MLB Minute - 8/6/09

With the trade deadline now behind us, I can honestly say that the Major League Baseball season is finally getting interesting. Sure, I guess I have only very little to complain about, since the Red Sox are still in the playoff hunt, despite having dropped to 2.5 games behind the Yankees, but the season has had next to no excitement until now.

However, now I'm scared out of mind, so that adds a little peak to the games. Why am I freaked out? Well, I can see the weaknesses my team has and thanks to dropping two in a row to Tampa, I'm also realistic enough to know that this weekend's four game tilt with New York now affects three teams, with Tampa now just three games back in the Wild Card standings as well. If Boston is going to make a stand, they are likely going to need to continue their 2009 dominance of the Yankees or face the possibility that they were nothing more than high expectations.

However, the big storyline of this series may not revolve around the game itself. Rather, it will be the Big Papi show in the Bronx as Ortiz makes his first trip to New York after news broke of his inclusion on the steroid list, by a New York newspaper nonetheless. If you thought Boston fans were harsh on Alex Rodriguez, I'm willing to be we haven't seen anything near what Ortiz will face tonight.

On TOPPS of the Card Mountain

Major League Baseball today announced an exclusive deal with TOPPS that would give the sports card company sole rights to printing team logos and such on baseball cards. The thought behind this is that it will stabilize the collecting card market after years of over-saturation. Personally, I couldn't really care. The steady rise in price of card packs, not to mention the plethora of sets have made it difficult for the average fan to take part in what once was a pleasurable past time. Still, in my day, TOPPS wasn't a name of quality, so taking a company like Upper Deck and putting them into a secondary market seems like a backwards maneuver to me.

If Major League Baseball really wanted to stabilize something, they should sit back and look at player salaries instead.

Speaking of salaries

We've had a number of discussions here lately in regards to teams like Pittsburgh,Cleveland, and Florida holding never-ending fire sales. Of course, the first thoughts of many would be to have a salary cap in Major League Baseball that would allow all teams to compete for every player. That seems all fine and dandy, but it isn't realistic. I think the solution would be to start smaller.

Therefore, I'm proposing this. The magic formula for fire sale teams is to give them prospects. But the question needs to be asked as to why these teams can't draft and sign their own. The reason is that agents have been allowed to control how the draft is executed, enabling incoming players to basically determine who they will be drafted by due to signability concerns. This means the rich continue to get richer, while the poor teams either lose a draft choice by picking a player they can't sign or by having to settle for a lesser prospect that they can. Want to put a stop to it? Do two things:

1.) Make it so that incoming players cannot sign a major league contract. They can get their signing bonuses, but they aren't guaranteed major league money at this stage.

2.) Instill a salary cap on incoming rookies. They do this in the NBA and in the NFL, why not major league baseball. If they aren't signed to major league contracts, then they aren't under the protection of the union either, meaning that their negotiations can be handled in a much more cost affective manner.

The big number mind set is being put into place by these agents now before these kids ever see draft day, so why not change that first.

Alright folks, that's what's on my mind for the MLB Minute this week. Let me know what's on yours.