with the World Baseball Classic. What we could do to replace the current series here in the States/Canada is a sort of national cup a la the FA Cup or DFB Pokal. Britain and Germany, respectively, hold these tournaments every year.

I don't expect MLB to ever approve anything like this, however good for baseball I think it would be.

[Jamaal510]

8. I'm loving the idea of just having one league,

not just for MLB, but for also the NBA and NFL, too. To Hell with these divisional rivalries. Every team's sight should be only on the Championship at the end, not some silly divisional title. Even if your team wins the division, it means very little if they choke in the playoffs.

[OmahaBlueDog]

11. Agree wholeheartedly with the NFL

8 divisions. Best upper half of the league in the playoffs. Two best teams in the Super Bowl -- be they 9ers/Raiders, Washington/Dallas, or Ravens/Steelers.

[FrodosPet]

9. That's 31 fewer days of work for stadium employees

OK, so perhaps they aren't the best high paying jobs in the world, but Major League Baseball is a labor intensive activity. Ticket takers, ushers, parking, security, concession stands, grounds crews...

I could see a 154 game season, but I don't see a need to drop to 100.

[OmahaBlueDog]

10. Fewer days, but more meaningful games = higher attendance

Stadium workers won't show up on a blazing hot September Wednesday to try to selll beer at a 1PM getaway day game between the last place Royals and the last place Mariners with 4,500 in attendance.

[demosincebirth]

12. Baseball is great in California. Lets play 170 games.

[OmahaBlueDog]

13. In parts of California, certainly..

The Padres have made some nice runs, but have never recaptured the Randy Johnson/Dave Winfield glory days of nearly 40 years ago. They struggle with attendance, and are one of the teams always mentioned in contraction talks.

The Dodgers will soon be a great product again. Magic is the right owner for that club (if he doesn't sell it to buy the Lakers). They need new talent, and a stadium reno worthy of HGTV. other than that, they're good.

The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim should continue to be called the California Angels by all who value common sense in nomenclature. That said, they are an exciting team.

I'd now like to focus on the Bay Area for a moment.

After freezing their fans half to death in Candlestick, the Giants got a shiny new stadium that has already changed names three times. Sure, fans can catch errant balls in their beer cups while floating on a raft in McCovey Cove, but the bottom line is that this frou-frou, overhyped team has won only 4 pennants and 2 World Series titles in 45 years.

In that same timeframe, the Oakland A's, a team that plays in a city in which people actually work for a living (and a city with a vastly more interesting bridge) are the host to the much-maligned A's. The A's have one of the most undervalued stadiums in MLB, with it's wide foul areas making it a pitchers park. A family can still ride to the stadium on BART, and save their parking money for better tickets, or more beer. Yes, Oakland has had some dreadful years. The A's had Moneyball and Billyball. The A's also had 4 World Series titles in the same time frame the Giants have only had two. They won 6 pennants, and 15 Western Division titles in the same timeframe that the Giants won 4 pennants and 8 Western Division titles. In short, from a Baseball perspective, Oakland is a vastly superior city to San Francisco.

Nevertheless, I still say shorten the season to 100 games.

[demosincebirth]

14. I'd sit on wooden bleacher seats and have for years past (PCL) to watch

my team play. New ballparks don't, just magically, spring up with pennant contenders. I love the coliseum for the reasons you mentioned. Which other ballparks have those attributes? Take Bart to the park and it drops you off (almost) right at the front door. Greedy owners like Wolf and his ilk want huge revenues from corporate clients. That's why he's hell-bent on moving to San Jose, and silicon valley. That area is, and always has been Giant's fertile ground for SF fans, with the San JOse Giants minor league team playing there for 60 years.



We also have winter leagues that play all winter. I Go to a few of those games too. I see many good players who play for the love of the game and are super good...they just haven't had the one chance.

Love to see that.