baseball's falling popularity and its affect on our hobby

[steve B]

And that perception I think comes from how the leagues differ.

Football has 32 teams and 12 make the playoffs.
Plus they have a salary cap, free agency, and generally short careers leading to a lot of turnover and not a lot of long term contracts.

Baseball has 30 teams and 10 make the playoffs. Those teams are also in fewer divisions, so there's less chance of any team making the playoffs.
Baseball also has no real salary cap, free agency, and longer careers leading to more long term contracts. That would seem to make things easier for the teams with more money. So a small market team is almost constantly rebuilding around someone new while the big market teams can lock in a great player for 5-10 years if they want to. (I've never really understood a young player wanting a long term contract- one of the most bizarre things I've heard about contracts was I think Mo Vaughn. "I'll only cost more next year, they should give me a long term contract" ?? If I felt I'd be making more next year and increasing for the next several, why would I want a long term contract at this years rate?)

So the impression is that the big money teams lock in all the good players leaving the small market teams out of it. Success as a team isn't entirely about how many stars you can sign. Great players help, but there are loads of teams that paid big money to finish out of the playoffs.

Granted, not every small market team is the As. Some problems are probably organizational problems making the team horrible for years. That's also true in football. There are teams that are clueless from the top down. Browns, Jets,recently the Cowboys, probably others. A team might not be any good with the players and coach/manager they have, but they will never get good if there's a new coach every year. there are exceptions, The 2012 RedSox with Valentine, had the talent and were just a bad team. Unless there's a situation like that, teams should hire the coach they think is the best fit, and give them a chance for more than a year.

I can't really say much about Basketball or Hockey. I don't watch much of either these days. Basketball started losing me in 96. Saw the second "dream team" at the Olympics They won by some huge margin but looked awful doing it. One guy missed an alleyoop dunk two times in a row before he finally got it. As much as the 92 team showed what the sport could be the 96 team showed what it should NOT be but was becoming. Just a collection of set pieces for a few people to display some skills of dubious value.
Hockey can no longer figure out just what teams are in the NHL, and when the season is. To think they were doing so well a few years ago and blew it all with two work stoppages over -- I'm not sure just what. Went from primetime network coverage to OLN or maybe ESPN2 overnight.

Steve B

[wonkaticket]

Steve B, that's sort of the breakdown my buddy was saying....true or not that was his take.....on why he's not a huge baseball fan etc.

[tschock]

Originally Posted by steve B

And that perception I think comes from how the leagues differ.

Football has 32 teams and 12 make the playoffs.
Plus they have a salary cap, free agency, and generally short careers leading to a lot of turnover and not a lot of long term contracts.

Baseball has 30 teams and 10 make the playoffs. Those teams are also in fewer divisions, so there's less chance of any team making the playoffs. ...

Steve B

Great points and I agree with a lot of what you said. But the part I left quoted got me thinking around the expectations of what a chance at a championship should be and how it's tied into the regular season.

For instance, in football there are only 16 games, so it makes sense (to me) that more teams should be involved with the playoff structure since it is such as short season (game-wise).

The question then is with baseball's 162 game season, what is someone's expectation of how many teams should be involved in a playoff structure? One school of thought is that 162 games should give a good indication of which teams are the best and there should be only a few teams vying for a championship after such as long season. Another is that more teams should be involved (to make it more interesting/exciting?).

I totally understand the real reason playoffs were expanded was money, but that's beside the point. The possibility for a championship is what matters to the fan. And I think which school of thought you subscribe to regarding the number of teams in the playoffs will influence your perception as well.

I also think that there could be a correlation between one's preference on the baseball division/playoff structure and one's social/political views, but we'll leave that for the sociologists.

[Tabe]

Originally Posted by steve B

Hockey can no longer figure out just what teams are in the NHL, and when the season is. To think they were doing so well a few years ago and blew it all with two work stoppages over -- I'm not sure just what. Went from primetime network coverage to OLN or maybe ESPN2 overnight.

Hockey is bigger, more popular, and drawing better ratings than it has in a long, long time. Certainly a lot more than before the last stoppage. It has never had primetime network coverage - at least in the last 30 years - outside of Canada. When it was on ESPN and ESPN2, that cable network intentionally tried to bury the league by constantly shuffling games around, pre-empting them, burying coverage in SportsCenter, or reducing coverage to simply highlights of fighting. They did this to appeal to the NBA and NFL and tank the value of the NHL TV contract. It worked. The NHL walked away and wandered off to OLN and was lost in the woods for a bit. Now the NHL has regular national coverage on NBCSN - which gets generally the same amount of households as ESPN - and has a massive ratings/attendance hit in its annual Winter Classic game. Attendance is the highest, %-wise, of any of the four major leagues. Revenues are up. The most recent TV contract is worth $2 billion.

In other words, hockey is doing just fine and is actually growing. The narrative from 2004 isn't true anymore.

[steve B]

Originally Posted by Tabe

Hockey is bigger, more popular, and drawing better ratings than it has in a long, long time. Certainly a lot more than before the last stoppage. It has never had primetime network coverage - at least in the last 30 years - outside of Canada. When it was on ESPN and ESPN2, that cable network intentionally tried to bury the league by constantly shuffling games around, pre-empting them, burying coverage in SportsCenter, or reducing coverage to simply highlights of fighting. They did this to appeal to the NBA and NFL and tank the value of the NHL TV contract. It worked. The NHL walked away and wandered off to OLN and was lost in the woods for a bit. Now the NHL has regular national coverage on NBCSN - which gets generally the same amount of households as ESPN - and has a massive ratings/attendance hit in its annual Winter Classic game. Attendance is the highest, %-wise, of any of the four major leagues. Revenues are up. The most recent TV contract is worth $2 billion.

In other words, hockey is doing just fine and is actually growing. The narrative from 2004 isn't true anymore.

Interesting. You can tell I haven't followed it all that closely for some time.

I wonder if I'm confusing the once great local coverage for national coverage. The Bruins were on TV a lot before the first stoppage, hardly at all after. Even NESN backed off a lot.
ESPN shuffling them around must have really hurt, that's almost a guarantee of poor ratings for any show. (The local outlet did that to Babylon 5) The league being on OLN was a big surprise, since OLN at the time was sort of like ESPN when it began, showing pretty much any sporting event they could.

Hopefully they'll continue building back up. I think there's probably a lot of international interest which probably helps (I could be wrong)

Steve B