Right now the biggest issue facing Major League Baseball is pitching injuries. Should they get rid of the pitch clock so arms have a few more seconds to recover between pitches? Should they expand the strike zone to where it used to be so pitchers don’t have to throw so hard? Or should they shorten the schedule?
What if baseball went to a 100 game schedule that ended in late July?
100 games is a nice round number, and it would reduce the amount of starts a pitcher would have to make by about 12, or ~ 35%, over the course of a season.
Surely that would help, right?
And what about another problem it would solve – the NFL and college football dwarf MLB yet the MLB playoffs are played right in the heart of football season.
So if you played the baseball season from April through July, you’d start the playoffs in August. That’s when folks are still paying attention to baseball, before they shift to football and never look back unless their team is playing in October.
Just admit defeat – football is more popular. But baseball could own the summer.
Once the NBA Finals are over in mid-June, it would be two and a half months in which baseball would dominate the sports calendar. First the College World Series which would lead right into Major League Baseball.
The trading deadline could be June 30. They could hold the annual all-star game on the 4th of July. Then August could be the new October. Finish the World Series by Labor Day.
The only real issue here is that in the northeast school hasn’t started back yet and August is a nice time to take in some regular season games. And in the warmer climates, August would probably be pretty brutal for postseason day games.
But then again – if kids are out of school then they can stay up to watch playoff games. And a good portion of the hottest cities have retractable roofs so outside of Atlanta the problem really isn’t one.
With more teams making the MLB postseason than ever before, the regular season has been devalued. If they’re going to devalue the regular season then why not get the most bang for your buck? 100 games then 16 teams making it.
Some will say the most sacred thing about baseball is the record book, so taking away 38% of the season would make records irrelevant. So what – baseball cares too much about records…..many of them are ignored now anyway due to the steroid era. Let’s try to save some pitching arms and elevate the status of the MLB postseason.
Can you imagine a pennant race in July when baseball is already the most popular sport going that month? Then the playoffs providing something to watch other than NFL preseason? Sounds good to me.
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