The Rest of the Baseball Season: Musical Chairs or Spoiler?

With 2/3 of the baseball season in the books, this is what it boils down to if you are a baseball fan: Your team is either playing Musical Chairs or Spoiler.

And the bad news is this: 60% of the teams in MLB baseball are relegated to playing the role of Spoiler rather than contender. At least if you believe the playoff odds as posted on coolbaseballstandings.com


http://www.coolstandings.com/baseball_standings.asp?i=1

The 12 contenders -- ATL, PHI, STL, CIN, SD, SF in the NL and NY, TB, BOS, MIN, CHI and TX in the AL -- are beginning to jockey for position and seeding, Musical Chairs. Six teams are in serious contention in each league competing for four playoff positions.

The other 60% of MLB -- 60% of the teams -- are playing for next year. And there are two months left in the season. Is this the parity of which you speak?

2/3 of the season gone and we've eliminated almost 2/3 of the teams. That's efficient, brutally efficient, and certainly not good for fan interest. Do we see the same in the NFL? No, I don't think so. Most teams are still in the hunt until about the last two weeks or so. Let's see 2/16 = 12.5%. Carry the one and...

So, baseball would have to figure out a way to have most of the teams remain in contention until about 20 games remain, or about mid-September -- give or take a week -- to be comparable. The only way to do that is to expand the playoff pool and the purists would kill baseball over that.

The salary cap / revenue sharing isn't going to pull everyone close enough to .500 to do the trick.

I know the NFL has the advantage of the smaller # of games magnifying the impact of each game but seriously folks, it used to be in baseball that you wouldn't look to wave the "Wait 'til next season" flag until September -- unless you're the Cubs, then why wait? Get it out of the way by late-June or July and concentrate on B-BQ or something.

I don't know how some of these teams pull in fans late in the season after all hope is lost. The sales pitch "Come see our pretty new stadium" ie: "look at what we brought with your increased taxes: only goes so far. Right?

Figure it out, MLB.