If you could change one thing about MLB, what would that be?

[Jpup]

This question was posed by Major League Baseball in the latest Fans At Bat survey. Here is my answer, I would love to hear your answers:

There are a couple of improvements I would like to see in baseball. First, I would love to see the adoption of a new salary structure which features a maximum and minimum overall payroll for each team. While revenue sharing is a great idea, most of that money is put into the owners pockets and not put back into the team's Major League product. It's a shame that you have team's with payrolls of over $200 million and clubs with payrolls of less than $20 million. I believe that a cap of $100-120 million and a minimum of $85 million or something of that nature would level the playing field for all organizations and would also make the large market teams spend more wisely and not cause player salaries to balloon above the reach of a smaller market club. Currently smaller market clubs such as Kansas City are forced to way overpay for talent to attract them to their club. This is a serious issue in baseball and I believe is even larger than the performance enhancing drug problem that has plagued baseball for the last 12 years.

I would also change the obscene blackout rules currently in place in baseball. I live 3 1/2 hours away from the nearest Major League city (Cincinnati) and their games are blacked out for me. Does baseball, the owners, believe that blacking out those games is going to be an incentive to get me to come to the ballpark? The answer is obviously, no. I'm not sure that this issue isn't larger than the one mentioned above. I believe baseball should be trying to attract more fans to the games and to the sport as a whole. I can understand a blackout of 50 miles in all directions, but when I am 200 miles away, their is simply no way to attend more than a handful of games per year.

[StillFunkyB]

Blackout rules first and foremost.

[Moosie52]

You beat me to it. Blackout rules.

[RANDY IN INDY]

The commissioner.

[VR]

Give Portland a baseball team.

[coachw513]

Institute a salary cap similar to the NBA's that has a maximum ($150 million) and a minimum ($100 million)...as much as I dislike Steinbrenner and the Yankees, I would be thrilled if my owner were so passionate about winning and willing to do whatever necessary with the checkbook...too many owners talk about the "bottom line" and don't spend an amount that the market would dictate as necessary for reasonable competition, trying to get folks to forget that the overall value of their franchises is increasing exponentially each year regardless of the bottom line...I also like the NBA's allowing teams to more easily retain their free agents by being able to "outbid" others by a certain % of $$...it would slow player movement but still allow players to "get paid"...

Next, I'd eliminate the DH...I'm (obviously) a NL guy and think it's the way to play the game...so much more need for strategy, as opposed to bash-ball...

[GADawg]

any change that would slow player movement....I miss those days when the same eight guys played together in the same lineup for several years at a time....I don't have enough time to keep up with who plays where anymore.

[edabbs44]

Salary cap and globalized draft.

[Crosley68]

The DH rule in the American League would be abolished.

[gonelong]

Speed the games up dramatically. 3.5 hours games on a day-to-day basis make it darn difficult to follow every game and exponentially harder for me to justify a trip to Cincy to watch them live.

GL

[BuckWoody]

There are lots of things that I'd like to change about baseball; the DH, the blackout rules, the winner of the All-Star game getting home field, and other things that have been mentioned already.

The thing that overshadows all of these is the need for a salary structure to help restore competitive balance. I like Jpup's and coach's ideas; have a minimum and a maximum and work out some sort of NBA-like Larry Bird clause for signing your own free agents. If you're going to make sweeping changes like this, why not do away with guaranteed contracts while you're at it? Let players play from year to year much like they do in the NFL.

[Chip R]

Yeah, lack of a salary cap keeps smaller market teams like StL and Florida from winning the World Series.

[BuckWoody]

Originally Posted by Chip R

Yeah, lack of a salary cap keeps smaller market teams like StL and Florida from winning the World Series.

Small market vs. large market isn't the issue...that's just what the media likes to call it. It's more about small revenue teams vs. the large revenue teams and those teams who have owners with deep pockets who are willing to spend it (in the case of Florida).

I can't see anything good about having teams in a league whose salaries are so disparate.

[klw]

Some day games for the World Series and bring back a network night game of the week.

[Edskin]

Either reduce the number of All Stars or simply eliminate the game itself altogther. I think each AS squad should have the 8 starters, plus about 5-6 bench players. You should then have a total of approx. 10 pitchers.

The AS game is so lame now because there are so many undeserving players each season. The game winds up coming down to a bunch of guys who probably shouldn't be there anyway. The rule about each team having a rep is also ridiculous.

If the owners and the union scoffed at this suggestion, then I'd just eliminate the game forever. Just have an "all-star" weekend with the contests, etc...