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Where will baseball be in 10 years?


Second Base

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This is a post I made in a different thread, but I think it could generate good discussions.  What are some major things we'll see happen in 10 years with baseball?

Within the next decade, there will likely be a lot of movement among major league teams.  I think the Angels and the city of Anaheim will end up working out a deal where the city partially funds a mass renovation, and Arte Moreno will end up funding the majority of it, so Angels Stadium won't look like it did before.  But in return for Moreno investing his money into making the park experience better, the city of Anaheim will give him rights to develop the parking lot and some of the surrounding areas and profiting that way.  Attendance is down league wide, and there's a "small stadium" movement beginning where instead of having 50,000 seats, with 20,000 of them empty, teams are showing a willingness to build stadiums with 30,000 max capacity, and I think that's likely what will happen with Angel Stadium. 

I also believe that both the Oakland A's and the Tampa Bay Rays will relocate, and Major League Baseball will expand by two teams.  I'm guessing Tampa Bay will relocate to Montreal and become the Expos and the A's will be convinced to relocate to Las Vegas when the Giants and /or politics block their latest attempt at building a new stadium.  Then MLB will have two expansion teams, likely in Portland, Oregon and Charlotte, North Carolina.  

This will also cause Major League Baseball to realign.  The AL and NL will still exist, but now, each will have four divisions instead of three.  There will still likely be an East and West Division, MLB will likely make the other two divisions North and South.   Portland and Las Vegas will be an AL team, and Charlotte and Montreal will be an NL team.  This will cause one NL team to have to move to the AL, and for the sake of this scenario, we'll say it's the Marlins.  So the divisions might shake out like this...

AL West: Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Seattle and Portland. 

AL East: Boston, New York, Toronto and Baltimore.

AL North: Chicago, Minnesota, Detroit and Cleveland

AL South: Texas, Houston, Kansas City and Miami

__________________________________________

NL West: Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco and Arizona

NL East: New York, Philadelphia, Washington and Charlotte

NL North: Colorado, Milwaukee, Chicago and Montreal

NL South: Atlanta, St. Louis, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh

_____________________________________________

The playoffs will likely need to be restructured as well.  It'll probably be four division winners and four wild cards (so literally half the teams making the playoffs).

- Round one will give the two division winners with the highest record an automatic buy into the Division series. 

- The rest of round one will be WC 1 vs WC 4 in a one game playoff, WC 2 and WC 3 in a one game playoff.

- Then it will be WC 2 vs division winner 3 in a three game series, and WC 1 and division winner 4 in another three game series.  The winners of those series will advance to the division series to play the top two seeds in the league. 

- The Division Series will be a 5 game series. 

- The League Championship Series will be a seven game series.

- The World Series will also be a seven game series.

______________________________________________________________

Outside of that, I'm thinking that eventually we'll see an international draft, and draft picks being able to be traded. 

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Hopefully we’ll finally have dumped the idea that pitchers can and should hit every fifth day in ten years. The notion that anyone can hit at a major league level in just one game a week was disproved decades ago, and yet here we still are. Proves how much baseball fans are like sheep: ‘We need to keep doing this because we’ve always done it that way’. ?

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Interesting idea.

Im not a fan of extending the playoffs a la NBA and NHL.  If you move to 4 divisions those are your playoffs teams, eliminate the WC.   The WC makes sense in a 3 division league. but not in 4 unless as you say you want to have half the league make the post, i personally have never liked that, it negates the season to much. 

Im also not sure i see relocation AND expansion.  Not unless there are more fundamental changes made to make the game appeal to a broader audience and less on turning it into live action analytics.  Relocation, yes, TB and Oak go somewhere, likely either Montreal, Vegas, Charlotte, Portland, or i still think Mex City or Monterrey south of the border.  

If we dont expand, one thing i would be in favor of is expanding the wild card playoff to 3 games over the current 1.  

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25 minutes ago, Sean-Regan said:

Hopefully we’ll finally have dumped the idea that pitchers can and should hit every fifth day in ten years. The notion that anyone can hit at a major league level in just one game a week was disproved decades ago, and yet here we still are. Proves how much baseball fans are like sheep: ‘We need to keep doing this because we’ve always done it that way’. ?

Having the pitcher hit really causes NL managers to truly manage.  Lots of moving parts.  I like that added wrinkle. 

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56 minutes ago, Second Base said:

Having the pitcher hit really causes NL managers to truly manage.  Lots of moving parts.  I like that added wrinkle. 

one could argue the opposite, it gives them an easy out to do things at set times or locations in the game that AL managers have to think much more about.  
The game truly needs a universal DH in my view.  sneding up guys hitting 20 and pretending they are good hitter for the position is the joke of joke and frankly the biggest reason i got bored with the NL as a child as my parents were Dodger fans. 

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10 years sounds like a lot of time, but if you think about it, 10 years ago we would be going into the 2009 season. So going off of that benchmark in the past 10 years the Astros moved to the AL, instant replay became a thing, the shift got popular, and the Rays decided to start their relievers. I think the most realistic possibility will be the use of the DH in both leagues, possible re-alignment, more attempts to "shorten" the game, and maybe the Rays or Oakland move?

 

My completely non scientific predictions from most likely to least likely to happen by the off-season of 2018:

 

Most likely: Tweaking of the rules to shorten a baseball game

Kind-of likely: DH in both the AL and NL

Maybe: Re-alignment or blurring between the AL/NL

Maybe: Rays or Oakland move to Las Vegas

 

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2 hours ago, Second Base said:

This is a post I made in a different thread, but I think it could generate good discussions.  What are some major things we'll see happen in 10 years with baseball?

Within the next decade, there will likely be a lot of movement among major league teams.  I think the Angels and the city of Anaheim will end up working out a deal where the city partially funds a mass renovation, and Arte Moreno will end up funding the majority of it, so Angels Stadium won't look like it did before.  But in return for Moreno investing his money into making the park experience better, the city of Anaheim will give him rights to develop the parking lot and some of the surrounding areas and profiting that way.  Attendance is down league wide, and there's a "small stadium" movement beginning where instead of having 50,000 seats, with 20,000 of them empty, teams are showing a willingness to build stadiums with 30,000 max capacity, and I think that's likely what will happen with Angel Stadium. 

I also believe that both the Oakland A's and the Tampa Bay Rays will relocate, and Major League Baseball will expand by two teams.  I'm guessing Tampa Bay will relocate to Montreal and become the Expos and the A's will be convinced to relocate to Las Vegas when the Giants and /or politics block their latest attempt at building a new stadium.  Then MLB will have two expansion teams, likely in Portland, Oregon and Charlotte, North Carolina.  

This will also cause Major League Baseball to realign.  The AL and NL will still exist, but now, each will have four divisions instead of three.  There will still likely be an East and West Division, MLB will likely make the other two divisions North and South.   Portland and Las Vegas will be an AL team, and Charlotte and Montreal will be an NL team.  This will cause one NL team to have to move to the AL, and for the sake of this scenario, we'll say it's the Marlins.  So the divisions might shake out like this...

AL West: Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Seattle and Portland. 

AL East: Boston, New York, Toronto and Baltimore.

AL North: Chicago, Minnesota, Detroit and Cleveland

AL South: Texas, Houston, Kansas City and Miami

__________________________________________

NL West: Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco and Arizona

NL East: New York, Philadelphia, Washington and Charlotte

NL North: Colorado, Milwaukee, Chicago and Montreal

NL South: Atlanta, St. Louis, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh

_____________________________________________

The playoffs will likely need to be restructured as well.  It'll probably be four division winners and four wild cards (so literally half the teams making the playoffs).

- Round one will give the two division winners with the highest record an automatic buy into the Division series. 

- The rest of round one will be WC 1 vs WC 4 in a one game playoff, WC 2 and WC 3 in a one game playoff.

- Then it will be WC 2 vs division winner 3 in a three game series, and WC 1 and division winner 4 in another three game series.  The winners of those series will advance to the division series to play the top two seeds in the league. 

- The Division Series will be a 5 game series. 

- The League Championship Series will be a seven game series.

- The World Series will also be a seven game series.

______________________________________________________________

Outside of that, I'm thinking that eventually we'll see an international draft, and draft picks being able to be traded. 

What an outstanding read this was! I'd love to see a lot of this happen, I'm not sure it can in 10 years, but still a great read!

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9 minutes ago, The_Outrunner said:

Well that's fair, I don't see the MLB losing it's market of 10 billion anytime soon. I feel like a lot could change in 10 years though

You’re probably right with the 10 years. I mean we all see things through our own experiences. I just don’t see the kids in my life playing baseball. It’s either basketball soccer or football. 

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