Interesting ideas by the Marlins, but I'd like to see the MLB take this further by cutting down the number of games from 162 to 100, and trimming the inning count from 9 to 7. Sure, the historical data won't match up, but it would be better for the players and more entertaining for the fans to watch shorter, less frequent games.
On an unrelated note, it would be nice if they expanded the playoffs to include 16 teams with the first two rounds being a best out of 5, concluding with the NLCS/ALCS and World Series being a best out of 7, of course. It would get more fanbases interested in their team if they at least made a playoff appearance more often.
The sport could use a shot in the arm in terms of viewership as the average age of your typical MLB viewer is ~54 years.
The problem as with reducing the number of games for any sport always comes down to money. Reducing a season by 62 games for each team is a huge loss in revenues which owners will never go along with, especially owners of the highest grossing teams like the Yankees, Red Sox and Giants.
I like the idea of off-setting that with more teams in the playoffs, but that would be the biggest hurdle to climb in terms of reducing the number of games in a season. You could argue that maybe the players union could strike, citing to grueling of a season, but their compensation is directly tied to revenues, so they'd be opposed to a reduction in games as well.
> by cutting down the number of games from 162 to 100
Since coming to North America I've always felt one of the problems with Baseball and Hockey is they just play too many games, so no game is significant enough. When your team loses to a certain team, you don't care enough because you know they'll play them multiple times more.
Baseball is 162, Hockey is 82 games in "regular season"
NFL is only 16 games, which to me, makes it much more exciting because each win or loss really matters, and as a spectator I actually care.
You just haven't followed baseball closely enough. When it's September and you're in a close divisional or wildcard race, there is nothing more exciting in sports: every pitch counts and every at-bat counts -- and there are ~5-6 games per week. (And that only counts your team! Part of the terror of a close race is that you're also watching every pitch and every at-bat of your rivals.) If anything, it's almost exciting to a fault...
In my opinion, the lockout-shortened 2012-13 NHL season (started in January, 48 game regular season) was the best thing ever.
Particularly in a country where NFL football reigns supreme, the NHL starting an 82 game season in October is just a loser. Starting the compressed season in January, with the NFL regular season over, made so much more sense.
I agree fully, although IMO there's another factor at work here (albeit a side effect of your point anyways).
Not only are there so many games, but they're all on TV. The NFL mostly stacks their games on Sunday so "football sunday" has become a social event for people. Leagues like the MLB, NBA and NHL spread their games all over the week and with modern cable packages on pretty much any given day you can find a game to watch - the specialness is lost.
This is one reason why I think it's a bad idea for the NFL to start spreading games around - sure there was always MNF but they've had TNF now for a while and there's always talk about adding more. They want those primetime slots but all it does is weaken The Event effect of sundays.
The long season not only fits baseball's cultural niche as the lazy Summer, lose-today-but-lick-'em-tomorrow sport, it also has the nice effect of reducing the significance of lucky breaks and hot streaks. The season's long enough to have a long run: Better teams win and worse teams lose. Players' individual statistics are at least stable enough to usefully model and predict overall team wins.
I love the excitement and unpredictability of NFL football as much as the next red blooded American, but there's something a little bit unsatisfying about a team's entire season routinely hanging in the balance of a single referee's call or a ball bouncing right instead of left.
There actually already is a rule on this, the pitcher has to release the ball within 12 seconds of receiving the ball, as long as the batter is ready to receive the pitch. It's just never enforced. But there has been a lot of talk about possibly starting to enforce this rule, primarily using a visible clock/timer in games - though I think MLB were talking about changing from 12 to 20 seconds if they do start enforcing it.
"The sport could use a shot in the arm in terms of viewership"
Your linked article also carefully tiptoed around the other elephant in the room, that being, as the pix demonstrates, not just a sea of old people, but a sea of old white people except for one Hispanic (old) guy. As whites become a minority race and the average age of a MLB viewer goes up one year per year, the pro level will die out pretty soon. How this interacts with billion dollar municipal bond offerings to pay for stadiums and such is interesting to contemplate.
Note, its probably a net gain to the sport overall, even if only 5% of the couch potatoes join or attend a local amateur game or take their kids to little league after MLB shuts down. Even if only 1% take a ball to a local park, it'll still be a net gain for the game overall.
Perhaps it's just that we have two good and popular teams in the Bay Area, but I don't recognize the problem you're talking whenever I attend a baseball game.
On an unrelated note, it would be nice if they expanded the playoffs to include 16 teams with the first two rounds being a best out of 5, concluding with the NLCS/ALCS and World Series being a best out of 7, of course. It would get more fanbases interested in their team if they at least made a playoff appearance more often.
The sport could use a shot in the arm in terms of viewership as the average age of your typical MLB viewer is ~54 years.
[1]http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-04-01/fixing-baseb...