Hypothetical: A NFL-sized MLB season

[John]

What If MLB’s Season Were Only 16 Games?

The other day, I was thinking about something that maybe you’ve thought about too: What would baseball be like if there were only 16 games in a season? I’ve often toyed around with that thought. I sometimes write columns when the baseball season is 16 games old. But I must admit I had never REALLY thought about how this would affect baseball. This time I did.

And I came to believe this: If a baseball season was just 16 games and structured like the NFL season — Major League Baseball would look A LOT like the NFL.

Leave it to Joe Posnanski to pose such an interesting question. A 16-game MLB season, huh? Mr. Posnanski believes that such a beast would turn each team's starting pitch - and each team would have just one starting pitcher - into the equivalent of the NFL quarterback. They would be looked upon as the face of their franchise, and top draft picks would be reserved for securing your ace for years to come.

Since only five pitchers would be carried and rosters would remain at 25, managers would have 20 position players to utilize. Mr. Posnanski sees this giving rise to all kinds of new and innovative strategies and ultra-specialization (think "designated bunters"). All these players would have a lot more time to watch game tape, too, something that doesn't really happen much in MLB because of the "always on" nature of the game.

It's not all good news, though. Mr. Posnanski believes that the pressure created by a 16-game schedule would cause baseball to become a lot more violent. When every game factors so heavily into a team's season, you can expect some hot-headedness and a plethora of plate collisions. Also, while attendance would surely increase - scarcity breeds demand - overall gate take would plummet. This factor alone kills the practicality of the idea.

But what kills it for me is Mr. Posnanski's assessment that fewer games means less opportunity for the accumulation of stats, thus decreasing the meaningfulness of stats overall. I think Mr. Posnanski has a point there. As enticing as the idea of more meaningful games is, I would hate to lose the significance of statistics in baseball. For that reason, I oppose this hypothetical change.

How about you? For or against? Do you have your own proposal for change that you'd like to share with us?

[Lions]

I played a season of High Heat once where I set the game length to 1 inning. It had some similar impacts. First off, top relievers like Mariano Rivera suddenly became ace starters. The key was to keep the other team off the board for as long as possible. Almost any run that scored had the chance to be the game winner. It was also VERY common for no more than the first few batters in your lineup to get an AB. You could stash all glove no hit guys in the bottom of the order and hope your sluggers could bring a run home before they ever had to see a pitch. If they did get to bat, I would eagerly pinch hit for them at home, but be a little more cautious on the road when I had to defend that lead in the bottom half of the inning. I would actually LOVE for OOTP to allow game length alterations like this because I think these things are pretty fun. Any time the game made it past the first inning, you were terrified of it ending abruptly. I can't remember why, but I think I played as the Detroit Tigers and did a fantasy draft. I just wanted to play in Tiger Stadium, I guess.

[Jason]

While the current 162 game schedule is super long, I don't think I could ever support an ultra short season. Not just for the stats, but in baseball I think there are a lot of variables that make any one game much less significant when played over a long schedule.

The whole stats, history, etc John mentions is important to me as well.

What might be cool is to shorten spring training a bit, shorten the season to maybe 132-144 games, and expand the playoffs to a couple more teams.

I think there is also a lot of opportunity being missed around amateur baseball and the draft -- at least the first 4-5 rounds. NFL and even the NBA now use their marketing genius to make their drafts a massive spectacle. Baseball, since the farms are so deep and wide -- and the draft is so long -- does little to make their own spectacle.

It's sad to see baseball dying. They do need to find a way to market and deliver their product to the masses. I would agree that the long season wears thin for most people and most fans - particularly if they are not playing well the first few months of the season.

[Rory]

I'm not for this other than in fun computer game type stuff. I'm a traditionalist in baseball and like the 162 game season, dislike: inter-league play and the wild card.

Now a 162 game NFL season....now were talkin.
What would be the over/under on broken bones if the NFL did that?

[Coqui]

It's sad to see baseball dying.

Wait, what? Sez who? Unless by "dying" you mean "just recorded the ten best attended seasons in the history off the sport in the past ten seasons" and "making money hand over fist on television rights and digital media". If that's the case, then carry on.

[Jason]

I'm not for this other than in fun computer game type stuff. I'm a traditionalist in baseball and like the 162 game season, dislike: inter-league play and the wild card.

Me too, mostly. I am not a huge fan of interleague since it's not really balanced. If everyone had a 2 game home and away series against the every team in the other league, that would make more sense than the way it's run now. However, the math would never work out...

Prior to 1961 teams only played 154 games. Weren't people up in arms about adding 8 more to balance the schedule?

[Cole]

It's funny because I've actually toyed with the idea of running a league like this in OOTP..

My biggest concern would be making it work properly...

I think it would work better as an online league personally, as all human owners could manage their rosters and lineups accordingly..

Some big concerns I would see thought is the draft pools.. they would still (I think) be filled with tons of pitchers, who would then just go on to do nothing.. Perhaps an independant league could be created as a feeder of sorts, I don't know.

I always thought it would be a cool league to run as an online league if OOTP ever implemented its "head to head" feature (wasn't that supposed to be here by like OOTP 9??) If you only have 16 games it would be fun to actually play them out live against your opponent where you can fully manage.

[Arroyos]

What If MLB’s Season Were Only 16 Games?

Bring me a pistol and I'll blow my brains out.

Proposals like this should be censored. Who let John get away with posting this irresponsible idea? It's damn difficult surviving from November to March without baseball, and the only things preventing me from turning to drink or drugs or suicide are OOTP and APBA. And now someone's trying to limit baseball to just 16 days during the summer?

Shoot them!

[Tim Meseck]

I have often thought that the baseball, basketball and hockey regular seasons are just way to long. Especially baseball, it is tough to be a casual fan. This is the exact reason why I love the NFL and that I pay attention to MLS and Premier League. The shortened schedule allows me to actually take interest in what the teams other than my favorite are doing.

Attaching this schedule to baseball would be insane. All of the nuances from pitch to pitch would get magnified by a thousand.

[roncollins]

I love Joe P's blog. It's a fun thought experiment, of course...but only that.