My response to MLB's proposed rule change and other assorted baseball thoughts

Did you hope for a new era of baseball to be ushered in with the reign of Rob Manfred? Well… your dreams were crushed, more than likely. Manfred has continued the tyranny of former dictator commissioner Bud Selig in almost every way. Not all of his policies have been the same as Selig’s, but his approach to MLB’s problems has been the same: solve the wrongs of the past by creating more problems for the future.

When the 2002 MLB All-Star Game ended in a tie, Commissioner Selig decided that subsequent All-Star Games would be used to determine the league whose representative in the World Series would hold home-field advantage. Because that’s totally legitimate. MLB gleefully pronounced, “This one counts!” as though that were a good reason to mess up the World Series. The ASG was never meant to count. It’s a fun game that both leagues play to enjoy a short break in the middle of the season.

It shouldn’t count.

It was never meant to count.

But Bud Selig, onetime overreactor-in-chief of MLB, insisted that the ASG should count, as insane a suggestion as that was. And MLB execs went along with it. Now, assuming that you, as a reader, are unfamiliar with just why this is a stupid idea (which… that’s kinda on you), let’s recap.

Hypothetically, if you have a team with few all-stars (or one. Or a million. This part’s not important, since ASG appearances are a matter of voting, so great players ≠ popular players and thus great players ≠ all-stars and all-star-devoid teams can do very well despite the lack of all-stars) and that team does exceptionally in the regular season, gaining a phenomenal win-loss record, it would not be granted home-field advantage (let’s go with HFA for brevity’s sake) on that criterion. But a team that barely made it into the postseason with an iffy record in, let’s just say, a weaker league, could get HFA. Because of the ASG. ONE GAME. That shouldn’t count. That has never counted. That only a few players of both teams did anything in.

The ASG HFA rule (I like acronyms) means that you ignore 162 games of the regular season for each team (when all the players were trying their hardest, you would think) and decide the location of the seven most important games of the year by a game that nobody who plays in it really cares about. No one even plays the whole game.

The second team in the hypothetical did not deserve HFA. The first team did. HFA is important. The ASG is not sufficient criterion to determine HFA in the World Series, for crying out loud.

And Bud Selig messed up the World Series because a bunch of drunk fans at Miller Park threw stuff at him.

That’s called trying to make a right with two wrongs.

And it’s exactly what Rob Manfred had proposed this week.

The first wrong was Selig's doing: constant, persistent interleague play. A little interleague is fun. It’s a change of pace for everyone. But interleague every day is not only entirely unnecessary, but also entirely avoidable. Keep the Astros in the NL. Keep unbalanced leagues. That’s the answer. It worked for a long, long, long time and no one minded it.

The second wrong is throwing the DH at the NL and forcing it to stick, even though the NL’s teams have been crafted by their GMs specifically to play without the DH. Not having the DH is what makes the NL special and fun to watch. Small ball is the baseball offense of the future as long as steroids are outlawed (which… is a rant for another time) and it makes the NL the NL. The DH makes the AL the AL. The differences are interesting and good for baseball. To force the DH on the NL is to take away what National League baseball is all about. So why even have different leagues, if there’s no difference? Have conferences, like the NBA. Or just throw all the teams in a blender and make the Yankees win. That’s probably what MLB wants to do anyway.

Speaking of the Yankees, let’s move to phase two of this blog. Does it smell to you that Aroldis Chapman isn’t going to be charged and that he’s now a Yankee, developments which occurred all around the same time? Because it smells to me. I think the Yanks could pull strings to get that shoved under the rug, as it were. But that’s just me.

Now, for phase three. What does the seemingly inevitable DH rule mean for the Reds in the future? Hopefully it will mean a boost to the team’s offense, which has been hard to come by in recent years. Having another hitter could be a help to the team, even though it may be hard to find a player to fill the spot. Now, as the president would say, let me be clear. I hate the DH.

I hate it.

I hate it.

But it could be good for the Reds, which I like. So... there's that.

In conclusion, this DH totalitarianism is just further proof of what I’ve been saying for a while: the big four leagues (NBA, MLB, NFL, and NHL) need competition. We need an alternative for when MLB becomes an unwatchable mess, partially as a result of the DH rule, and the NFL becomes even more poorly officiated than it already is, and so on.

But that will probably never happen.

*sigh*

Oh, well. Enjoy what you can of sports in the future!

Fugate out.