What a bunch of idiots

Imagine this situation. You are a rich dotcommer with money burning a hole in your pocket. So you go out and buy a bunch of racehorses. You get a top trainer, have a top quality barn...total first class because money ain't an object. So you get your business manager to call up Santa Anita and go about talking to the racing secretary to get your horses in races. But wait, the secretary says sorry buddy, new rules. Only horses from our approved list of 30 owners are allowed to race here. You ask how do you get to be on the approved list and he says, well you pay us a bunch of money and if we like you then we put you on the list, otherwise you have to pay another owner off an ungodly amount to take his place. You try for years to get on that exclusive list to no avail, meanwhile you are racing your horses at smaller tracks dreaming of the day your horse makes it to race at Santa Anita. You get the satisfaction of beating some of these horses at Santa Anita in your small track races, but still not enough. Finally you give up when you hear the news, the owners at Santa Anita decided that two owners weren't spending enough on their horses and were bringing up inferior horses that weren't drawing bets. So they paid them off and kicked them out. Sounds like what baseball does!


These baseball owners are pure and simple idiots. If any other business engaged in this type of practice they would be sued like you wouldn't believe. This latest case of stupidity, somehow thinking 50 less players will make the game great, clearly illustrates how illegal their rules are. They treat their game as personal property, but they are going to get screwed soon. They all say "well this last expansion was a terrible decision"...if its so terrible why is the champion one of these two teams?!?!? If Oakland thinks they can make more money in San Jose and a bunch of owners think they can make more money in DC/Virginia, why do they get blocked on the grounds these areas are "other teams property"? Whatever happened to the fair market and outselling the competition with a superior product? I just wonder about these things because it seems like so many people are in favor of this completely unreasonable concept that flies in the face of capitalism. Further what really makes me laugh is how people talk about this great dilution of talent. Lets see how many Dominicans were playing back in 1980? How about Cubans? Koreans? Japanese? They all play a bigger role now and their millions of citizens now can say they too have a chance to play MLB. So maybe you had a pool of 250 milllion back then (Americans/Canadians/a few foreigners) and now you have countries totalling over 1 billion people to find your talent in, now how is that diluting the talent? Don't believe the hype, baseball owners are just ignoring the basic truths of how to make their business better and they are hoodwinking the public into thinking they will solve anything. And they wonder why Dallas-Washington outdraws game 5 of Yankees-A's.

all I know is that there shouldn't be baseball in Montreal where an attendance of 3000 is not atypical

True indeed, but why not move the team? If people in other cities are clamoring for teams and if they are big enough fools to build them a stadium, why not let them go? Oh I forgot, poor Peter Angelos depends on people to drive 60 miles to watch a lousy team that has been gutted to face their new "reality" of lower revenues. This team would be playing in DC or Virginia right now if not for Angelos.

....baseball should be slimmed down, The talent pool, especially with respect to pitching, is way too thin anyway.

In 1980 there were 26 teams, in 2001 there are 30... 4 extra teams. How many extra players does that require? Another 100-125? Do enough players come from new sources to make up the number.


ESPN allows you to list players by Country, a quick check shows the following...


Canada - 14

Australia - 7

Cuba - 16

Curacao - 3

Dominican Republic - 133!!!!

England - 1

Jamaica - 1

Japan - 12

Mexico - 25

Panama - 11

Venezuela - 60 (I might be off by 1 or 2)

Aruba - 3

Columbia - 3

South Korea - 2

etc. etc.


you get the picture...


Several weeks ago I heard this same argument made regarding the NHL. The commentator mentioned that he had recently viewed tapes of some games from several decades ago and concluded that overall current hockey players are more talented and the quality of game is better. You hear the media talk about the league being watered down but several decades ago the NHL was made up of Canadian players, a few Americans and Borje Salming... now there are the same number of Canadians but many more American and European players. Watered down? Not in reality.

who's the english guy?

Lance Painter, Pitcher, Brewers


These are countries of birth so some of these guys will have been born in a given country but were raised and exposed to baseball in the US. Nevertheless, these numbers are pretty impressive.


Being Canadian I was surprised to see there were that many in Canadians in the League

And don't forget the US has gone from about 220 million in 1980 to almost 280 million now, that alone would cover 4 extra teams. The problem, as I see it, is there is poorer coaching and smaller ballparks.


Pitchers pitch much differently now. The good pitchers pitch inside to hitters, the rest don't. I don't know of too many effective inside pitchers that don't have good numbers overall. A few pitchers make a living pitching outside (notably the Braves staff), but most quality pitchers own the inside and outside of the plate. The DBacks pitchers put on a clinic and much of it due I think to Bob Welch, a guy that never conceded the inside part of the plate when he was on the mound. Not that he had to teach a thing to Schilling or Johnson, but the rest of the staff had guys that realized to win in Yankee Stadium you had to be able to get an occasional inside strike and you have to pitch Jeter inside. Why doesn't the rest of the league do this? Why do new pitchers coming up all look the same to me, guys that don't pitch inside, but do throw about 95-97? There is no art form to pitching anymore, its just who can get the numbers on the gun. Crafty pitchers like Moyer or Wakefield when he came up all seem to develop as they are hitting 30, why don't these guys get taught how to pitch at a younger age? That is where you blame the lack of talent, because no one ever says there aren't enough offensive players out there, its always the pitching. One other thing I might note is that with all these international players, there still is a deficit of pitchers for the most part. There are guys like El Duque and Pedro that are international players, but a lot more seem to be position players outside of the Asian guys. For the world to really catch up to the US level, their pitching will have to improve and maybe that is just a part of the way the game is viewed elsewhere.


The second culprit is the parks themselves. Outside of Seattle and Detroit, every new park seems to do favors to the hitters. Blatant changes can be seen in Houston and Milwaukee, two places where the edge switched completely to the hitters. Baltimore and Texas were slightly skewed to the hitters. Colorado added the true launching pad and Tampa and Arizona are definitely not pitchers parks by any means. If you go way back, Toronto used to have that huge right field and now has a neutral field. Atlanta has a park of almost the same dimensions now and Cleveland got a more hitter oriented park, although both of these were somewhat affected by the makeup of the teams that played in the old parks compared to the new. All in all I don't think anyone can argue that the new parks didn't add a lot of advantage to the hitters.


Not that offensive advantages aren't good for the game, in all I think they are. Only the purists seem to be upset about more offense and they are the ones mostly loudly complaining about the talent. However the game doesn't really need to pander to the purists, they will watch no matter what. It needs to get the average fan that doesn't pay much attention to pay more attention. It needs to get at least some attention from those that don't watch at all. These types of fans almost exclusively want offense. Only a purist leaves a 1-0 game saying "how great was that?" The casual fan is bored and says why spend all this money to see that.

"Why do new pitchers coming up all look the same to me, guys that don't pitch inside, but do throw about 95-97? There is no art form to pitching anymore, its just who can get the numbers on the gun."


I think part of the reason has to do with what the scouts are looking for. One of the ESPN baseball gurus noted that scouts hardly ever consider a pitcher who under 6'2". You also have to consider that young pitchers don't want to throw their arms out by throwing alot of split finger pitches and curveballs. Fast ball/change up is the way to go for longevity. The scouts figure the pitching coaches can work on new pitches as the pitchers mature.

Could be, but if a guy never works on his curve or splitter until he is 20 he probably won't develop it at anytime. I agree though about the scouts, all they care about is how hard a guy throws. I don't know about if the guy has to be 6'2" or a certain size, but he isn't hitting 91 or 92 at a young age on the gun then he won't get their attention much. But size isn't that important, just look at Tim Hudson to see a small guy that can bring heat and an array of pitches.