LOCKOUT '22: When will we see baseball again?

[Tiger337]

Kids suck today.  Parents suck today.  Baseball isn't the way it used to be.  What is the world coming too?  Even Randy is getting into it. lol  We really are a bunch of angry old men.   

Edited February 15, 2022 by Tiger337

[casimir]

3 hours ago, Biff Mayhem said:

This thread needs some Biggs ref input.

This forum needs some Biggs.

[casimir]

So, help me with promotion/relegation.  My understanding of it as such (and please correct me if I'm wrong):

• Multiple divisions in the same league.  And for this example, we will call them the Bestest and the Worstest.  And we'll use 10 teams in each with 8 total playoff spots.
• Assignments are based in the previous season(s).
• Playoffs of the current active season are structured in a way such that teams in the Bestest have more chances for playoff seeds than teams in the Worstest.  In other words, a simple ratio of playoff spots to teams in the Bestest is higher than the ratio of playoffs to teams in the Worstest.  If there are 10 teams in each division, let's say the top 5 in the Bestest and the top 3 in the Worstest are awarded spots.  Or we could go 6 & 2 or 3 & 1, whatever.
• Promotion/relegation occurs in between seasons the top X number of teams in the Worstest exchange places with the bottom X number of teams in the Bestest.  Everyone else remains the same.

What I don't like about it is that, in essence, playoff chances are somewhat decided by the previous season's records.  I understand that current division winners are somewhat decided by geography.  I would suggest as few divisions as possible and the playoff berths are decided solely by that season's play.

Edited February 15, 2022 by casimir

[casimir]

27 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

Kids suck today.  Parents suck today.  Baseball isn't the way it used to be.  What is the world coming too?  Even Randy is getting into it. lol  We really are a bunch of angry old men.   

Everything sucks.

[buddha]

1 hour ago, casimir said:

So, help me with promotion/relegation.  My understanding of it as such (and please correct me if I'm wrong):

• Multiple divisions in the same league.  And for this example, we will call them the Bestest and the Worstest.  And we'll use 10 teams in each with 8 total playoff spots.
• Assignments are based in the previous season(s).
• Playoffs of the current active season are structured in a way such that teams in the Bestest have more chances for playoff seeds than teams in the Worstest.  In other words, a simple ratio of playoff spots to teams in the Bestest is higher than the ratio of playoffs to teams in the Worstest.  If there are 10 teams in each division, let's say the top 5 in the Bestest and the top 3 in the Worstest are awarded spots.  Or we could go 6 & 2 or 3 & 1, whatever.
• Promotion/relegation occurs in between seasons the top X number of teams in the Worstest exchange places with the bottom X number of teams in the Bestest.  Everyone else remains the same.

What I don't like about it is that, in essence, playoff chances are somewhat decided by the previous season's records.  I understand that current division winners are somewhat decided by geography.  I would suggest as few divisions as possible and the playoff berths are decided solely by that season's play.

are you talking about european soccer leagues?

each country has their own league system.  it has a top division and then lesser divisions.  the teams in the divisions range from professional powerhouse billion dollar franchises (manchester united and liverpool), to club teams from small villages made up of part time players.  

the general method of relegation/promotion is that the top 3 teams from the lower division move up to the next highest division the next season, while the bottom three teams from the upper division move down.  different leagues do the promotion and relegation in different ways.  for instance, in the english leagues, the top two teams are promoted straight, but teams three through six play in a playoff to see who gets the last spot.  in germany, the bottom two teams are relegated and the top two teams promoted, but the third place team has to play the last potentially relegated team in a playoff to see who gets to stay in the upper division.  some leagues dont do these types of playoffs at all.

and then the top 2 to 4 teams (depending on a uefa formula to determine league strength) make the champions league the next season.  thats where the real money is.

[Tigermojo]

Get off my pitch.

[Edman85]

Elaborating on earlier...

 

It's takes like Joe Sheehan on twitter saying the owners are at fault because they could end the lockout at any time if they give in to the players' demands. 

No shit, sherlock. The players could do the same.

[casimir]

2 hours ago, buddha said:

are you talking about european soccer leagues?

each country has their own league system.  it has a top division and then lesser divisions.  the teams in the divisions range from professional powerhouse billion dollar franchises (manchester united and liverpool), to club teams from small villages made up of part time players.  

the general method of relegation/promotion is that the top 3 teams from the lower division move up to the next highest division the next season, while the bottom three teams from the upper division move down.  different leagues do the promotion and relegation in different ways.  for instance, in the english leagues, the top two teams are promoted straight, but teams three through six play in a playoff to see who gets the last spot.  in germany, the bottom two teams are relegated and the top two teams promoted, but the third place team has to play the last potentially relegated team in a playoff to see who gets to stay in the upper division.  some leagues dont do these types of playoffs at all.

and then the top 2 to 4 teams (depending on a uefa formula to determine league strength) make the champions league the next season.  thats where the real money is.

So how would promotion/relegation work for the MLB regular season and playoffs?

[buddha]

57 minutes ago, casimir said:

So how would promotion/relegation work for the MLB regular season and playoffs?

it wouldnt.  

american sports are inidividual universes that guarantee a certain income for their owners and limit their labor costs with salary restraints.

nothing identical exists in europe (especially england).  however, many euro leagues have strict financial rules that you cannot break in regards to club debt.  go over the debt limit by the new year and you will be punished with a points deduction (like derby - pronounced DAR- be -  in england this year).

but back to promotion and relegation.  it wouldnt work here.  but if it did, you would have the bottom four teams get relegated to triple a (baltimore, arizona, pirates and texas) the worst in the al (baltimore) and the worst in the nl (arizona) are automatically down.  the next two play a three game series against the runner up in the aaa west and aaa east divisions and the winner gets to play in mlb the next year.

last year it would have been durham bulls promoted, buffalo bison v pittsburgh for promotion.  and tacoma raiders promoted, and the sugar land skeeters v the texas rangers for promotion.

it would be fun and is a surefire way to prevent tanking because no one wants to go down to triple a.

[buddha]

btw, european soccer owners look longingly at the american model and wish they could emulate it.

this past year a number of big clubs got together and tried to form their own "super league" wherein they would all play a round robin style tournament against each other every year.  but there would be no promotion and no relegation.  just marquee matchups of real madrid v manchester united and barcelona v juventus every week.  but the fans went ballistic and held protests and riots, stormed fields.  the idea of european soccer without the incentive of promotion/relegation and just guaranteeing the big clubs money was too much foe most fans.  the idea was abandoned and most of the big clubs issued apologies.

for now.  the lure of that kind of money and certainty of income will continue, especially as many if the traditional big clubs (the spanish and italian giants in particular) have been left in the dust by the amazing revenues from english soccer, as well as the influx of oil money that has propped up clubs who have unlimited budgets (chelsea, man shitty, psg, and now newcastle).  the old guard cant keep up.

[gehringer_2]

1 hour ago, buddha said:

it wouldnt.  

american sports are inidividual universes that guarantee a certain income for their owners and limit their labor costs with salary restraints.

nothing identical exists in europe (especially england).  however, many euro leagues have strict financial rules that you cannot break in regards to club debt.  go over the debt limit by the new year and you will be punished with a points deduction (like derby - pronounced DAR- be -  in england this year).

but back to promotion and relegation.  it wouldnt work here.  but if it did, you would have the bottom four teams get relegated to triple a (baltimore, arizona, pirates and texas) the worst in the al (baltimore) and the worst in the nl (arizona) are automatically down.  the next two play a three game series against the runner up in the aaa west and aaa east divisions and the winner gets to play in mlb the next year.

last year it would have been durham bulls promoted, buffalo bison v pittsburgh for promotion.  and tacoma raiders promoted, and the sugar land skeeters v the texas rangers for promotion.

it would be fun and is a surefire way to prevent tanking because no one wants to go down to triple a.

I can't even imagine a system in the US that would relegate a $40M/yr all-star getting off the ground. Maybe that's an oddity of baseball where you can have any number of the best players on a team that still isn't that good - i.e. the Angels.

[casimir]

7 hours ago, buddha said:

it wouldnt.  

american sports are inidividual universes that guarantee a certain income for their owners and limit their labor costs with salary restraints.

nothing identical exists in europe (especially england).  however, many euro leagues have strict financial rules that you cannot break in regards to club debt.  go over the debt limit by the new year and you will be punished with a points deduction (like derby - pronounced DAR- be -  in england this year).

but back to promotion and relegation.  it wouldnt work here.  but if it did, you would have the bottom four teams get relegated to triple a (baltimore, arizona, pirates and texas) the worst in the al (baltimore) and the worst in the nl (arizona) are automatically down.  the next two play a three game series against the runner up in the aaa west and aaa east divisions and the winner gets to play in mlb the next year.

last year it would have been durham bulls promoted, buffalo bison v pittsburgh for promotion.  and tacoma raiders promoted, and the sugar land skeeters v the texas rangers for promotion.

it would be fun and is a surefire way to prevent tanking because no one wants to go down to triple a.

I think you are going about it wrong if you are trying to find a way for MLB to adopt it.  I wouldn't exchange MLB with AAA teams.  That's not possible given the farm system and player contracts and whatnots.  I think if it were to be implemented in MLB, you'd simply keep the current 30 MLB teams but split them up into a Bestest/Worstest scenario.

But then what about scheduling?  How does MLB protect New York vs Boston if they get split up?  I am being sarcastic, but also serious.

[casimir]

7 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

I can't even imagine a system in the US that would relegate a $40M/yr all-star getting off the ground. Maybe that's an oddity of baseball where you can have any number of the best players on a team that still isn't that good - i.e. the Angels.

Hold on now.  Do you remember the World Series home field advantage being based off of the all star gimmickery?  Never put a bad idea in MLB's head.

[davidsb623]

14 hours ago, MichiganCardinal said:

When grown men are calling my 16-year-old umpires "pencil neck", telling them they're too skinny and need to eat a cheeseburger, getting chest-to-chest on a field with another coach in front of them, flipping them off on the field, and telling them they'll meet them in the parking lot (all very real scenarios that happened either in that league or another), how do we seriously expect these kids to say "yeah I want to keep doing this! I want to get better!"

Any umpire that would allow this type of behavior to continue in a game was not properly trained, if at all.  Sounds like this 16 year old umpire had zero support from his assigner or league.  

[Tigeraholic1]

Well here you go, the home team Northrop (My wifes Alma Mater) vs. North Side (My Alma Mater) big brawl just last night. AAU families carrying this style of ball all the way through highschool.

 

 

[MichiganCardinal]

1 hour ago, davidsb623 said:

Any umpire that would allow this type of behavior to continue in a game was not properly trained, if at all.  Sounds like this 16 year old umpire had zero support from his assigner or league.  

In some of those, the 16yo umpire was me. And I tend to agree. I don’t think it’s on the umpire to “allow” or “not allow” the behavior though, and I don’t think it has anything to do with their level of training. If someone is going to show their ass, no one can stop them. All an official can do is remove a participant. As you said, it’s on the league to react appropriately from that point on.

When the league didn’t suspend a coach for the cheeseburger comment (and subsequent ejection), despite a league rule I had created that required it, because the coach was buddies with the president, I told them it would be my last year.

[oblong]

2 minutes ago, MichiganCardinal said:

In some of those, the 16yo umpire was me. And I tend to agree. I don’t think it’s on the umpire to “allow” or “not allow” the behavior though, and I don’t think it has anything to do with their level of training. If someone is going to show their ass, no one can stop them. All an official can do is remove a participant. As you said, it’s on the league to react appropriately from that point on.

When the league didn’t suspend a coach for the cheeseburger comment (and subsequent ejection), despite a league rule I had created that required it, because the coach was buddies with the president, I told them it would be my last year.

that's the problem with most youth sports.

 

[davidsb623]

14 minutes ago, MichiganCardinal said:

When the league didn’t suspend a coach for the cheeseburger comment (and subsequent ejection), despite a league rule I had created that required it, because the coach was buddies with the president, I told them it would be my last year.

I 100% support this!!

[davidsb623]

52 minutes ago, Tigeraholic1 said:

Well here you go, the home team Northrop (My wifes Alma Mater) vs. North Side (My Alma Mater) big brawl just last night. AAU families carrying this style of ball all the way through highschool.

WOW!  I did not see this.  My two oldest graduated from Northrop and I have many friends from both schools.

[chasfh]

17 hours ago, MichiganCardinal said:

I used to oversee umpires for a moderately sized Little League in the area. I used almost exclusively youth umpires, working their first job.

When grown men are calling my 16-year-old umpires "pencil neck", telling them they're too skinny and need to eat a cheeseburger, getting chest-to-chest on a field with another coach in front of them, flipping them off on the field, and telling them they'll meet them in the parking lot (all very real scenarios that happened either in that league or another), how do we seriously expect these kids to say "yeah I want to keep doing this! I want to get better!"

Funny you should bring up this exact thing. Some forty-plus years ago, as a skinny teenager just getting over pimples, I umpired in Warren’s Little League (or WVAC league, the non-affiliated local equivalent) for a few weeks when there was some dispute about a call I made and one of the coaches said he was going to “meet” me “in the parking lot”. He didn’t but it shook me because, who knows, with another person at another time in the future it might go different. I told the umpire supervisor about it later that week and he basically said yeah, you gotta have a thick skin to be an umpire here, not everyone is cut out for it.

So I cut myself out of it.

One other thing I clearly remember is that the lippiest team of kids I umpired was a girls softball team made up of middle schoolers (actually, at that time, junior high school students). Not only did their coach not control them, he was laughing and egging them on egged them on. I ask him to control them he said, in essence, “what, you can’t handle a bunch of little girls?” That was another data point in the case for “later for this shit”.

[chasfh]

3 hours ago, casimir said:

I think you are going about it wrong if you are trying to find a way for MLB to adopt it.  I wouldn't exchange MLB with AAA teams.  That's not possible given the farm system and player contracts and whatnots.  I think if it were to be implemented in MLB, you'd simply keep the current 30 MLB teams but split them up into a Bestest/Worstest scenario.

But then what about scheduling?  How does MLB protect New York vs Boston if they get split up?  I am being sarcastic, but also serious.

My impression of promotion/relegation is that it works best in a table-type league, where all 20 or 22 or whatever teams all play each other twice. Maybe p/r could work a division-oriented league if you move teams among divisions as other teams come and go, but in a country as geographically vast as the United States, they might get a little hairy.

The English soccer pyramid goes something like 20 levels deep, and it’s technically possible for a team to rise all the way from the bottom of that pyramid to the top in any many years as it take to leapfrog levels. An American baseball equivalent might be some town team in Battle Creek eventually working its way up from many levels down to the major leagues in the space of a few decades. I believe that might be technically possible in England even today.

[MichiganCardinal]

51 minutes ago, chasfh said:

So I cut myself out of it.

You and so many others!

If we want to say that the person who paid $30 for a ticket to a college baseball or USPBL game has paid for the right to yell at an official (within reason), fine. Whatever. Those officials are pretty well compensated, and are experienced enough to know how to tune that out and know their “role”, so to speak. Call that “thick skin” if you want I guess.

When we transfer that to youth ball though, we are removing a ton of smart young officials from an already limited pool of officials, because they (as a teenager) can’t manage being yelled at by adults (who they look at as authority figures). Something that has nothing to do with balls, strikes, safe, and out. They quit. Who can blame them?

[chasfh]

4 minutes ago, MichiganCardinal said:

You and so many others!

If we want to say that the person who paid $30 for a ticket to a college baseball or USPBL game has paid for the right to yell at an official (within reason), fine. Whatever. Those officials are pretty well compensated, and are experienced enough to know how to tune that out and know their “role”, so to speak. Call that “thick skin” if you want I guess.

When we transfer that to youth ball though, we are removing a ton of smart young officials from an already limited pool of officials, because they (as a teenager) can’t manage being yelled at by adults (who they look at as authority figures). Something that has nothing to do with balls, strikes, safe, and out. They quit. Who can blame them?

Yes, all this, and also, a key difference is that there is a clearly defined chain of authority that occurs at the college and professional levels in which abuse of officials is redressed in some form of sanctions for the abusers, which by extension also means that the very threat of sanctions usually acts as a check on abuse before it even happens. I don't know for sure whether that exists at the Little League level, but it sure didn't when I was trying my hand at umping.

[Tigeraholic1]

 

[Motor City Sonics]

♫ She may get woolly

Young girls they do get woolly

'Cause of all the stress.......yeah

When she gets woolly

Try a little tenderness ♫