Jose Bautista hit his 50th home run last night? Who knew? I mean, does anybody really watch baseball anymore? To be completely honest, if you asked me who the MLB HR leader was I probably would have said Albert Pujols with like 38.
Over the summer, Bill Simmons wrote a column about how baseball games are too long. He thinks people simply don't have the attention span to watch such a slow game for 3.5 hours. This created a 3-day discussion on all the ESPN shows about how to fix baseball. Shorten the commercial breaks. Enforce a time limit between pitches. Invest more money into marketing the league's best players. Implement a salary cap to increase competitive balance.
These are all decent ideas. But at the same time, isn't the answer really obvious? Just expand the playoffs to 8 teams per league. And I don't say that just because the Red Sox are out this year. Think about it. Right now there are 9 teams in all of baseball that have any significant games left to play this season. The 4 American League playoff teams are set, and there are 5 in the N.L going for 4 spots. If 16 teams in total made the playoffs, then you probably would have about 22 teams still fighting for their lives right now. Wouldn't that make baseball so much more relevant?
How does Bud Selig not see this? Why do the NBA/NHL playoffs have so much fan interest throughout the country? Because most fan bases have a team involved and therefore get really excited about the playoffs. And even if their team gets bounced, they're already into it and so they continue to watch. I probably won't watch one playoff baseball game this year.
My proposal isn't that hard to implement. Logistically, the first series would be a 5-game series, and then you would have to reduce the number of days off throughout the postseason so that we're not still playing ball into December. But other than that, it's basically the perfect solution.
Unfortunately I'm just sitting on my bed right now and not being the commissioner of baseball. But I know Bud Selig is a fan of the Blog, so he'll definitely get this.
