Baseball Commissioner for the Day

The local sports radio station has been running a survey about what would you do if you were the Commissioner of Baseball. What rule changes would you make to better the game. Baseball is a sport that has problems. Being a person who loves baseball like a member of the family I would love to make the game stronger and better.

The first thing I would do is put a hard salary cap in place. At the same time I would put an equally hard minimum salary floor in place. Teams that take their profit sharing and make money before they sell a ticket are just as destructive to the integrity of the game as are the Yankees and their too high payroll. Baseball is a different sport than football. Each team has an ability to make a local television and radio contract. Seattle and Texas even with a YES or NESN network would not generate the revenue the Yankees and Red Sox do. They just would not, baseball is not followed with the same intensity in other markets. For this reason the salary cap will need to be a large number. But the key is that these numbers both on the high and low end must be fixed. By doing this teams that do well and generate local media revenue will be profitable. If an owner spends the bare minimum under this new formula he will, in the absence of payroll taxes, not make money. The impetus will be to, as we are often told, to spend money to make money.

In recent years we hear about teams being made for the Playoffs as if the game changes in the postseason. The game, however, does not change but the scheduling does. When the Yankees go through the postseason with three starters this is an indication that the off days are too commonplace. An off day when the teams go from one site to the next is acceptable but that should be the only off day. If a game is rained out schedules for future games should be tightened up even if it means eliminating a scheduled off day. To me the postseason should measure the same things as does the regular season and a team with the best starting 5 rotation should not suffer in the postseason against a team that has three aces and two terrible pitchers in the 4 and 5 slot. Perhaps they would still lose the series, but they should not be at a competitive disadvantage in a series schedule that inherently favors the team with 3 pitchers.

More on this subject later but these are two solid ideas on how to improve the game we love.