The Central Divisions

[Guest El Hijo Del Lunatic]

How's the attendence in Montreal this year with the winning team?

Up, actually, by about 500 people a game. They're still stuck in the cellar in terms of attendance, but usually a team with a winning record won't get a huge bump in attendance until the stretch run.

 

Well, if the Cubs were somehow allowed to have Sammy Sosa in the batting order 3 or 4 times, maybe they'd have a chance.

They could also use snother big bat since Moises Alou hasn't panned out the way they planned, and hope their pitching shores up a bit. They overachieved last year, mainly because their pitching (both starting and bullpen) was on fire up until about August. Jon Lieber's still really good, and Mark Prior looks to be the real deal, but Kerry Wood's gotta start finding the strike zone a bit more and the bullpen has to return to form for them to have a shot at anything. They're hitting isn't great, but they're a bit young. Corey Patterson continues to impress me.

 

Personally, I hate the salary cap. I'm not a fan of the NFL system. I like to see players stay with their teams a few years.

Well, the NFL salcap isn't perfect, but it's a better situation business-wise than what baseball's doing. It's different in baseball: most of the bad teams ship off their good talent in trades rather than lose key components via free agency. It sucks to be a Bartolo Colon fan in Cleveland, for example.

 

There is only one answer that will solve all of baseballs problems. MAKE ANDY FURMAN OR TRACY JONES THE COMMISH

Two words: Jesse Ventura. Someone on ESPN.com made this comment as a joke, I think, but he's shown a vested interest in baseball, is an outsider to the game (in that he's never owned or played in MLB), and isn't afraid to both get good people to help him and tell it like it is. It's not that I don't like Bud ... ok, it's not that I *HATE* Bud. He's just never going to get anything done, because he was an owner ande still has an owner's mentality. He can bend over backwards for MLBPA and the players will still hate him because he was an owner, AND the owners will hate him for turning his back on them. Find someone fromt he outside, and do it yesterday.

 

They should just realign the divisions similar to English football: Premier and A divisions for the haves and have-nots...

They could probably do that, but it'd be ten times easier to just make everyone on even terms. Major League Baseball is having trouble enough getting people to go to Expos' games, without classifying them as "second-tier" to boot.

 

And as far as the AL and NL Central Divisions go, it's not that they're bad divisions. They've got some halfway-decent teams and some really good players. The problem is you look at the AL and NL Wests and think "GODDAMN!" The Giants, Dodgers and Diamondbacks are in the NL West; the A's, Mariners, and Angels are in the AL West. That's probably 6 of the top 12 teams in the league right now. They are the equivalent of the NBA Western Conference, and everything else (except that two-team race in the AL East) plaes in comparison.

 

LUNATIC

- Pimpin' ho's and clockin' a grip like my name was Dolemite.