Future Fanpost Topics

but there are plenty of people who speak fluent DLese. Therefore, Pavano would feel at home.

I am seriously considering contracting you.

i like the thought of more playoff teams, I just don’t think there is a good way to make it happen. First round bye’s are more harmful than beneficial in baseball IMO. there fore they would need to expand to eight in each league instead of four. But Eight in each league is way to much.

Six is a nice number in each league but how do you get two more teams into the playoffs. four divisions and two wildcards works in the NL but not the AL unless you wanted two three team divisions which wouldn’t work. three wildcards in each league would be the easyest option.

you could do a one game series between three wildcards. two play each other on Monday, the winner plays the best record wildcard on tues to get to a real 7-game series starting wens. one game series doesn’t really seem right though to determine a winner and wouldn’t really expand the playoffs much for the extra two teams. there might also need to be a one game playoff to determine who goes to the one game playoffs pushing it back another day or two in messy tie’s.

about the only thing that would work for me is a three game series between four teams in each league back to back to back starting on Monday with a bye for the the top two. the next 7 game series starts on a Thursday so the bye teams only have three days off. the Three days off momentum disadvantage could equal the disadvantage the wildcards get in the next round as there best pitcher or best three pitchers have been spent. the problem of one game playoffs pushing back the series another day could be fixed by doing tiebreakers like in football to eliminate those.

all the options seem fatally flawed in some way with the last option the least worst

the most important thing to me in the NFL is to get a rookie salary cap similar to basketball. give them three years of very good, not great, salary’s and give them every incentive to stay with the drafting team afterwards if the team decides to keep them. Of course the money saved would have to go back into vet’s salary’s or much better retirement benefits for all players. At least having the top picks in the draft wouldn’t be such an albatross to the team’s if they draft bad. If that dosen’t fly let NFL teams go the way of MLB and let them get the same pick +1 in the next years draft if unable to sign.

18 game season’s would be awsome to watch. player’s are going to get hurt more though. I don’t even think two bye’s would be enough. Three bye’s, every four/five games, would let the player’s be much more healthy for such a long season, it would expand the season another full month with the extra bye’s and games. I’m down. The NFL would make alot more money and I would like an extra month of football.

And nothing to do with the CBA but do something about instant replay. Refs are still fking up way too many games. At the very least give them a third challage if they get either the first or second right, I would also prefer all questionable TD’s to be booth reviewed with twice as many camera’s around the end zone. I think I can deal with games lasting another 10-15 mins if they got more calls right. I’m curious how bad things were back in the day before replay.

   

Until then, I’d like to hear more about Bud Selig’s modeling career.

The White Sox team… Harrelson, Stone, et al… is the absolute worst. Period. Hands down. End of topic. Enough said… lock the thread.

I like the Twins and Rangers announcing teams.

Warren and Phelps both have innings-eating #4 upside

but I always feel weird listening to the games without Fosse/Kuip on the mic.

Who is the best announcing crew in baseball in your opinion, and why?

Currently, Ken Korach and whoever happens to be along for the ride (in this case good ‘ol Vince). 5 years ago I would have said Vin Scully, but watching probably around 25+ Dodger games a year (don’t worry, it’s usually just background noise), he’s at a point where his longevity is just cute and not effective anymore.
Frankly, I have a very difficult time being convinced a TV crew can compare to the best radio broadcast crews. It takes a much more colorful and broad knowledge of language to describe a baseball game to listeners who cannot see the action than it does to viewers.

(Not just a few words either, we had a non-baseball related conversation.)

Not only is he fluent, Spanish may well be his first language. He’s certainly bilingual.

It’s only a matter of time before the Orioles, Rays, and Jays start hollering that they want out of the AL East and who can blame them? The Rays caught a bolt of lightning from 2008-2010, but the hopes of competition for them are always… 30% (or so?) lower than everyone else’s. Plus, having the two payroll titans in the same division and league makes sense only for them and works against the original point of the wild card.

Anyway, it’d be cool if you went through some of the possible permutations, NSJ.

what makes him tick? where’s he from?
has he got a girl? has he got parents? how many?
what are his hopes and dreams, his desires and aspirations?
does he think all the time or set aside a certain portion of the day?
how tall is he? what’s his shoe size?
what does he have for breakfast? does he put jam on his toast or doesn’t he? if not, why not, and since when?

Gary Cohen is a good play by play, Darling may be the smartest announcer in all of sports, both within baseball and in general, and Keith Hernandez can be genuinely funny. They are balanced and knowledgeable, I love watching the Mets because of them.

I have it on my list to write the an for my European editor on the differences between the 4 NorAm sports’ CBA and how European Soccer goes about business. This here might be a good trigger to start.

Any good soul around here who might guide me with the basics? The main commonalities and differences between NHL, NBA, NFL and MLB, when it comes to draft, salaries, trades, revenue sharing and such? I’ll do my homework, you know I always do, but getting started with the help of the people who know much more about it would be nice.

I have no particular desire to see playoffs expanded, but I just want to note that a lot more possibilities exist than are often acknowledged. The discussions above all seem to assume that the number of playoff teams must be a power of 2, or else if it’s not then there needs to be bye rounds while wild-card matchups are played for the spot in a regular power-of-2 tree.

But there are plenty of other ways to do it. Just as an example, suppose you want to have six playoff teams out of a league. Give them a seeding order A, B, C, D, E, F. First round of playoffs can have simultaneous series between A-F, B-D, C-E. Second round of playoffs can have simultaneous series between A-E, B-F, C-D. At the end of two rounds, each team is either 2-0, 1-1, or 0-2. Two best records go on, with tiebreaker being either initial seeding or some rule about how their opponents fared.

That’s just an example of a possible framework. Lots of options for tweaking it in order to maximize considerations of scheduling, TV audience, travel, avoiding teams playing in a lame-duck situation, etc. The point is, the usual single-elimination playoff+wildcard scheme is not the only option. There are lots of ways to make playoffs work if you’re willing to be a little creative.

Even five teams in the playoffs could be made to work. You could do a round-robinish thing where each team plays each, or maybe most of each but not necessarily all. The fact that you’re scoring over the mini-tournament would make it easier to let go of other limiting conventions. Like it would not be necessary to have each series be at least five games since it isn’t single elimination, and you wouldn’t need each pair to have both home and away games.

So suppose you have five teams: A, B, C, D, E. Figure each team will play a three-game series against each of the others. That’s ten pairings for a total of 30 games, with each team playing 12 games. Winner is best W-L record over the tournament, with first tie-breaker being tied teams head to head. Each three-game series is in just one location, for better travel schedule. Series are scheduled to overlap so that the entire tournament is ongoing, so each team will have a semi-bye when the other pairs are playing, but series could be staggered to minimize the off days just like in regular season. If you want to give an advantage to the higher seeds, you could arrange it so A and B each get 3 home series and 1 away series, while D and E get 1 home series and 3 away series.

Again, my point is there are lots of possibilities. You shouldn’t assume that a given number of playoff teams is unworkable.

Do you guys think that the current wave of ballparks built in the last 10-20 years will become outdated at the same rate as the previous generation of parks?

My theory is that the new ones will withstand the test of time much better. If multi-use stadiums proved to have a shelf life of ~30-40 years, I think that this new wave of baseball-only ballparks could last 60 years. Could be a good discussion topic – what is the next wave of stadium evolution that will make the current iteration of ballparks outdated? And how far away is that innovation? What will the in-ballpark experience look like in 30-40 years? (Part of what fascinates me about an A’s new stadium is, they pretty much get to provide a peak at this future, in the way that Camden Yards set a precedent for the next 20 years).

I really hope someone will take that one on. Now that Beltre is off the table, and the Nationals have spent their remaining money on LaRoche, I think it’s worth considering. Especially since the reliever-market prices have been the most insane thing of all.

The Twins are incentivized to let him walk because of the two high picks they get. The A’s might be able to swoop in on a diminished market for a 200-inning, 4.00 FIP guy.