| 23 November 2011
Major League baseball has been a whole ‘lotta moves the past few days by agreeing to a new labor deal, moving the Astros from the NL to the AL, adding an additional wild card playoff spot to each league and becoming the first professional sports league to start blood testing for HGH.
All of these major key issues were agreed upon with little or no strife, much to the grief of fans who are suffering through a NBA lockout and the NFL fans were stressed to no end when it just a mere thought that professional football would not be played.
Hit the title/read more to continue reading....
Bud Selig, the long groaned about MLB Commish has to be be given some credit here as he has done was David Stern and Roger Goodell could not do- have 21 consecutive years of labor peace.
“Nobody back in the ’70s, ’80s and early ’90s, 1994, would ever believe that we would have 21 years of labor peace,” Selig said.
The biggest surprise was the agreement on HGH testing. Baseball has long been known to “look the other way” when it comes to steroids but the fact they are the first professional sports league in the States to start blood testing shows they mean business. The HGH testing will be randomized and take place during Spring Training and the offseason. While the in-season testing is still being debated because of player safety, a positive HGH test would still result in the same 50-game suspension as a positive urine test.
Players and owners agreeing on the HGH testing is a way to prove to the public that they want to be seen as leaders in the movement to ban all steroids in the game rather than ignoring a blatant issue.
In a move out of left field [pardon the pun] is the sale of the Astros with the condition they be moved to the AL which confused the hell out of me at first but this now leaves both the NL and the AL with one 5-team division.
The addition of one wild card playoff spot to each league should make a lot of Redsox fans happy, myself included. I didn’t watch a lick of baseball after the final night of the regular season because I was so pissed of at my drunken fat team. So next year, it will make it a little easier to not be as angry at my drunk/fat team if they collapse in the postseason rather than the Fall.
Who am I kidding, Redsox fans will always complain about something, but at least we don’t have to worry about fighting off the Yankees and Rays for one playoff spot.
Also in the new CBA? Players who chew tobacco can't have a full wad in their mouth anymore. If they choose to dip while playing, they must do it more "discretely". That to me is a slippery slope. I know parents are this antitabaco kick but baseball players have always dipped and if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Another thing that troubled me is the new international salary cap and international draft rules. In a nutshell, teams are awarded additional draft picks and increased salary cap based on each team's revenues, market share and record. The better teams get less, the worst teams get more. You are allowed to trade away your international cap share money but only a certain amount of trade-able.
The MLB beleives the International Cap and Draft picks will level out the playing feild by making the draft based off in order of talent, but others see this a chess move to push for the International Draft as early as 2014. These specific rules hint at only worsening the competitive balance between teams and drastically change the way teams plan and prepare for season-team-players-organization-everything. Especially organizations likes Tampa Bay where a majority of their players are international.
With the exception of the Internation Cap and Draft which ramifications cannot be known yet, the rest of these things are great moves for the MLB. No one has to worry about labor strikes, they are addressing a problem well before other professional leagues are and changing the game slightly to benefit the fans all while the NBA fights over a couple of percentages and the NFL scared the living bejesus out of the entire country.
