Now that the baseball season is over (WAHOO!), I'm going to tell you why I hate baseball and you should too.
Reason #1: It's Boring
I've been to 10 or 15 baseball games in my lifetime (I know, not that many) and every time I go I don't cheer for 1 team - I cheer for the pitchers to get the batters out as quickly as possible. Baseball is just plain boring! Pitch, wait 50 seconds, pitch, foul ball, batter steps out of the batter's box, wait 50 seconds, pitch, etc. While NBA games last 2.5 hours and NFL games last about 3 hours, each of those have halftimes. Baseball has no halftime (the 7th inning stretch is relatively short), yet still lasts 3 to 3.5 hours.
Reason #2: Different Rules
Pitchers hit in one league but not in the other - how is that fair? Considering the disparity in batting average between pitchers, historically the worst hitters, and designated hitters, whose sole job is to hit, this doesn't seem fair. And what happens during interleague play is an abomination; how can you expect a pitcher than never hits to hit or a team that never has a DH to use one?
Also, the stadiums are all different. If someone hits the ball 360 feet to left field in one stadium it's a home run, but in another it can be caught for an out. What would you say if NFL stadiums could change their goalpost heights to whatever they wanted, or some NBA stadiums could move their 3 point line out a few feet? Isn't that what baseball is doing with these different stadiums?
Reason #3: Some of the Best Players Rarely Play
Every year you hear the same thing going into the playoffs: good pitching gets wins championships. Yet, pitchers really only play every fifth game. Shouldn't we have a sport where some of the best players play in every game?
Reason #4: No Salary Cap
If you're in a big market, you have more money and can get any player you want. There's a reason the Yankees and Red Sox make the playoffs every year, and it isn't because they have better GMs or scouting departments. How come all of the other major sports leagues have a salary cap? Maybe because it provides competitive balance? Sure, every few years you'll have a small market team that goes to the playoffs a few years in a row, but they can't keep that up. Eventually the competitive edge that the small market teams have spreads to the big market teams, such as what happened with the Oakland A's (read Moneyball!).
Reason #5: It's More Luck Than Skill
Each baseball team plays 162 games in the regular season. You would think there would be a few teams that win 70% of their games, which would equate to 113 wins. The MLB record for most wins in a season is 116!
It's considered a big accomplishment for a baseball team to win 100 games, a winning percentage of just 0.617. The data is consistent with this, with somewhere between 0 and 3 teams winning at least 100 games over the past 10 years. But why is that such an accomplishment? Is a winning percentage 10% higher than the 0.500 actually good?
Here's some data from the last 10 years for each of the MLB, NBA, and NFL.
Here's some data from the last 10 years for each of the MLB, NBA, and NFL.
MLB
| Year | Most Wins | ≥ 100 wins (0.617) |
| 2011 | 102 (0.630) | 1 |
| 2010 | 97 (0.599) | 0 |
| 2009 | 103 (0.636) | 1 |
| 2008 | 100 (0.617) | 1 |
| 2007 | 97 (0.599) | 0 |
| 2006 | 97 (0.599) | 0 |
| 2005 | 100 (0.617) | 1 |
| 2004 | 105 (0.648) | 2 |
| 2003 | 101 (0.623) | 3 |
| 2002 | 103 (0.636) | 3 |
NBA
| Year | Most Wins | ≥ 50 wins (0.610) | ≥ 60 wins (0.732) |
| 2011 | 62 (0.756) | 9 | 2 |
| 2010 | 61 (0.744) | 12 | 1 |
| 2009 | 66 (0.805) | 9 | 3 |
| 2008 | 66 (0.805) | 11 | 1 |
| 2007 | 67 (0.817) | 7 | 2 |
| 2006 | 64 (0.780) | 6 | 3 |
| 2005 | 62 (0.756) | 8 | 1 |
| 2004 | 61 (0.744) | 8 | 1 |
| 2003 | 60 (0.732) | 7 | 2 |
| 2002 | 61 (0.744) | 7 | 1 |
NFL
| Year | Most Wins | ≥ 10 wins (0.625) | ≥ 12 wins (0.750) |
| 2010 | 14 (0.875) | 13 | 4 |
| 2009 | 14 (0.875) | 10 | 4 |
| 2008 | 13 (0.813) | 10 | 5 |
| 2007 | 16 (1.000) | 11 | 4 |
| 2006 | 14 (0.875) | 8 | 5 |
| 2005 | 14 (0.875) | 13 | 4 |
| 2004 | 15 (0.938) | 9 | 5 |
| 2003 | 14 (0.875) | 13 | 6 |
| 2002 | 12 (0.750) | 9 | 3 |
Winning 50 games in basketball, which is comparable to 100 games in baseball, is extremely common. In fact, there have been teams that have missed the playoffs after winning 50 games, and that's in a league where more than half the teams makes the playoffs! It's the same story in the NFL, where a good portion of teams finish the season with more than 10 wins (again, comparable to 100 wins in baseball).
I do realize that there's only 16 games in the NFL, so a win is much more valuable and there's less time to regress to the mean. Yet I can't help but think that a baseball "win" is based much more on luck than actual skill. I want a sport to be based on talent, coaching, and chemistry, minimizing luck as much as possible.
Reason #6: Not a Team Game
Baseball is not a team game. Don't get me wrong - there are baseball teams, but players don't need to work together to succeed. A majority of the game is the pitcher against the batter, one on one. The only "chemistry" that a team needs is between pitchers and catchers. Otherwise you can pretty much throw together any random group of baseball players and they'll be able to play together.
