One was the subject of the expansion of post-season play. For the first time since 1995, a change will be made to the playoff format. Starting no later than 2013, a second Wild Card will be added in each league, increasing the post-season pool to 10 of the 30 clubs.

The new format does not appreciably increase the length of the post-season since it consists of a simple one-game playoff between the two Wild Cards in each league. The winner of that game will advance to the regular Division Series.

Though this seems like a no-brainer in terms of implementation, the November announcement stated the question of whether it will go into effect in 2012 would be decided no later than March 1. With one month to go before the self-imposed deadline, the two sides have yet to concur.

Not surprisingly, MLB commissioner Bud Selig wants to get it done immediately.

“It’s pretty definite in my mind,” Selig told USA TODAY. “Teams are anxious. Clubs really want it.”

Michael Weiner, executive director of the Major League Players Association, is unsure it is feasible this year.

“The 2012 season was not designed to accommodate an extra round of playoffs,” Weiner told USA TODAY. “We’re having discussions to see if it can work. We’ll decide in the next month or so if we’re able to do it.”

Though Weiner was not specific, the concern seems to be the travel involved in the expanded post-season schedule. In addition to this one-game Wild Card play-in game, any division ties will reportedly also be decided on the field going forward. The potential scheduling impact of this change also has to be considered. Though not stated, revenue-sharing issues could also be present.

Given the considerable regular-season benefit of an additional team in the playoff hunt in each league, having fewer off-days during the post-season to fit in an extra game or two should not present a significant challenge. Nor should money be an insurmountable problem.

Here’s hoping the two sides resolve their differences, whatever they may be, and MLB begins the new playoff format this coming fall.

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“It meant a great deal to me personally, and a great deal to our sport,” Selig told the AP this week.

Even one of MLB’s most vocal critics took positive notice.

“The agreement to begin testing puts baseball ahead of other American professional sports leagues and is a credit to their leadership,” U.S. Representative Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) said.

Earlier this month, Waxman, the ranking member of the House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce, had issued a warning to MLB and the NFL to begin HGH testing procedures or face the wrath of Congress. His open letter was published by ESPN.

At first blush, this seems like a significant turnaround for the grand old game. But how strong is this agreement, really?

Let’s start with the announcement itself:

“Commencing in Spring Training 2012, all players will be subject to hGH blood testing for reasonable cause at all times during the year. In addition, during each year, all players will be tested during spring training. Starting with the 2012-2013 off-season, players will be subject to random unannounced testing for hGH. The parties have also agreed on a process to jointly study the possibility of expanding blood testing to include in-season collections.”

Just as for an initial positive test for any banned performance-enhancing substance today, a failed HGH test would result in a 50-game suspension.

MLB first experimented with HGH testing in the minor leagues, where the program began late in the 2010 season. Eligible players are those not the 40-man roster. In other words, players covered by the union were exempted. That was not surprising since the union had been steadfastly against HGH testing.

Digging in deeper, the players did not really give up much in the new agreement.

The MLB collection process is yet to be disclosed. In the minors, blood samples are collected from the non-dominant arm of players after games by representatives from the National Center for Drug Free Sport. The samples are sent for analysis to a testing laboratory in Utah.

In August, a former major leaguer, Mike Jacobs, then playing in Triple-A for the Colorado Rockies, was the first player to be suspended for a positive HGH test. Almost immediately, the Rockies released the first baseman.

As mentioned above, the new MLB process includes off-season testing, but how random can that really be? Will representatives travel all over the world, running down players in their home countries or on the beach? Will they show up without notice? How could they?

Players’ Union head Michael Weiner acknowledges that to be effective, testing must occur within a few days of HGH usage. He said scientists have determined that the HGH test can detect the substance in the blood for just 48 to 72 hours.

More importantly, the agreement does not include in-season testing – unless “reasonable cause” is determined. Yet to be clarified is precisely who will decide what is reasonable. More than likely, unless a smoking gun is found that cannot be ignored, no in-season testing will occur.

Without unrestricted in-season testing, the new agreement lacks any significant teeth. Further, expect a major battle if somehow, a union member actually tests positive for HGH use at any time, in-season or off.

“We are sufficiently comfortable with the science to go ahead with testing, but we have preserved the right if there is a positive test for there to be a challenge — if that’s appropriate — to the science at that point in time,” Weiner said.

Despite his effusive praise, Rep. Waxman noted the obvious – the agreement has major exposures.

“It will be important that the testing be extended to the regular season to avoid creating a loophole in the new policy,” Waxman told the AP.

The sides have agreed to explore in-season testing, but there is no assurance anything further will get done during the five-year term of the new agreement.

“The players want to get out and be leaders on this issue, and they want there to be a level playing field,” Weiner said. “The realities, though, are that baseball players play virtually every single day from Feb. 20 through October. And that’s unlike any other athlete — professional or amateur — who’s subject to drug testing. We want to make sure that we’re doing everything we can on the HGH issue, but that it be consistent with not interfering with competition and not interfering with players health and safety.”

The bottom line is that MLB did something, which generated a lot of positive initial press. Years down the road, looking at this in hindsight, will it be considered to have been enough, however?

Probably not.

Note: While you are here at The Cardinal Nation Blog, make sure you register for our free, World Series Highlights DVD sets giveaway. Registrations only run through tomorrow, Friday, so don’t wait!

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Here are four of the elements.

One team from the National League, perhaps the Arizona Diamondbacks or Houston Astros, would move to the American League, creating two 15-team leagues.

The playoffs would expand to five teams from each league instead of the four today.

One version has the six divisions eliminated with the five teams with the best records in each league making the playoffs.

Another major question would be implementing the designated hitter in the former National League teams, since there would be constant interleague play with 15-team leagues.

Any recommendations to Commissioner Bud Selig and the owners will come from baseball’s special committee for on-field matters, which includes Cardinals manager Tony La Russa.

Did I miss any key elements or questions?

What do you think?

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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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I fully acknowledge being a baseball traditionalist. As such, I was not excited about the institution of the Wild Card in MLB. After some time, I now admit that it has been effective in prolonging fan interest and therefore, putting more money into the owners’ coffers.

My main beef moved to the format itself, which I have always strongly felt devalues the first-place finishers by giving them just one more home game than the Wild Card entrant. Having a five-game Division series instead of a seven-game set has also rubbed me the wrong way.

Here in 2010, we have already seen one Wild Card team, the New York Yankees, dispatch a division winner, the Minnesota Twins, in three quick games.

As we learned when the 2011 schedule was announced, next season will begin early – on Thursday, March 31, a half-week sooner than the traditional Monday start. This may have been designed to buy more time for October baseball.

That is what Chicago Trib’s Phil Rogers believes as part of a plan by MLB to expand the playoffs starting this coming year. One big reason why? Money, of course. In-house outlet MLB Network can then elbow up to the post-season broadcasting table.

It would also be consistent with recent comments from commissioner Bud Selig, who in addition to taking frequent bows over the addition of the Wild Card, also notes that MLB has the lowest percentage of playoff participants of major sports and favors a growth in October (and November) ball.

As an aside, I wonder when MLB will make more money from their Advanced Media ventures than from running the teams themselves. As a journalist, I fear the expanding role of the owners of a league self-reporting, with its inherent risks of stifling objectivity, but that is a subject for another day.

Anyway, Rogers suggests two possible formats are under consideration.

1)     A play-in, best-of-three series between the two Wild Card clubs in each league.

2)     A one-game play-in between the two.

The former seems fairer to me than a single winner-take all contest, but even it would not be without controversy. The division winners would have to wait for at least a half-week, which could either be good (resting starters and revamping rotation order) or bad (entire team sitting for the better part of a week getting rusty).

Nothing was yet said about the Division Series and Championship Series mix, but I hope they would make two other changes at the same time as the Wild Card is expanded. First, give the division winners at least a 5-2 home advantage over any Wild Cards and second, increase the DS to seven games.

One other consideration is the removal of potential game 163’s, tiebreaker or play-in contests. The thinking is that they would in effect add a fourth level of post-season play. In other words, too much. Instead, an NFL-style of regular-season tiebreaker based on season series and division record may be implemented, Rogers reports.

On one hand, it would eliminate exciting play-in games like when the Twins and White Sox tied in 2008. Better though would be recognizing what occurred during the 162-game season and giving the berth to the superior team over the previous six months. Overall, I think this proposed change would be positive.

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Until this week, the 16^th and last time a manager was ejected during the playoffs was back on October 16, 2005 when Tony La Russa was run by umpire Phil Cuzzi.

From my game report that evening:

In the seventh inning of the NLCS Game 4 at Houston, La Russa barked from the dugout about a walk issued by Jason Marquis. Crew chief Tim McClelland had to step between the manager and Cuzzi multiple times during the several-minute dispute. During the next inning, centerfielder Jim Edmonds was also run by Cuzzi after complaining over a strike call. The Cardinals lost that pivotal contest by a 2-1 score.

At the time, the umpires were criticized for being short-fused and more importantly, the post-season umpiring selection process came under attack. The cronyism system that keeps the best umpires down and allows the bad ones to remain in their jobs year after year remains a problem to this day.

The 2010 Division Series has already seen three managerial ejections, all on close plays in which replays indicated the skippers had good cases to argue.

Tampa Bay Rays manager Joe Maddon was run from Game 2 of the AL Division Series on Thursday for arguing a checked swing by Texas’ Michael Young. Maddon was tossed by home plate umpire Jim Wolf after Young hit a three-run home run to give the Rangers a 5-0 lead in a game they would win 6-0.

Later that same day, Twins skipper Ron Gardenhire was ejected by ump Hunter Wendelstedt in Game 2 of his ALDS for arguing balls and strikes. The two have had multiple skirmishes in the past.

Twins starter Carl Pavano appeared to have struck out the Yankees’ Lance Berkman, but Wendelstedt called the pitch a ball. Berkman doubled on the next pitch to put New York ahead 3-2 in a game they would go on to win by a 5-2 score. Like the Rays, the Twins were put into an 0-2 hole in their series.

On Friday night, Atlanta Braves manager Bobby Cox was sent to an early shower in the second inning of Friday night’s Game 2 of the NLDS, eventually won on a Rick Ankiel home run in extra innings. Cox argued that Giants shortstop Juan Uribe‘s throw on Alex Gonzalez‘ grounder pulled Aubrey Huff’s foot off the first base bag on a play that had been called safe. Replays again suggested another missed call.

The same umpire, Paul Emmel, had been involved in what appeared to be a blown call at second base the night before that helped set up the only run of the game in the Giants’ 1-0 Game 1 win. The soon-to-be retiring Cox has a history of ejections, but he had a point here.

Something must be done because again the umpires are making themselves factors in the playoffs instead of remaining a seamless part of it.

Is do-nothing commissioner Bud Selig watching these games? If so, will this finally help push him into engaging the unions in discussions about expanded use of instant replay?

Probably not.

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Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig was at Chicago’s Wrigley Field on Friday. The 76-year-old appeared on several radio and television broadcasts, fielding the normal softball questions about his legacy. That allowed Selig to brag about his accomplishments such as the wild card, as well as future wishes including international play.

What no one posed were the questions that would have actually told us something. Here are six examples of what I would have liked to ask:

1) You take credit for instituting the wild card and now say you would like to expand the playoffs. Do you plan to do anything to give a greater advantage to division winners in the future? If so, what and when?

2) We’ve seen instant replay used for disputed home run calls. Isn’t it time to consider expansion of the capability to a greater level of use as in many other sports?

3) With the recent leaking of financial statements of the Florida Marlins and Pittsburgh Pirates, were you aware they have not been deploying their revenue sharing funds to improve their on-field product as was supposedly required? What are you going to do about it? What is your message to those teams’ fans?

4) It has been rumored that Bob DuPuy, MLB president, is being forced out of his job. Does it have anything to do with the above? Does eliminating your most obvious successor mean you may be planning to stay longer than the two more years you have remaining on your term, which will have run 20 years?

5) Will you ever standardize the use of the designated hitter or abolish it entirely? Don’t you see that it causes a built-in inequity in interleague play, the All-Star Game and the World Series?

6) You said the wild card was instituted for the fans, increasing their interest in more teams deeper into the season. If you want more fans to follow games, why can’t you get the archaic and confusing television blackout rules fixed as you said you would at least four years ago?

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12 months ago at this time, I was in Cooperstown, New York, attending my first-ever Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremony. That class included Goose Gossage, Dick Williams, Peter O’Malley and former Cardinals manager Billy Southworth.

It was a special time for me – a beautiful Sunday afternoon setting, just about perfect in every way, but one thing really bothered me.

I had to give up the final installment of a Cardinals-Mets series, my and the team’s last-ever game at the old Shea Stadium, to head up to Cooperstown. Why did I have to decide between the two?

This year, I had the benefit of watching Rickey Henderson’s acceptance speech on one of the press box monitors during the Cards-Phils game. But what about the 45,000 baseball fans in this park and hundreds of thousands more across America?

I do give the Phillies credit in that they announced that ticket stubs from Sunday’s game can be redeemed for a free Hall of Fame admission in the next 12 months. A nice gesture, but not enough.

Why doesn’t MLB show more respect to their greats by not holding games during the induction ceremony? Schedule all the Sunday action in the evening, for example.

Better yet, take a day off. Don’t you think Tony La Russa would like to have traveled to Henderson’s ceremony? Don’t you think most of the dignitaries still active across the game would like to be there?

Do we see the NFL having their yearly Canton, Ohio ceremony on a game Sunday? Heck, they don’t even hold it during the season.

Of course, in MLB, we are talking about a league that didn’t even think to cover their own draft live until 2007 – a league that starts their post-season games so late in the evening that the next generation of fans they should be cultivating cannot even watch.

It is about time Major League Baseball wises up and celebrates their heritage instead of relegating it to second-fiddle status. Sadly, probably the only way to get their attention is to prove to them by doing so, they will make more money.

Congratulations to new Hall of Famers Jim Rice, Henderson, the late Joe Gordon, broadcaster Tony Kubek and writer Nick Peters.

MLB Advanced Media, L.P. (MLBAM) is known as the extremely profitable arm that introduced MLB.tv, the online video server for streaming games live and on-demand said to be the most successful subscription service on the entire internet.

The technology used by MLBAM for a system and method that identifies the location of an Internet user has been recognized with a U.S. patent, officially given number 7,486,943.

The purpose of the system is to determine if a user is eligible to receive the video feed of a particular game given television blackout restrictions. The system determines the location of an subscriber using Internet protocol addresses and compares it with a set of predefined rules to determine whether the user will be allowed to access to the requested content.

MLBAM has proudly boasted that it believes the patent is the first issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to the baseball industry in the modern era.

You’ll have to excuse me for not joining in the celebration. There are so many areas to be concerned about here that I can barely count them all.

First and foremost, with MLB it is always about money. In this case, it is protecting the golden goose they have raised in MLB.tv. Can you imagine the horrors, the tragedy, if one of their paying customers accidentally was able to see a game that MLB deems they shouldn’t?

Let’s say you were caught at work and couldn’t get home to see the game on television. Instead you wanted to tune it in on your computer at the office. Sorry. MLBAM’s world-class technology will ensure you can’t.

After all, why should fans be able to see games they wouldn’t otherwise be able to? In MLB-think, that is apparently bad business.

Wouldn’t it be great if MLB would decide to invest as much energy and resources in fixing their amazingly complex and overlapping broadcast territories and the confusing and frustrating blackouts inherent with them as they do in defending them?

In fact, three years ago, Commissioner Bud Selig promised to get to the bottom of the territorial rights issue.

“I don’t understand (blackouts) myself,” Selig said. “I get blacked out from some games.”

“Right now,” he said, “I don’t know what to do about it. We’ll figure it out.”

“I hear more about people who can’t get the game,” Selig said, “and, yes, I’ve already told our people we have to do something about it.”

Apparently what his “people” have done since 2006 has been to make it even more difficult for fans all over the country to see Major League Baseball games. And now they have the patent to prove it.

And they’re not stopping there. MLBAM has an additional ten patent applications pending approval, likely all intended to generate even more money while further decreasing fan-friendliness.

Congratulations, MLB. You may not seem to care much about fans, but you’re definitely consistent.