BIG Changes in Major League Baseball

Major League Baseball has announced some MAJOR changes to it's structure that include the following:

1. The Astros to move to the American League in 2013, thus creating two 15 team leagues, which means that interleague play will now occur throughout the 26 week season. Purists and old school seamheads are already bemoaning this fact, but this particular genie left the bottle in 1997 when interleague play began, and there is no turning back. Why is this only important to baseball people? Nobody cared when the the NFL and AFL merged in 1970 and inter-conference play became a fact of life. No one even thinks of this when the NFL schedule comes out.


2. Expansion of the playoffs to include two wild card teams in each league with the wild cards meeting in a one game playoff to start the post season. While you can argue that this dilutes the playoff pool, I think I like this. When wild cards were introduced, people said that the idea of down-to-the-wire-pennant-races had been killed, and we see that that hasn't happened. The final week of the 2011 season is ample proof of that. I also think that having a one game playoff between the wild cards will provide real incentive to finish first in your division. Now it will really MEAN something for the Yankees to finish ahead of the Red Sox, and vice versa.


3. And how pressure packed will that one game playoff be? Off the charts. If you say that it isn't fair to play 162 games and risk being eliminated in one game, then I say just play better, finish in first place, and avoid that one game shoot out.


4. Word is being leaked that teams and the players are close to coming to an agreement on a new collective bargaining agreement. Well, nice to know that there will be no NBA-like work stoppage, but I am guessing that the Yankees will still be the Yankees, and the Pirates will still be the Pirates under the new CBA. I know, I know...the Yankees are only playing by the rules that are in place, and the Pirates are cheapskates who make lousy decisions anyway. The beat will continue to go on.


5. The Florida Marlins are now the Miami Marlins with some very cool new logos and colors. They are making a splash with their new stadium by making, by all accounts, serious contract offers to free agents Albert Pujols, Jose Reyes, and Mark Buerhle. As one Loyal Reader has pointed out to me, when the Pirates got a new stadium, they made a splash by signing Jason Kendall to a $60 million long term contract. That was 10 years, two principal owners, and three GM's ago, but you could say that the shadow of that contract still hangs over the Pirates to this very day.