Seems that more Ivy Leaguers make their way into MLB while those who have given their life to the game and know the game inside out are fired, the dumber baseball gets.
No surprise that Commissioner Rob Manfred was ballyhooing the changes he made to the game this year at the neutral site World Series between the Rays and Dodgers.
You wouldn’t expect Manfred to say any of his moves are bad, would you? They are all great.
Here’s a list of some of those changes that have taken place under his watch.
Turning the baseball into an F-15.
Eliminating true extra innings baseball during the regular season.
Making doubleheaders into seven-inning scrimmages you only would see in the past before the exhibition schedule started in spring training. Nine, meanwhile, is the perfect baseball number: nine hitters, nine innings, BallNine.
But seven innings now gets you a victory and those wins count as much as nine-inning victories.
Taking away hard slides that were once a staple of the game.
Taking away managerial decision-making with the three-batter rule.
Making the DH mandatory in what used to be two different and distinct leagues, the American League and the National League.
Excessive and relentless replay.
Excessive times of game.
Watering down importance of the regular season, which makes the baseball season so unique, and this year was pure overkill with 16 teams making the postseason, making it more like a World Baseball Classic than an event featuring the World Series.
Teams should be forced to put in the work and the money to get better, don’t just hand them a playoff pass. And now that he has the postseason overkill in place,
Manfred will trim it back a couple of teams to make it look like the regular season still means something and ram down something like a 14-team postseason when baseball returns to a 162-game schedule.
Everybody into the playoff pool.
Doing nothing as so many scouts are terminated from organizations.
Severely limiting the number of draft rounds.
Standing by as teams slash staffs, the Cubs the latest to send employees packing.
Destroying the foundation of minor league baseball and truly taking the game away from so many minor league communities. Minor league baseball is the fabric of those communities but they will be hammered under the Manfred Plan. Soon everyone will have to answer to Baseball’s Big Brother.
1 comment:
Boy, Kevin Kernan masterfully touches on a bunch of subjects.
I do understand the historic underpinnings of the game, yet am not a sacrosact as Kevin is on a few things:
Let's shorten doubleheaders - but not to 7 innings. I can live, though, with 8. Save fragile pitchers' arms, to help MLB pitching stay more up to the task.
I understand that some extra inning games can also go very many innings. I am OK with adding a runner, but on first, in the 11th inning. On second base in the 10th inning is absurd.
Also, the following quote pertains dead-on to the Wilpons, who so many times were too cheap (or financially strapped) to sign guys like Daniel Murphy. Or pursue a Gerrit Cole, and cede him to the Yankees. Mr. Cohen needs to do it like the Dodgers - period:
"As one longtime scout told BallNine on Wednesday about Mookie being a Dodger: “He’s the face of that franchise. And for the Red Sox, it’s not like they didn’t know what they had, they had an MVP, and a young guy. They just didn’t want to spend the money. That’s the bottom line.’’"
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