Discussion Topic: Should the World Series be played in a neutral site?

[The_Admiral]

World Series at a neutral site is an awful idea. The Super Bowl is just one game its fine, but you cant ask a group of fans get together for a seven game series in a neutral city.

It happens every March in Basketball. That seems to work out OK. Just saying...

Well those are practice games, and have zero intensity.

whoosh!

[Jimmy!]

MLB is so stupid. The longer the season goes into the NFL season, the more they kill themselves, and going to a neutral site would be dumb. I do think they need to award the team with the best record home field advantage. What they need to do say the season goes from the beginning of April to the end of August and then have September for the playoff.

And that folks is the biggest problem of them all. I am a huge baseball fan but even I have to admit that by Halloween I am pretty much in football mode. If next year's World Series goes 7 we're looking at November 5 before the season is over. I shouldn't be thinking about baseball at the same time I am thinking about Ohio State-Michigan and the Big 10 race.

Here's the easy solution. Shorten the season back to 154 games. Get rid of unnecessary off days between playoff games. Have the northern teams play the first 7 to 10 games of the season in the west and south. They can make it up to these teams later in the season. Oh and tell FOX to shove their 8:40 start times. We do all of that and it should be wrapped up by mid-October and people outside fans of the two teams involved may actually care again.

Not a bad plan. Shorten the schedule by a few games, start the season a week or two earlier, make double-headers more common (does that REALLY hurt the MLB gate?), go back to having day WS games, and ditch the designated hitter rule altogether.

A neutral-site World Series is a bad, bad idea.

[njmeadowlanders]

My plan:

First off, go back to 2 divisions per league, 2 divison champs and 2 wild cards make it (Both Wild Cards can come from the same division too).

The season can start a week earlier. Now, I realize it's not fair northern teams would open on the road every year, so you'd have to take some gambles some years, but you could have northern-team outdoor games only between division opponents so that games could easily be made up instead of say, Seattle and Cleveland's debacle last April.

Sites that would always work: MIL, SEA (can get cold, but its covered), LA, SD, ARZ, HOU, TEX, FLA, TB, ATL, probably SF and SD, and of course because they always must open at home, CIN. That's 13 sites, Minnesota works until their new stadium so that'd be 14, and then you can go with say, St. Louis or KC and hope for the best there I guess.

Season ends near the end of September. You still need a couple days built in to accomodate a tiebreaker, but by Wednesday the DS's start, no "unnatural" days off (i.e. no day off between non-travel days), and maybe even eliminate a travel day from the DS's. Shouldn't be more than 6 days. That takes you to roughly the 3rd of October in a basic year for arguments sake, an at most 2 day layoff for a team (at most 1 for another if both series go 5) so you'd start the LCS's no later than October 5th or so, give 8-9 days to knock that series off, meaning the WS shouldn't start any later than October 15-16 and be over by the 23rd or so at the absolute latest.

You can also force a couple of doubleheaders to be scheduled for every team (I know, I know, owners lose gates--you can sell them as split DH's maybe) and possibly end the season on the Wednesday before what would be the final weekend and start the playoffs on a Friday night in September, and save 5 days there perhaps.

And FOX: We can wait for a new episode of House or 24 or whatever the hell you're going to air. If you can go a week without airing a new garbage episode of the Simpsons (what a disgrace the show has become from being so so good) you can make House wait another week too...

[infrared41]

Here's my somewhat radical proposal: Keep the regular season as it is (with the provision that it end no later than the last Sunday in September), and keep the divisions as they are, but drop the wild-card teams.

No way.

Wild Card is the best thing to happen to baseball in a long time. The past two seasons ought to be proof enough of that.

Agreed. The Wild Card is one of the few things MLB has gotten right in the last 20 years. It's great and I love it. And that's coming from someone who is about as old school and traditional as it gets with baseball.

[Bronxmet]

If the World Series is played on a neutral site, it's gonna come at the expense of the major baseball cities (especially New York and Boston, if their teams win the pennant). Fans in the established baseball towns are going to be mad that they can't host the World Series if THEIR team is playing in it.

[scarsofthumper]

I know what they need to do immediately is make the division series a best of 7 also.

[oo_nrb]

Here's my somewhat radical proposal: Keep the regular season as it is (with the provision that it end no later than the last Sunday in September), and keep the divisions as they are, but drop the wild-card teams.

No way.

Wild Card is the best thing to happen to baseball in a long time. The past two seasons ought to be proof enough of that.

Agreed. The Wild Card is one of the few things MLB has gotten right in the last 20 years. It's great and I love it. And that's coming from someone who is about as old school and traditional as it gets with baseball.

Agreed again. The Wild Card has been a huge success. Since it's been introduced, there have been 9 Wild Card teams to make the World Series, 4 of them winning it. In fact, this year's WS was the first since 2001 to NOT feature a Wild Card team. I say the Wild Card stays.

However, I say that the ASG determining home-field advantage in the World Series needs to go. The eventual NL Champion Rockies had a lone representative at the game, and they were the team that felt the effects of the NL losing. The fact that their World Series fate was in the hands of 29 other players is just not a good system.

As for the playoff proposals, I'm all for a 3-5-7 playoff format, especially because it cuts down on the fact that a sweeping LCS champion can be forced to wait up to 8 days for their opponent.

...and yes, I know everything I just says shows my blatant 2007 Rockies bias. So sue me

[infrared41]

Here's my somewhat radical proposal: Keep the regular season as it is (with the provision that it end no later than the last Sunday in September), and keep the divisions as they are, but drop the wild-card teams.

No way.

Wild Card is the best thing to happen to baseball in a long time. The past two seasons ought to be proof enough of that.

Agreed. The Wild Card is one of the few things MLB has gotten right in the last 20 years. It's great and I love it. And that's coming from someone who is about as old school and traditional as it gets with baseball.

Agreed again. The Wild Card has been a huge success. Since it's been introduced, there have been 9 Wild Card teams to make the World Series, 4 of them winning it. In fact, this year's WS was the first since 2001 to NOT feature a Wild Card team. I say the Wild Card stays.

However, I say that the ASG determining home-field advantage in the World Series needs to go. The eventual NL Champion Rockies had a lone representative at the game, and they were the team that felt the effects of the NL losing. The fact that their World Series fate was in the hands of 29 other players is just not a good system.

As for the playoff proposals, I'm all for a 3-5-7 playoff format, especially because it cuts down on the fact that a sweeping LCS champion can be forced to wait up to 8 days for their opponent.

...and yes, I know everything I just says shows my blatant 2007 Rockies bias. So sue me

The ASG deciding home field is a joke. It should be determined by the World Series team with the best regular season record. In the event of a tie the best playoff record gets it. If that fails then go to a coin flip or something. Hell, even switching back to alternating years would be better than the current system. This is kind of funny and ironic. At the beginning of the year I heard an analyst on some show (I forget where) arguing against the ASG deciding home field in The World Series. His argument? "Is it fair that a Tampa Bay Ray might end up in a position to decide who gets home field advantage in The World Series?"

I like the 3-5-7 format. I think a 3 game LDS would make for some of the best baseball in the playoffs. Talk about intensity. A 5 game LCS worked before. It could work again. Not to mention it would add to the importance of each game. Cutting down the length of the post season would eliminate World Series baseball in November.