Radical? baseball changes

I was listening to the weekly (when does it switch to daily??? I'm Jonesing here!) ESPN baseball today podcast hosted by Eric Karabell (@karabellespn) in which some proposed radical changes were discussed. This week's episode had Keith Law (@keithlaw) on it (he takes turns with Mark Simon (@msimonespn) as co-hosts).  I love listening to all of these guys, although I really miss the wit and sarcasm of Peter Pascarelli who got me hooked on the show in the first place.   But I digress.  My point is just that if you're a baseball fan - and if you're not, I'm not sure how you landed on this page in the first place(!) - you should really listen to this show. It's infinitely better than any of the local sports radio talk shows that you may listen to, and offers a very insightful view into the world of MLB baseball.   Anyhow, one of the proposed radical ideas that had been suggested and was very quickly and unceremoniously dismissed by Mr. Simon, was the idea of having baseball adopt what is used in English Football (i.e., soccer!) where the worst teams in Division I get bumped down to Division II, and the best teams in lower divisions get to move up.  As stated I completely agree it's a bad idea, and there are a million reasons why it won't work.  Can you imagine if Pawtucket wins the International League title and gets to move up to the MLB?  How could they survive financially in their 10,000 seat stadium?   And how well would they fare against established franchises?  And how well would the Astros draw if they were playing against Omaha or Nashville or Albuquerque?  (As a benefit, I suppose they might win some games but nodody would be watching).

Best and Worst of 2011

As we start a new year, hopefully one with better results for our Red Sox, time to reflect on the first year of this blog, and look at the best and worst predictions that I made.  After reading through these, I welcome you to share your opinions in the comments section.

I'll start with a few nominees for worst predictions, in chronological posting order:

Colorado beating Oakland in the World Series.  I think I at least get a break on this one, as it was made in January before the end of all the off-season moves and I was trying to be original.  Every other prognosticator  had picked Philadelphia and the Red Sox, and neither team played in the Fall Classic, so in that sense my prediction was no worse than everybody else's.  I made some other poor choices on this initial power ranking too, including having Cleveland as the worst team in the majors.