The MLB season will look a little different this year, and I'll have more on that in a moment.
Some things remain the same. The Oakland Athletics still play in a dump, and that is an embarrassment to the league. Move them! Move them NOW! Even if it means playing in a minor league park in Nashville, Charlotte, or Las Vegas. There are cities out there that will support a team.
The season is too long. Too many teams make the playoffs, and the games are spread out over several channels. You never know what channel to watch. Joe Buck jumped to ESPN, and I will miss him on the FOX coverage of the World Series.
John Sterling still does Yankees games on the radio. He has been around long enough to deserve to call his own shots. Sterling should have been smart enough to walk away years ago, and management should have reigned him in.
I think back to when I was a kid, and there wasn't a lot of baseball on television. You really looked forward to that Saturday Game of the Week on NBC. It was there, always at 2 pm. FOX now has the primary baseball contract, and the games are all over the place. Late afternoon, prime time, and on the FS1 cable channel. The game deserves better. Apparently, money counts more than fans.
Now, the changes.
Games against divisional opponents decrease from 76 to 53. Boo!
There are more interleague games. Boo!
The shift is outlawed. Boo! You get nine players. Put them where you want. I thought different defensive alignments showed creativity.
The bases are larger. It was done in the name of safety. Boo! I'm all for safety, but face it. This was done to increase offense and stolen bases.
The pitch clock is a great idea. Games became too long, and too slow.
A day with a baseball game is always better, and even a flawed game is better than none at all.
