The Atlanta Braves - Hello darkness my old friend

#69,676
#69,676
Vercingetorix said:
This has been the obvious endgame ever since they neutered pennant races 25 years ago. More rounds, more wild cards, eventually an NFL-like system. I feel sorry for any of yall who weren't around to witness 1993.

I think they should start picking homefield advantage in each round by having each team pick a player for a home run derby.
Click to expand...

I know the commish works for the owners and his job is to make them as much as money as possible but I wish Manfred would stop trying to money grab so freaking much and protect the sport. He’s trying to dumb it down and I hate it.
 
#69,679
#69,679
zjcvols said:
I know the commish works for the owners and his job is to make them as much as money as possible but I wish Manfred would stop trying to money grab so freaking much and protect the sport. He’s trying to dumb it down and I hate it.
Click to expand...

Believe it or not I’m sympathetic to the position they’re in, which is that attendance keeps dropping and the sport is falling off the radar for the youth. So in theory I don’t really blame them for making moves I, an old person, hate. Four rounds of playoffs and a stupid draft-your-opponent TV show isn’t going to do **** to fix their problems though.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Notorious B.E.N
#69,680
#69,680
Vercingetorix said:
Believe it or not I’m sympathetic to the position they’re in, which is that attendance keeps dropping and the sport is falling off the radar for the youth. So in theory I don’t really blame them for making moves I, an old person, hate. Four rounds of playoffs and a stupid draft-your-opponent TV show isn’t going to do **** to fix their problems though.
Click to expand...
Attendance problems is an issue across the spectrum, and it’s just going to get worse. Not sure there is anything that is going to stop that trend.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Notorious B.E.N
#69,682
#69,682
Florida Stanley said:
Attendance problems is an issue across the spectrum, and it’s just going to get worse. Not sure there is anything that is going to stop that trend.
Click to expand...
The fact is there are just too many damn games.

I love it. Baseball fans love it. But why would anyone on the fence care about a Thursday night Braves vs Diamondbacks game when they’ll play three more times in a weekend and 10 more times that year?

It’s not that football is a better on field product. It really isn’t. But those games matter. Every snap has a larger consequence. Baseball and basketball don’t have that.
 
#69,683
#69,683
Vercingetorix said:
Believe it or not I’m sympathetic to the position they’re in, which is that attendance keeps dropping and the sport is falling off the radar for the youth. So in theory I don’t really blame them for making moves I, an old person, hate. Four rounds of playoffs and a stupid draft-your-opponent TV show isn’t going to do **** to fix their problems though.
Click to expand...
You wanna check out the statistics on kids playing baseball?
 
#69,685
#69,685
Kingston Vol said:
The fact is there are just too many damn games.

I love it. Baseball fans love it. But why would anyone on the fence care about a Thursday night Braves vs Diamondbacks game when they’ll play three more times in a weekend and 10 more times that year?

It’s not that football is a better on field product. It really isn’t. But those games matter. Every snap has a larger consequence. Baseball and basketball don’t have that.
Click to expand...

But the nature of the sport is that you have to play a crapload of games to have a meaningful season because any individual game is damn near a coin flip. The best teams still lose 40 percent of the time. That's why the whole appealing point of baseball is that they play every damn day. Unlike every other sport it's actually _relaxing_ to watch your team play, because the result of any one game doesn't matter that much. It's a six-month story that takes all summer to play out, and the slow pace of the game was sort of the point. But unfortunately I don't know how broadly appealing that is anymore.
 
#69,686
#69,686
TBrown said:
You wanna check out the statistics on kids playing baseball?
Click to expand...

I don't take it for granted that that's going to translate in ~20 years to butts in seats in stadiums and MLB ratings. Youth participation in soccer has been sky-high for 40 years and it's still mostly a niche sport. A buddy of mine coaches youth baseball, has two kids heavily involved -- travel teams, etc. The boys love playing but neither of them has any interest in watching on TV or talking about MLB with us. They're mostly into the NBA even though neither of them plays basketball.
 
#69,687
#69,687
Vercingetorix said:
I don't take it for granted that that's going to translate in ~20 years to butts in seats in stadiums and MLB ratings. Youth participation in soccer has been sky-high for 40 years and it's still mostly a niche sport. A buddy of mine coaches youth baseball, has two kids heavily involved -- travel teams, etc. The boys love playing but neither of them has any interest in watching on TV or talking about MLB with us. They're mostly into the NBA even though neither of them plays basketball.
Click to expand...
That’s not a baseball problem. I’m around more kids than anyone. They don’t give a damn about watching any sporting event.
 
#69,689
#69,689
TBrown said:
That’s not a baseball problem. I’m around more kids than anyone. They don’t give a damn about watching any sporting event.
Click to expand...
He's right... If they want to build the game, focus on having the most innovative Xbox/PS game there is and give it away.
 
#69,690
#69,690
TBrown said:
That’s not a baseball problem. I’m around more kids than anyone. They don’t give a damn about watching any sporting event.
Click to expand...

I don’t know how much actual long-form sitting and viewing of events is going on, of course, but the kids at my son’s high school seem to be pretty heavily into the NBA and all its attendant drama. The amount of shlt-talking about college football seems high. I see a million Atlanta United and even Premier League shirts. But I rarely see any evidence among them that they know the Braves exist.

Hockey eventually figured out how to be a sport that isn’t driven by massive TV money. I guess I’m just worried about what baseball is going to do to itself before it gets there too.
 
#69,691
#69,691
Vercingetorix said:
I don’t know how much actual long-form sitting and viewing of events is going on, of course, but the kids at my son’s high school seem to be pretty heavily into the NBA and all its attendant drama. The amount of shlt-talking about college football seems high. I see a million Atlanta United and even Premier League shirts. But I rarely see any evidence among them that they know the Braves exist.

Hockey eventually figured out how to be a sport that isn’t driven by massive TV money. I guess I’m just worried about what baseball is going to do to itself before it gets there too.
Click to expand...
There’s a 0.0% chance middle school aged boys are watching soccer matches on television and a 90% chance that college football **** talking comes from their parents or whatever winning team the boy has latched onto for the sole purpose of being able to **** talk.
 
#69,692
#69,692
TBrown said:
There’s a 0.0% chance middle school aged boys are watching soccer matches on television and a 90% chance that college football **** talking comes from their parents or whatever winning team the boy has latched onto for the sole purpose of being able to **** talk.
Click to expand...
Sorry, but it is true. There is a small percentage of youths that watch the premier league. I personally love the english premier league, but I know most of you guys hate soccer in this thread. I cant stand all the elementary school aged kids who love the warriors because they were winning everything several years ago
 
#69,693
#69,693
TBrown said:
There’s a 0.0% chance middle school aged boys are watching soccer matches on television and a 90% chance that college football **** talking comes from their parents or whatever winning team the boy has latched onto for the sole purpose of being able to **** talk.
Click to expand...

I have personally seen a small group of high school boys watching an MLS game on TV in my own house, so okay. But all I am saying is that I live in a city with a good baseball team and it doesn’t even seem to be on their radar.

MLB certainly isn’t behaving like it thinks it’s got a healthy sport with a secure future, anyway. Can’t wait till they switch to three balls and two strikes to speed things up even more.
 
#69,695
#69,695
Vercingetorix said:
I have personally seen a small group of high school boys watching an MLS game on TV in my own house, so okay. But all I am saying is that I live in a city with a good baseball team and it doesn’t even seem to be on their radar.

MLB certainly isn’t behaving like it thinks it’s got a healthy sport with a secure future, anyway. Can’t wait till they switch to three balls and two strikes to speed things up even more.
Click to expand...
The NBA is getting beat head to head by my 700 lb life on TLC and their salary cap is going DOWN

The problem isn’t isolated to baseball.
 
#69,696
#69,696
I would also like to say that something people love to not mention when trying to **** talk baseball (not speaking specifically to you Verc but in general) is local ratings for baseball continue to rise and also continue to dwarf the NBA’s. The national presence isn’t there for sure but locally tv ratings are big and locally teams continue to do well.
 
  • Like
Reactions: LotteryPick and TBrown
#69,698
#69,698
Also, baseball in 2018 brought in $3B more than the NBA in revenue, but you won’t here ESPN talk about that.
 
#69,699
#69,699
zjcvols said:
I would also like to say that something people love to not mention when trying to **** talk baseball (not speaking specifically to you Verc but in general) is local ratings for baseball continue to rise and also continue to dwarf the NBA’s. The national presence isn’t there for sure but locally tv ratings are big and locally teams continue to do well.
Click to expand...

I guess my question then is this: if everything is good, why has baseball spent the last few years acting like they’re desperately bailing out the lifeboat? Why so many rule changes and now postseason changes and the talk about radical realignment? By now everybody in the industry understands that the way sports is consumed is going to keep changing and all the existing business models are in flux, but so far only baseball is acting like they’re in an emergency. Why?

(As you’d expect, my theory is that right now existing revenues are still good —and with twice as many regional games as the NBA, you’d assume they’d be higher — but that baseball has data showing that their current customers/viewers skew older than other sports, and are therefore presumably less likely to follow along into whatever the next sports revenue model is after selling commercials on regional sports networks. Thus MLB’s willingness to explore all kinds of crazy **** in an effort to widen the base going into whatever the future of sports is.)
 
#69,700
#69,700
Vercingetorix said:
I guess my question then is this: if everything is good, why has baseball spent the last few years acting like they’re desperately bailing out the lifeboat? Why so many rule changes and now postseason changes and the talk about radical realignment? By now everybody in the industry understands that the way sports is consumed is going to keep changing and all the existing business models are in flux, but so far only baseball is acting like they’re in an emergency. Why?

(As you’d expect, my theory is that right now existing revenues are still good —and with twice as many regional games as the NBA, you’d assume they’d be higher — but that baseball has data showing that their current customers/viewers skew older than other sports, and are therefore presumably less likely to follow along into whatever the next sports revenue model is after selling commercials on regional sports networks. Thus MLB’s willingness to explore all kinds of crazy **** in an effort to widen the base going into whatever the future of sports is.)
Click to expand...

I will preface this and then answer your question. Baseball isn’t in a perfect spot. They have problems and your concern about the youth and watching I think is valid. I mean I talk baseball in my life with three people, one my dad and one at work. And both are middle aged white guys. And the third is my roommate. So I think it’s fair to be concerned.

But I would say part of the reason that Manfred is trying so hard to do weird **** is because he believes his sport isn’t cool and so he has to try something different to try and make his sport hip. Which, I would say promoting your young guys and not having them be hit when they stare at a home run for a couple seconds is a good start.

Now, I think baseball believes they have a “cool problem.” Old people love to bitch about the game now but I love strikeouts and home runs. Those are the best part of baseball! I think that’s great. I think Manfred thinks though nobody thinks the product is cool hence trying to shorten games and try weird shot.
 
New posts
You must log in or register to reply here.

VN Store



Back
Top