MLB Realignment

[WSPanic]

Don't understand why people complain about players salaries, it must be a jealous guy thing.  Some movie stars make 50-60 MILLION PER MOVIE but you don't hear people complain or heckle them.

I think you're misinterpreting the arguments. And, people bitch about overpaid, undertalented Hollywood-types all the time.

[KCMax]

You forgot about the Angels, but I see your point.  However, the Yankees spend twice the Royals' entire payroll more than the White Sox, and the Red Sox spend the Royals' payroll alone more than the White Sox.  AL Central has certainly been spending more money lately, but outside of injuries, it is pretty telling how often the Angels, Red Sox, and Yanks make the postseason.  In the last 10 seasons, the leaders in post-season berths are the Yanks (9), Red Sox (6), Angels (6), and Twins (6).  The Twins are the only team you could point to to say that payroll isn't importand, but they are now spending a lot, and spending wasn't big in the division when they were spending less.  The only other team with more than 2 berths is the A's at 4, and it just shows that Moneyball cannot work in perpetuity without big payrolls following.

Which is why I'd want two WC teams in a two division format. That way, you can have the Red Sox and Yanks in your division in the playoffs and still make the playoffs.

[bobbyhawks]

Which is why I'd want two WC teams in a two division format. That way, you can have the Red Sox and Yanks in your division in the playoffs and still make the playoffs.

Sure, but you also would potentially have to play the Red Sox and Yanks twice as often, while other larger markets would suddenly feel less smothered (Toronto and Baltimore).  My argument is that the only small market team in the AL over the last ten years to have any kind of sustained success only had that success because they were sheltered from better teams by a lesser, smaller market (by payroll) division.  As you stated, this is less and less the case, so take away the three divisions, and there is even more exposure to having large payroll teams hog all of the playoff spots now that they don't have to beat each other to death in the AL East.  Or, there is more necessity to overspend to have any success from the former AL Central teams as you are now competing directly with the Angels, Red Sox, and Yanks, instead of smaller payroll teams.

[pash]

.

[bobbyhawks]

It will be extremely interesting to see which league makes a serious attempt at being an international league first.  I'm not talking NFL Europe or anything like that, but establishing a league that is either equal to the one in the US or at least allowed to compete against them periodically.  Obviously, they don't want to dilute the talent playing in the North American time zones, but one would think there is potential to grow the big four US sports beyond the continent, ala FIFA.  I'd think the NHL is one of the best poised to do this, with many players coming from Europe already.

MLB has a great opportunity in Asia, but they will probably never get beyond the fact it is America's game (and America North).  It would be interesting to see the MLB try to acquire or merge with the Nippon Professional Basbeall league and Korean Professional Baseball.  That is 20 teams or so currently.  Also, MLB could try to form a more expansive latin league, with a Central American division/league and a South American division/league.  Eventually, the World Series would actually be the World Series, with the four winners of the North American, Central American, South American, and Southeast Asian leagues competing.

Someone has to expand eventually, or they risk a foreign league stealing the top league honors (or the sport losing out to other more international sports).  The NBA could probably expand the easiest to Europe since there is already a great following.  Basketball, with small rosters and the difference being one or two players also seems like the sport which could handle expansion the best.  I have a feeling that, once one league in the US expands, they will all follow.  The hardest sell will be the NFL.  While popular, there really aren't many international players.

[KCMax]

I dunno, the Japan League is similar, but in many ways, much different from MLB which their own set of traditions and customs and history. I'd kinda hate to see that lost. Plus, I hate monopolies, and pro sports here have a protected monopoly - at least rival international leagues give some sort of competition. I'd rather see lots of international leagues that are on par with each other like soccer with a tournament at the end of the year to determine a true World champion like you talk about.

FWIW, MLB has agreements with the Nippon Baseball League to help professionalize it more.

[bobbyhawks]

I dunno, the Japan League is similar, but in many ways, much different from MLB which their own set of traditions and customs and history. I'd kinda hate to see that lost. Plus, I hate monopolies, and pro sports here have a protected monopoly - at least rival international leagues give some sort of competition. I'd rather see lots of international leagues that are on par with each other like soccer with a tournament at the end of the year to determine a true World champion like you talk about.

FWIW, MLB has agreements with the Nippon Baseball League to help professionalize it more.

They need to have a regulating body (like FIFA, but ideally not at all LIKE FIFA), though, that helps determine common rules.  Japanese players play with a different ball and have a few different rules.  The current MLB players association and ownership probably wants nothing to do with legitimizing another league as it will make competing in the USA much more difficult and expensive.  It would be great if they could play a rookie game during the All-Star break against Japanese and/or Korean players to get some interest, though. 

Perhaps someone like A-Rod will be the first quality non-Japanese MLB player to finish his career in Japan with a Beckham-like large contract.  It doesn't really have the same glamorous cultural appeal as coming to the USA to finish a career does, though.

[pash]

.

[phuqueue]

They need to have a regulating body (like FIFA, but ideally not at all LIKE FIFA), though, that helps determine common rules.  Japanese players play with a different ball and have a few different rules.  The current MLB players association and ownership probably wants nothing to do with legitimizing another league as it will make competing in the USA much more difficult and expensive.  It would be great if they could play a rookie game during the All-Star break against Japanese and/or Korean players to get some interest, though. 

Perhaps someone like A-Rod will be the first quality non-Japanese MLB player to finish his career in Japan with a Beckham-like large contract.  It doesn't really have the same glamorous cultural appeal as coming to the USA to finish a career does, though.

There is a regulating body like FIFA.  It's called the International Baseball Federation and it's been around since the 30s.  They're the ones who work with the IOC to handle baseball as an Olympic sport (or, well, worked with the IOC when baseball was an Olympic sport) and they're also the ones who handle the Baseball World Cup, which is roughly as old as the FIFA World Cup except nobody's ever heard of it (it is also pretty much always won by Cuba).  The infrastructure is all there for baseball as an international sport like soccer, but the problem is there is intense interest in baseball in certain countries/regions of the world and utterly zero interest everywhere else.  For instance, the Netherlands is ranked first in "UEFA" (really the Confederation of European Baseball) and actually sixth in the world.  I was in the Netherlands last summer and talked about baseball with some Dutch people and they were only vaguely aware that there was a national baseball league in the Netherlands, they knew none of the players, none of the teams, had never seen a game, etc etc etc.  And they didn't care anyway because we were right in the thick of the World Cup at the time.  They weren't outright dismissive of baseball, they would talk about baseball with us and we would talk about soccer with them, but baseball was more of a curiosity than anything they were actually interested in or cared about.

Obviously we're not really talking here about growing baseball in Europe but my point is there already is a "FIFA" for baseball and it isn't the problem.  There's also a FIFA for basketball (FIBA), one for hockey (IIHF), and even for football (IFAF -- headquartered in France, the current president is a Swede, and two of the three IFAF World Cups that have been played were won by Japan).  The problem isn't a lack of organizations to set rules or orchestrate events, it's a lack of interest on some or all sides.  In the case of baseball, none of the other leagues are on par with MLB.  UEFA Champions League works because EPL is good, La Liga is good, Bundesliga, etc etc etc.  What other league is honestly going to compete with MLB?  You've got guys who will talk up Japan, but the fact of the matter is the number of Japanese players jumping to the majors is still relatively small and the number of American nobodies who find second life in Japan is still comparatively large, two facts that don't seem to indicate parity.  It would be really cool, in an ideal world, if baseball were really popular everywhere like soccer is and you could get continental Champions League tournaments and maybe even a Club World Cup (although even the FIFA Club World Cup has only a short and checkered history), but you need the other leagues to catch up to MLB, which quite frankly probably isn't going to happen.  America already has a stranglehold on talent in a sport that has limited global appeal.  It's not really a good recipe for growing soccer-style international tournaments.

[bobbyhawks]

I was in the Netherlands last summer and talked about baseball with some Dutch people and they were only vaguely aware that there was a national baseball league in the Netherlands, they knew none of the players, none of the teams, had never seen a game, etc etc etc. 

Obviously, baseball has no traction in Europe.  I don't think you have to travel to Europe to find that out, but the whole Netherlands scenario is misleading. Their team includes the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba in the Caribbean as being part of the Netherlands.  This is why you had people like Andruw Jones in the WBC playing for the Netherlands.  It is a very popular sport in those countries, being amongst the Carribean and off the coast of Venezuela.

And I'm not saying that one can overnight legitimize the Japanese leagues, or any other leagues.  The MLB would have to start allowing for an international draft that every league participates in, and the lesser leagues would have to start offering some serious money to get players from the MLB.  It would be a huge leap and will not happen like that in the foreseeable future.  As far as talent goes, South America is probably the most likely place for a league to take off and work on its own, but it remains to be seen if there are owners with the money to keep players around.  It will take a true visionary to be the first American league to truly go global.  There is not chance that Bud Selig is that guy.

[phuqueue]

Obviously, baseball has no traction in Europe.  I don't think you have to travel to Europe to find that out, but the whole Netherlands scenario is misleading. Their team includes the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba in the Caribbean as being part of the Netherlands.  This is why you had people like Andruw Jones in the WBC playing for the Netherlands.  It is a very popular sport in those countries, being amongst the Carribean and off the coast of Venezuela.

Netherlands Antilles has its own team separate from the Netherlands national team and it's actually ranked 22nd in the world, far below the Netherlands national team.  The IBAF national teams aren't the ones competing in the WBC, which is mostly an MLB thing.  The issue with these national teams is nobody knows or cares about them.  The US team is second in the world and I can promise you nobody you've ever heard of even plays on it because it's more of an amateur thing.  That's beside the point in this case, because whether amateur or pro, the ranking of the Dutch team shows that there is some level of baseball talent in the Netherlands, but nobody in the Netherlands gives a damn about it.

Lest the high Dutch ranking be read to call into question the veracity of the rankings themselves, I should probably point out that they're a very very distant sixth -- Cuba has 986.02 points, USA 953.25, South Korea 811.34, Japan 799.74, Taiwan 524.36, Netherlands 374.51.  But it is also worth noting that because the rankings are based on tournament results, a middling team in a weak confederation will probably come out looking better than a middling or even decent team in a strong confederation (ie, one could make the argument that Netherlands Antilles only ranks below Netherlands because Netherlands Antilles has to play Cuba and USA, while Netherlands gets to play other European teams); this is partly addressed by weighting the points value assigned to different tournaments (a world tournament is worth more points than a regional one), but fact still remains that by winning your continental championship you might be able to rack up some easy points that simply aren't there for a better team that has to face tougher competition.  Then again, in the case of Netherlands/Netherlands Antilles, the gulf is pretty wide (Netherlands Antilles only has 48.98 points), so continental bias might not be a very strong argument.

And I'm not saying that one can overnight legitimize the Japanese leagues, or any other leagues.  The MLB would have to start allowing for an international draft that every league participates in, and the lesser leagues would have to start offering some serious money to get players from the MLB.  It would be a huge leap and will not happen like that in the foreseeable future.  As far as talent goes, South America is probably the most likely place for a league to take off and work on its own, but it remains to be seen if there are owners with the money to keep players around.  It will take a true visionary to be the first American league to truly go global.  There is not chance that Bud Selig is that guy.

Baseball isn't that popular in South America outside of a few places like Venezuela.  People in Brazil and Argentina don't care about baseball any more than people in Germany or Denmark do.  The Caribbean seems like a better place for a league to take off -- you'd get Venezuela in there, Mexico, DR, PR, ABCs, maybe even Cuba if the political thorns can be figured out (actually this probably isn't a very big deal since we're the only country that really has it out for Cuba), etc.  Of course there are already plenty of leagues serving all of these countries, but none of them are even close to being on the same level as MLB.  The problem, again, isn't a lack of infrastructure.  It's that where there's interest, there's no money, and where there's money (ie, Europe), there's no interest.  Japan is pretty much the only place in the world where there is both the money and the interest in baseball to match America, but like I said and you've conceded, NPB still isn't on par with MLB.

[pash]

.

[mgsports]

Bowden only got California Division right.
Putero Rico and Hawaii as the 2 new Teams because Orlando gets Dodgers.
3 Leagues
East League consist of Northeast,Altantic and Southeast
Central North Central and Central
West Midwest,California and West