We’re a week into the return of sports and there’s been some good and bad. The best thing so far was the Dodgers sweeping the Astros in Houston. They might not finish the season, but at least that happened. But it still doesn’t make up for the Astros cheating to win the World Series in 2017. Jose Altuve, Alex Bergman, George Springer, and Josh Reddick combined to go 0 for 28. In Games 3-5 of the World Series, they were 13-50. As Orel Hershiser said, “Guessing’s harder than knowing.” Now, 13 for 50 isn’t crazy, but they were 11 for 35 if you take out Game 4. Why is Game 4 significant? Alex Wood was changing signs even when a runner wasn’t on second base in Game 4, making it a lot harder for the Astros to cheat. So they were ridiculous in the two games when they were definitely cheating and bad in the one home game when it was difficult to cheat. Of course, that was the one game the Dodgers won in Houston in the World Series. They scored 12 runs in Game 5 and that wasn’t enough because the Astros were cheating. That World Series was stolen from the Dodgers. And there’s one thing that everybody forgets about that World Series because now everybody focuses on the cheating (because, you know, the Astros cheated to win the World Series). Yuli Gurriel should have been suspended for what he did with Yu Darvish pitching in Game 3. Oh, that’s right, he was suspended, but it was for five meaningless games the following season. If you want to actually punish him, suspend him for two World Series games. In Game 5, Gurriel had a home run and a double. The home run was a three-run homer to tie it in the fourth. Of course, if Gurriel had been suspended, the Astros would have just had somebody else in the lineup cheating so maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference.
And now let’s talk about Joe Kelly. Baseball announced an eight-game suspension for Joe Kelly for not hitting anybody. Now, he threw a fastball near somebody’s head and it was probably intentional so I’m fine with a suspension, but eight games was excessive (there’s no precedent for a suspension that long for throwing near somebody). And Major League Baseball’s explanation made no sense. Here’s what they said:
“Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Joe Kelly has received an eight-game suspension for his actions in the bottom of the sixth inning of Tuesday night’s game against the Houston Astros at Minute Maid Park. Kelly, who has previously been suspended in his career for intentional throwing, threw a pitch in the area of the head of Alex Bregman and later taunted Carlos Correa, which led to the benches clearing.”
Like I said, I’m fine with suspending him for throwing near somebody’s head, but if they added any games to his suspension for taunting Carlos Correa, that’s absurd. The Astros cheat to win the World Series and nobody gets suspended, but you’re going to suspend Joe Kelly for taunting Carlos Correa? Also, Kelly wasn’t even thrown out of the game. The benches cleared because the Astros didn’t stay in their dugout. And I get that you don’t want an altercation where people could be spreading coronavirus, but blaming Joe Kelly for the Astros coming out of their dugout because Joe Kelly made a silly face and said something not nice to Carlos Correa is ridiculous. You can give him two or three games for throwing a fastball near somebody’s head, but the rest of it is absurd. And then I saw the Astros complaining about Joe Kelly throwing at somebody when he wasn’t on the 2017 Dodgers. That’s right, but he was on the Red Sox and the Astros cheated against them in the playoffs also.
The second game of Dodgers-Astros was my first Major League experience with the ridiculous extra innings rule. The Dodgers ended up beating the American League Houston Astros after the Dodgers’ DH hit a two-run home run to lead off an inning. Ten-year-old Jim would be very confused. The rule is very stupid, but I was happy that the game refused to end and went 13 when the point of the rule is supposed to be to end games quickly. Baseball games end when they’re good and ready and that’s one of the things I love about the game. They played four extra innings and the Dodgers only scored in two of them. In the two innings where the Dodgers didn’t score, the Astros definitely should have laid down the sacrifice bunt to lead off, but they didn’t (sacrifice bunting with a man on second and nobody out in the third inning is stupid, but when you only need one run to win the game in extra innings, you should absolutely take a runner on third with one out). Hopefully they will just get rid of the stupid rule when we get back to regular baseball, but Rob Manfred is the commissioner so anything is possible. I heard a podcast where they were talking about having the magical runner starting in the 12th or 13th or something. They also mentioned going to a points system where you get two points for a win and none for a loss, but if you get to the 12th or 13th or something, you get one point for a loss. Here’s my reaction to that:
This isn’t hockey and don’t give Manfred any more stupid ideas. I hate the DH, but I heard an idea that would make it more palatable. I am 100% against the DH, but this idea would be better than just having it all the time: you lose the DH when you take out the starting pitcher. The bad part of this idea is the DH. The good parts of this idea are losing the DH at some point, giving an incentive to keep starting pitchers in longer, and the strategy of where to put the DH in the lineup (early in the lineup to get as many at bats as possible or later in the lineup to make it easier to deal with after you lose the DH) and dealing with that spot once the DH is gone. They’re also talking about seven-inning games for doubleheaders. I don’t like it, but I could live with it for this season when you have limited off days and lots of games possibly getting cancelled. It’s definitely not worse than the NL having the DH and the magical extra innings runner.
And then there’s the coronavirus situation with the Marlins. It took less than a week for games to be cancelled because of the coronavirus. It seems that the rest of the league is doing okay so far (but people who work for the Phillies have now tested positive since the Marlins played there), but that doesn’t mean that will continue. I’m not optimistic about the season finishing. Hopefully there will be a vaccine available by next season and we can just get back to playing sports regularly (ideally I’ll be at Dodger Stadium in August 2021 to boo the Astros), but that might not happen.
So what can baseball do? Things seem to be going better for the NBA with their bubble. So Major League Baseball should be making plans for next year in the event that the coronavirus is going to affect next season as well. It’s a little easier for basketball with smaller teams. They can put 22 teams at Disney World and have their bubble. Hockey has two bubbles going in Canada. I think baseball could do three bubbles. You could have the East play in New York, the Central play in Chicago, and the West play in Southern California. It’s not as easy as having everybody at Disney World, but it can be done. In New York, you have Yankee Stadium, Citi Field, and minor league stadiums in Brooklyn and Staten Island. Chicago has Wrigley Field, whatever the White Sox stadium is called, and the Kane County Cougars’ stadium a little over an hour from Chicago (also the South Bend Cubs are two hours away). Southern California has Dodger Stadium, Angel Stadium, and minor league stadiums for the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes, Inland Empire 66ers, and Lake Elsinore Storm about an hour from Disneyland. The disadvantage for Southern California is that it’s more spread out, but the advantage is that you could have the teams at Disneyland.
A full day of games for each region would be five games. You could play four at the Major League stadiums each day and one at a minor league stadium (or use more than one minor league stadium and then you don’t have to have two games at both of the Major League stadiums each day). There was some talk of having Arizona and Florida bubbles with the spring training sites, but I don’t think that works with the summer weather in those places. You definitely can’t play afternoon games outdoors in the summer in Arizona. I remember landing in Phoenix at night in July and it was still 100 degrees so even night games outdoors could be rough. Florida has heat and rain to deal with. You can definitely play afternoon games in New York and Chicago. If you’re playing four games per day at Dodger Stadium and Angel Stadium, that would mean two afternoon games per day. You would have some days where it’s pretty hot (my second game ever at Dodger Stadium was an afternoon game when it was 97 degrees), but the Dodgers and Angels do play afternoon games in the summer. And if you wanted to limit the afternoon games in Southern California, you do have three minor league stadiums in the area. Hopefully we won’t have to worry about any of this, but baseball should be preparing for that possibility. One issue is what to do with players not on the active roster. Right now everybody has those players working out nearby (the Dodgers have them at USC). Maybe you could have those players staying in the bubbles and playing games at nearby college fields or something.
And we’re still pretending that football is happening in the fall. The NFL should probably do four bubbles by region (I’m not putting thought into where they would be). That would be up to four games each week for each region (you would need multiple fields). Play everybody in your division twice and everybody in the other conference once and that gives you a season of ten games. But they’re going to try to play a normal season and that seems guaranteed to fail in football. I saw somebody saying that baseball was more risky than football because football is only one game per week. I have a hard time believing that because football is a contact sport, rosters are much bigger, and you have practices.
College football is allegedly happening with modified schedules. Allegedly, Notre Dame is playing an 11-game schedule as a member of the ACC with ten conference games. We’re going to travel to North Carolina twice and Georgia for games. Since college football is talking about ideas that aren’t actually going to happen, I’ll give you my plan. It won’t happen, but it makes more sense than what they’re planning on. I kind of alluded to this in my last post, but I’ve put more thought into it. You create temporary pandemic conferences that are mostly based on geography and play in the spring when things are hopefully better. You only play eight games to keep the season as short as possible so that you have as much time as possible between this season and the following season. If you’re playing eight games, the ideal number of teams in a conference would be nine. Unfortunately, there are 130 FBS teams so you can’t have every conference with nine teams. I came up with 14 conferences and all but two have nine teams. I couldn’t figure out what to do with the MAC so I just left it alone. So the MAC still has two divisions of six teams so you play everybody in your division once and three teams from the other division. And then there’s my Northeast Conference with ten teams. Teams in that conference would play everybody except for one team in the conference. So you play eight games in nine weeks (you would need to have one team off each week with nine teams in a conference). There are no conference championship games. In most conferences, you’re playing everybody so you just go on record for the conference champion. Then you play an eight-team playoff with no other bowl games. To make the playoff, you have to be a conference champion. So these are based on geography, but there’s definitely some overlap. Notre Dame ends up in a pretty good conference, but that means it would be harder to win the conference. I named the conferences and I like some of the names, but others could be improved. I tried to keep as many rivals together as possible. Here we go:
MAC
The same 12 teams that already make up the MAC
Northeast Conference
Boston College
UMass
UConn
Army
Syracuse
Rutgers
Navy
Maryland
Penn State
Temple
Great Lakes Conference
Pittsburgh
Ohio State
Cincinnati
Notre Dame
Indiana
Purdue
Michigan State
Michigan
Northwestern
Great Plains Conference
Illinois
Wisconsin
Minnesota
Iowa
Iowa State
Nebraska
Missouri
Kansas
Kansas State
Jefferson Conference
Kentucky
Louisville
Western Kentucky
West Virginia
Marshall
Virginia
Virginia Tech
Liberty
Old Dominion
Oklahoma/Texas Conference
Oklahoma
Oklahoma State
Tulsa
Texas
Texas Tech
Texas A&M
Baylor
TCU
Houston
Ark-La-Tex Conference (I definitely don’t like this name, but apparently this region is called that)
Arkansas State
SMU
North Texas
Rice
Texas State
UTSA
Louisiana
Louisiana Monroe
Louisiana Tech
Deep South Conference
LSU
Tulane
Ole Miss
Mississippi State
Alabama
Auburn
Arkansas
Southern Miss
Troy
Florida Conference
FIU
FAU
Florida
Florida State
UCF
USF
Miami
South Alabama
Georgia Southern
Tennessee/Georgia Conference
Memphis
Middle Tennessee
Tennessee
Vanderbilt
Coastal Carolina
Georgia State
Georgia
Georgia Tech
UAB
Tobacco Conference
Clemson
South Carolina
Appalachian State
Charlotte
Duke
East Carolina
NC State
North Carolina
Wake Forest
Desert Conference
UTEP
New Mexico
New Mexico State
Arizona
Arizona State
Colorado
Colorado State
Air Force
Wyoming
Mountain Pacific Conference
Washington
Washington State
Oregon
Oregon State
Hawaii
Utah
Utah State
BYU
Boise State
Gold Rush Conference
Cal
Fresno State
San Diego State
San Jose State
Stanford
UCLA
USC
Nevada
UNLV
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