Off-Topic Forum

Every now and then, I come across something related to major league baseball that I think is interesting.

For example, I've been hearing about how bad the A's are, that the fans are staying away in protest, that the owner wants to move the team. That stuff never goes smoothly, never without a fight. Anyway, I thought I'd take a look to see if this season really is unprecedented. By the way, I have some empathy for A's fans, I remember the Twins 1982 season very well.

I did this search on Stathead Baseball:
In a span of 54 games, from 1901 to 2023, in the regular season, within a single season, requiring Team W/L% <= .167, sorted by ascending Team W/L%.

We have the 2023 A's, 2021 Diamondbacks, 2012 Astros, 2004 Diamondbacks, 1982 Twins, 1969 Padres, 1961 Phillies, 1949 Senators, 1943 A's, 1937 A's, 1932 Red Sox, 1923 Braves, 1916 A's, 1915 A's, and the 1907 Cardinals.

A couple of things stuck out to me. Happens about once a decade. It's happened to the A's more that anyone else.

Then I dug into the 82 Twins, things were not exactly as dire as I remember. That season they won 3 of their first 4. They then went 12-53 but finished the rest of the season winning 45 of the next 93. It would be interesting to know why they were awful for the first third of a season and then were nearly a .500 team the rest of the way.

Very early in the season they traded Roy Smalley to the Yankees and the most visible thing they got in return at the time was Ron Davis, but they also got Greg Gagne. A month later, they traded Doug Corbett and Rob Wilfong to the Angels and got Tom Brunansky. Earlier in the year, in January, they drafted a guy named Kirby Puckett. Three of the four position players that saw the field most often were Gaetti, Hrbek, and Brunansky (ages 23, 22, and 21). They also had a 22 year old pitcher that made 22 starts that season named Frank Viola. 

In conclusion, they were a horrible team for part of the season and a below average team for the rest of it, but the core of the team went on to win the 1987 and 1991 World Series. 

I'm an A's fan, but this season the A's seem to be putting a minor league team on the MLB field.  Not even sure if this same team could play .500 in AAA.  Certainly not the first team to do something like this.   Not sure how to fix this but MLB should be embarrassed for allowing this to happen.  Anyone who pays for an MLB game ticket should see MLB baseball.  I know the English soccer league kicks teams out of the top level that can't compete.  It may be time for something like that to keep the standards of the league up to a professional level.

Pretty sure every team gets 50 some million dollars in TV revenue money.  Every team should be required by MLB to at least spend this figure on their payroll..

The Union is dead against a salary cap, but they seem to ignore the fact a salary cap usually comes with a salary floor, forcing all teams to compete within the same range of total payroll.  And total salaries across the league grow, not just the top of the market players.  This helps to reduce the tanking, because you have to still pay out the salaries, so you might as well pay to get half decent players. 

As a team who spent a lot of the last 40 years in money saving mode, I'm not sure a salary cap would fix things.  The NBA has a salary cap and you still have teams like the 76ers that spent many years in the cellar in thrift mode to acquire young players in the draft.  Even this year the Mavericks sat key players in their final game to MISS the playoffs (I believe it was to keep a draft pick).  They also have supermax contracts which I won't admit I know what they are, but some have admitted to overpaying players just so they can either stay above the floor, or other reasons that may or may not make sense.

I'm not sure it would work in MLB for those reasons plus the fact that unlike the NBA and NFL, when players are drafted it takes a while for them to make it to their MLB team.  So players don't make a sudden impact and that kind of messes up the salary cap.

Having said all that, I think there should be a rule in place where teams or the owners have to make an effort in improving their team within a certain number of years or else face fines or possibly losing their ownership.  I don't mind the strategy of spending a year or two to rebuild and spending much less, but when it lasts 5 years or more, then it makes the league look bad, not just MLB but any sport.