Major League Baseball’s plan to add two wild cards may be off the table for 2011, but is far from dead.
In a recent post, I looked at two of the leading proposals for Major League Baseball to expand the playoffs. As Commissioner Bud Selig made the rounds at the end of last season, he was increasingly vocal in his support to add two wild cards, one per league.
Apparently that will not come to pass in 2011. Even Bud can’t make major changes to the game unless the owners and the Players Union are behind him.
The Chicago Tribune’s Phil Rogers, who has been on top of this story from the beginning, tweeted this:
“Expanded MLB playoffs will definitely not begin before 2012. Owners and players union are unwilling to pursue amending CBA for next year.”
The current collective bargaining agreement will expire on December 11, 2011. Preparing for the negotiations for the next CBA has reportedly been a major topic during this week’s General Manager Meetings in Orlando.
The AP reports there appears to be little opposition to the concept of the expanded playoffs in 2012, but that will still need to be negotiated into the CBA. There does not yet seem to be a preferred format for a wild card play-in round, whether one or three games or something else entirely.
In fact, Selig is now pondering expanding the aperture to four wild cards. Ed Price of Fanhouse tweeted the following, quoting the commissioner:
“Eight (playoff teams) is a very fair number, but so is 10.”
When the 2011 regular season schedule was announced, with its start a week earlier than in the past, some (including me) speculated it was done at least in part to accommodate the new wild cards.
Even though that won’t be the case, the new schedule guarantees (unless there are a large number of weather cancellations) that the World Series will be complete in October. That isn’t a bad thing.
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What happened to the old white guy comittee that TLR was on? Did they ever report out?
I have not heard of a detailed report, but recall having read that they recommended some of the schedule changes, specifically in the condensing of the playoff calendar. In fact, it looks like the same group is meeting next week about this.
I have mixed feelings about expanding the WC but I definitely think 8 teams is more than enough.
I did find it interesting how BD put a position out there in regards to Albert and his salary demands. I believe he wants the fans to know that ALbert may be asking for the moon. This is a PR move to keep the fans in his corner and make sure they see Albert as the bad, money grubbing guy if this goes bad for the Cardinals.
Now we wait for Albert to shoot something back about how he doesn’t want that much money to stay in St. Louis…this great organization as he puts it.
This may be a battle we are fixing to see if Albert really wants to be paid huge money. Albert and his PR team rarely if ever make mistakes with regards to Albert’s image.
It was necessary to derail the ‘out of my control’ train.
Give Albert $30MM and negotiate the years. I wouldn’t go more than 7 or 8.
MLB Trade Rumors said the Cardinals may be interested in Marco Scutaro. He could backup Freeze. He could also play 2B (hint, hint).
Red Sox owe him a bunch BB……………….we were asking if they were going to eat half his salary…….
I read up on Scutaro a little… he has a $12.5M/2-year deal with the Crimson Hose, one year down & one to go and the team holds an option on him for a third year. Getting him would cost more money than either Uribe or Tejada, and player(s) in trade.
He’s Venezuelan… not Brazilian.
Over the last two years, Scutaro has played 275 games at SS and 16 at 2B. He made 20 errors last year, 18 at SS and 2 at 2B, with FPCT of .965 and .969, repectively. Not so good.
In 632 ABs he scored 92 runs, had 174 hits, 38 doubles, 11 HR, 56 RBI, 53 BB, 71 K, hit .275, slugged .388, had a .333 OBP, burgled 5 bases and was caught 4 times.
Sox are shopping him, planning to play Jed Lowrie at SS instead.
Inglesis will be the Red Sox SS by mid season. That’s who we should be going after!