We found baseball in a hopeless place

One hundred sixty-two games. It can be easy to forget in the early season excitement of Major League Baseball (which begins tonight, at least in the U.S.), that we've got to last through five and a half months and 162 games just to get to the playoffs. And that means if your team is not very good, after a month-long (maybe) grace period of just being happy to watch baseball, the sport can get pretty old and pretty depressing pretty fast. That's not a good thing, because a few tennis Grand Slams aside, baseball's the only thing going on during the summer months.

This is precisely why I'm concerned about the 2012 MLB season. According to Grantland.com baseball writer Jonah Keri, it would be a surprise if the New York Mets (my favorite team) were to finish anything better than last in the NL East. In ESPN.com writer Jayson Stark's annual preseason prediction of the World Series winner, the Mets qualified as one of the ten teams that have "no shot to be cooking in October." And in a division that possesses expected contenders in the Phillies, Braves and Marlins, let alone the popular sleeper-pick Washington Nationals. It could be a very long season for the Metropolitans. The Amazin's are looking like anything but in 2012.

So how to enjoy a season of baseball in which the team I like will probably be 10 games off the lead within the first 40 games of the season? Fantasy baseball will certainly help. But the key to continuing to enjoy baseball lies in following individual pursuits. Will David Wright, one of the great Mets of my lifetime, finally enjoy a healthy season and return to his original form? Will any of the young players (Ike Davis, Lucas Duda, Ruben Tejada) have a breakout year and be a pleasant surprise in an otherwise dark year? How impressive will Johan Santana be after sitting out last year due to surgery? Outside of the Mets, how about Jose Reyes? Will he continue to be the dominate game-changer he was in 2011, or will he go back to good-but-not-great form after securing himself that massive contract?

With so many players, so many games and so, so, so many numbers, there is always something that can be enjoyed about baseball. Really, where else can we so easily access a hitter's batting average against a certain pitcher when he is facing a 2-1 count? Nowhere else in sports that I'm aware of. Love it. So tune in tonight, tomorrow and over the weekend.

Moving Madness

Earlier in the week Jose Reyes made a crazy-expensive deal with the Marlins. As a New York Mets fan, it was sad to see Reyes go, but something I had been preparing for. On a bigger-picture scale, it was the type of signing all sports fans today have to get accustomed to. Players don't stay with the same team for their entire careers anymore; Michael Jordan and Brett Favre made sure we understood that. And teams are often more interested in moving a hot commodity who they think they can get good rebuilding value for. Sometimes, teams just don't have the money to make a move for a top-tier athlete. Whatever the reasons are, the fact remains: the professional sports landscape today is one of big business in which everybody is looking to make a move.

Still, knowing that about sports couldn't have prepared you for last night's whirlwind. December 8, 2011 is an afternoon and night I'll remember for a long time, as I read about Albert Pujols signing with the Angels in baseball, enjoyed Bill Simmons' unrest about the Celtics pursuing Chris Paul, scratched my head over Tyson Chandler likely heading to the New York Knicks, watched one of the best comedy episodes of TV I've ever seen in Community's "Regional Holiday Music" (probably the show's last shot at getting renewed for a fourth season), read that the Angels had also managed to grab pitcher CJ Wilson, heard Chris Paul was heading to the LA Lakers, and finally, found out the deal had been put on hold by the NBA because supposedly some owners thought the NBA was up to no good making another superpower team.

Not to mention there was an NFL game going on (luckily not an especially important one), college football awards being handed out, and the best hour of TV happening on FX from 10-11 p.m. Whoa.

First, take a look at the Angels. They went 86-76 last year, lost the AL West by 10 games and the AL Wildcard by 5. Signing the best position player and pitcher this offseason has got to improve their team by at five games you would think. I would figure it puts them into the discussion of the best teams in baseball. Their pitching rotation will now boast Jered Weaver, Dan Haren and Wilson, while their lineup will now boast Albert Pujols (whoever else is there doesn't really matter. They could bring up an entire Triple A roster and so long as those guys got on base every once in awhile, Pujols would make sure they came home). It is insane how much the Angels would appear to have improved with the addition of two men. What's more, is how (relatively) inexpensive it was for them. Pujols' $250 million is of course through the roof, but everyone knew that would be the case. Take a look at Wilson's deal though: 5 years, $77.5 million. AJ Burnett and John Lackey each signed deals for 5 years, $82.5 million, with the Yankees and Red Sox, respectively. Read that again. The Angels managed to sign Wilson for $5 million less than two pitchers he is better (significantly better?) than. Well done.

On the other hand, the St. Louis Cardinals are done. They lost their manager (one of the best in baseball history) to retirement, and then the best player in baseball during the offseason. Even with Adam Wainwright back in the rotation, counting on Lance Berkman and Matt Holliday to drive home at least 220 runs does not strike me as a sustainable model. But hey, St. Louis fans, you guys have enjoyed a pretty good run for awhile. Two World Series titles and seven NL Central titles since 2000 is a lot to be proud of. But it might be a bit to have anything more to cheer about.

As for the moves (or lack thereof) in the NBA, I was really surprised to hear about Tyson Chandler going to the Knicks, because signing Chandler would definitely knock the Knicks out of the running for Chris Paul. They wouldn't have the cap space or the trade fodder to make a deal for Paul happen. Perhaps the Knicks had heard through the grapevine that they were no longer in the running the for Paul, and went for the best they could get. Whatever the Knicks' reasoning, as I thought more about the signing, the more I thought it was a decent move, simply because having Tyson Chandler in the paint will make things way easier on Amare Stoudemire. Chandler will now be the guy guarding opponents' big men, and he will likely be the guy who is guarded by the opponents' center. This mean's (a)Stoudemire will be able to focus more of his efforts on offense (b) his won't have to bruise in the paint as much at either end, and (c) he'll be taking it much easier on his weak knees. That makes for a competitive Knicks team this year. Maybe not a title contender, but top 3 in the East? I could see it, especially if Dwight Howard moves and the Celtics get even older with a pissed off Rondo.

Then came the most wild news of the night. Chris Paul was traded to the Lakers, while Pau Gasol was going to the Rockets, while Lamar Odom, Kevin Martin, Luis Scola, Goran Dragic and a first-round pick were the Hornets' prize. It seemed like a fair enough trade. The Lakers get the player they wanted, the Rockets get a player they like a lot to replace Yao Ming and clear some cap space, while the Hornets get about as good a deal as they are going to get for Paul, who will be leaving at some point during or after this season.

But then the unthinkable happened. David Stern did his best Foghorn Leghorn impression and nixed the deal. "Now, hold on, I say hold on just one cotton pickin' moment!" The NBA technically owns the New Orleans Hornets right now, but was planning on allowing them to take care of themselves. Not so fast, evidently. The initial reports were that several owners had complained that the league was trying to create another superpower team at one of its signature franchises. Stern has since said "All decisions are made on the basis of what is in the best interests of the Hornets. In the case of the trade proposal that was made to the Hornets for Chris Paul, we decided, free from the influence of other NBA owners, that the team was better served with Chris in a Hornets uniform than by the outcome of the terms of that trade." Whatever reason is true, they're both moronic. First, if owners can really hold that much sway in what's going on, then the NBA is the most corrupt organization in sports. And Stern's quote is correct, but it is short-sighted. Of course the Hornets will be better with Chris Paul as their point guard. That's not the reason for this trade, though. The reason for the trade is that Chris Paul does not plan on resigning in New Orleans, so the Hornets understand it is better to move him now and get as much as possible than to have him sign elsewhere after this season and get absolutely nothing. Does Stern not get that? What the hell is going on here? What is really going on behind the scenes, because it doesn't make any sense.

Now, the news has come today that Dwight Howard is looking to go the Nets, but he had an illegal meeting with the Nets that his current team, the Orlando Magic, is protesting. Gaaaaaaahhh! But Howard says there was no meeting. Gaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh! Whatever the case is, it sounds like Superman is going to end up in New Jersey. And Mikhail Prokhorov will have the NBA's best center and second best point guard on his team's roster. Does this make the Nets an Eastern contender? Probably not? But I'd say it makes them a playoff sleeper. Howard carried the Magic to the NBA Championship series with nobody close to as good as Deron Williams as a teammate. You can't underestimate how good those two guys are.

A whooooooole lot happened yesterday. But also, a whole lot didn't happen. Whatever ends up happening, if the NBA season is half as exciting as December 8, I won't be able to stop watching.

Lockout angst: When did baseball become the good example?

It doesn't feel like all that long ago when baseball had an awful strike, missed a ton of time, and alienated many of its fans into jumping ship because they didn't want to deal with these rich guys' "problems" anymore.

For a modern example of what happened to the MLB in 1994-95, look no further than what Netflix has done the past five months, or what the NBA is trying to do as we speak. Both are excellent emulations of that less-than-excellent situation from 16 years ago in baseball.

So after all the messy news about the NFL lockout and among all the messy news about the NBA lockout (which is looking about as bad as Jared Leto's face in Fight Club), it was almost impossible to believe that I could be reading this.

According to the report, Major League Baseball has reached a verbal labor agreement between the players and owners for when their current deal runs out in...DECEMBER. Wait, What? They're allowed to negotiate and be productive before the current deal runs out? That's so weird, cause I would have thought if that was the case the NFL and NBA might have taken advantage of some negotiating sessions before they actually entered the lockout phase.

Since when did the MLB start setting the good example? This post comes on the heels of what I wrote about yesterday, when they made more good moves (adding more teams to the playoffs and moving the Astros to the AL). Sure, basketball and football were facing bigger issues that needed working out when they came out of their most recent labors deals than baseball is. But come on. This is the way this stuff is supposed to go down. Some smart people get together who understand what is going on, talk it out, and come up with a new deal. You don't get petty and take potshots at each other in between negotiations, offer deals that you know aren't going to be accepted because they are unreasonable, and wait forever to actually negotiate in earnest. If you'd have told me five years ago that in 2011 we would have three separate labor negotiations happen, that two of them would go poorly and one would go well, I would have never guessed the good would have come from baseball. If you'd have told me baseball would do a better job than the NBA or especially the NFL, I would have called you an idiot.

But here we are, in 2011, and the MLB appears to have done a good job making sure it can hang onto the momentum it gained from a phenomenal close to the regular season, phenomenal playoffs and PHENOMENAL World Series. NFL, NBA, you should be ashamed of yourselves. Your ne'er-do-well older brother just got called into the game and won the town over because you two were unavailable. Make sure you don't do this again, or Hockey just may slip on by you as well.

Major MLB Moves

Alliteration aside, there are some crazy changes coming to Major League Baseball.

ESPN.com is reporting that the Houston Astros will be moving to the AL, two more wildcard spots will be added to the playoffs, and interleague play will be extended, all within the next two years. This is all coming on the heels of the sale of the Astros being finalized, and is going to make baseball look lot different, but not necessarily better.

The Houston Astros will be moving to the AL. This one actually makes sense. What doesn't make sense is why one more team hadn't been in the American League for all this team. I never understood why the AL had 14 teams to the NL's 16. It really didn't work out well for interleague play, during which two NL teams would still be playing a regular game. It was just weird. Now, theoretically, the MLB can schedule 15 interleague matchups at a time. Presumably, the Astros will join the currently-four member AL West, and that will be a good division for them, potentially creating a rivalry between them and the Rangers (if the Astros can improve a lot, obviously) in the future.

Fast forward really quickly to the third thing I mentioned, the extension of interleague play. This is the only real negative aspect of the Astros moving to the AL: it forces the MLB's hand in having interleague play throughout the season. An odd number of teams in each league (15) won't work for having all the games be AL-AL and NL-NL. Still, this is a small and necessary evil. More interleague play will not effect the outcome of the season for teams. Baseball will still be a sport in which if you are winning more than your division opponents, you will beat them to the postseason.

The second move doesn't make as much sense to me. One more wildcard spot will be added to each side of the playoffs, giving us 10 total teams to make the playoffs. While the idea of adding more teams to the playoffs is exciting to me, thinking about creating a fair playoff system for five teams on one side of the bracket makes my head hurt. Evidently, it made the MLB bigwigs' heads hurt as well, because supposedly the most likely playoff scenario is to have the two teams from each league that do not win their division (the two wildcard teams) play a one-game, winner-take-all playoff, and then the rest of the playoffs looking like they do now. Basically, its the same as the NCAA's former "Opening Round game" between the 64 and 65-seeds of the tournament.

Unfortunately, baseball is the worst game imaginable to have one game decide so much, and the reason for that is simple: in every other sport, everyone a coach expects to play in a playoff series would play in game one. In baseball, that is not the case. In baseball, the most important player on the field on a given day is the pitcher, and only one of them can play at a time. A one-game playoff would not prove anything about which team was better. And this is different than deciding which team will make it to the playoffs when two teams finish with the same record at the end of the season. In the new format, both teams would have been deemed playoff teams; in the old one, neither of them were. In the old format, it was considered a regular season game; in the new one, its a postseason game. And to let so much ride on which team has a better ace, or which pitchers is feeling better that particular day, or which infielder makes an error on that particular day, is ludicrous. To make matters worse, the team that won the series would be at a significant disadvantage heading into their divisional round matchup. Presumably, they would have started their ace in the play-in game, and then would not be able to start him twice in a five-game divisional series. It would effectively be a penalty game for "being good enough to make the playoffs, but not good enough to win your division."

"We believe after a lot of study and a lot of thought that the addition of two wildcards will really help us in the long run," was what commish Bud Selig had to say of the move. And while the thought of Selig thinking for a long time about anything makes me nervous, I agree with him in this case. Just not if he's going to make a joke out of bringing those extra two teams in by screwing them and the other wildcard teams over.