Dear Rob,
Congratulations on your ascension to Commissioner. Always nice to see a Cornell guy from my year make good.
Here are your top priorities:
1. Speed up the game so women and children can identify with it.
2. Maintain your focus on labor peace and competitive balance.
3. Keep your eyes on the future while remembering the power of tradition.
4. Act as if baseball is in the entertainment business.
Specifically, to speed up the game and make it more interesting:
1. Enforce the 20-second rule between pitches with no one on base. That will eliminate all the apparel repositioning that sandbags the action and does nothing to build drama.
2. Instruct umpires not to allow batters to exit the batter's box unless they're hurt. That means pitchers can work fast and batters can't stop them.
3. Pass a rule that bans the replacement of a pitcher in his first inning of work unless he has allowed a run. Mid-inning pitching changes suck the life out of the game in the late innings, just as it should be getting exciting.
4. Speed up instant replay. It's saved time by eliminating most arguments. Its execution, though imperfect, has exceeded expectation. Keep tweaking it so that reviews don't take three minutes.
Then:
- Continue to expand alternative media so that young fans can plug in on any device and revenues can be distributed equally.
- Find a way for the A's to move into the Valley. No other franchise has been held hostage to a dying city like they have.
- Hitch your wagon to Mike Trout, Clayton Kershaw, Giancarlo Stanton and Andrew McCutcheon. The four best players -- or at least young players -- in the game are Americans, and they're all humble, mature, articulate and charismatic. Throw in Yasiel Puig, Bryce Harper and King Felix. Sell them! People will buy.
- Alter the schedule so early April games are played in warm weather cities and inside domes.
- Get some doubleheaders into the schedule and move up the playoffs to prevent the abomination of flurries and freezing rain on World Series games.
- Pardon Pete Rose. It's time. He's paid his debt. While you're at it, pardon Joe Jackson too.
Do all that and you'll be the best commish ever. Go Big (Manf)Red.
It's understandable why Jonathan Papelbon and Bruce Bochy feel indignant about Dodger phenom Yasiel Puig being considered for the All-Star game after just 116 plate appearances over 28 games. If Puig is selected for the game he'll displace one of their compadres who has toiled for years in pro ball awaiting his chance to take the field in the Mid-Summer Classic.
(It is worth noting that Papelbon has thrice represented his league after a similar number of plate appearances against him during that season.)
Fortunately, we don't allow players and coaches to run the sport of baseball. After all, MLB is in the entertainment business, and what could be more entertaining than allowing a meteor to land at Citi Field? Puig, a highly-prized Cuban defector with an awesome backstory, a .440 batting average (and 1.200 OPS) and a diamond gems video collection, is tearing up the Bigs in his first month like no rookie in history except a fella named DiMaggio.
Puig has wowed with the full spectrum of baseball skills. He hits for power and average, lights up the highlight reel with his defense and motors around the bases. His arrival rejuvenated a moribund Dodger squad, catapulting it from last place to second with 10 wins in 11 games. He's filling the stands and powering up the TV ratings and he's already been worth a pair of wins to L.A., best among Dodger batters in one-third the time.
The fans want to see him in the game. His appearance will goose TV ratings. So yeah, he's an All-Star. We shouldn't expect Papelbon and Bochy to understand. They're not fans, they're not MLB brass, they're not TV executives. They think baseball is about athletics, not entertainment dollars.
Even taking into account their argument, there's good evidence that Puig still deserves a spot. They argue that Puig has yet to demonstrate that he can sustain his pyrotechnics over a full season. But this is not Kevin Maas, a career farmhand who caught fire for a few months when called up, only to sputter thereafter. A gaggle of Major League suitors for Puig's evident talents out of Cuba earned him a $42 million/7-year deal from L.A. before he'd faced a single pitch. The 22-year-old was universally rated the Dodgers' top prospect, ripping through three levels of the Minors in less than a full season with a 1.016 OPS. He employed is muscular 6'3" 215-pound frame to singe Spring Training, hitting safely in more than half his at-bats.
Moreover, based on his short history, Baseball Prospectus projects Puig will continue embarrassing Big League pitching with a .341 bating average the rest of the way. To Papelpon and Bochy's point, that would drag his average for the year down to .369, leaving him with just 5.4 WARP for the season, about what Robinson Cano was worth last year.
In other words, the odds are very good that Yasiel Puig is Joe DiMaggio. What do you think: do you want that guy in the All-Star game?
