Welcome To The New Baseball

In case you haven't noticed, baseball is just a bit different this year.

Start with the 60-game schedule, turning the season into a sprint from a marathon, and move on fro there.

Designated Hitter in the National League? Check. Gotta admit, I do like the managerial chess match that comes from pitching changes, pinch hitters and the like. But, at least for this season, I'm fine with the Senior Circuit going with the DH. But it sure will make for some interesting options. As will having a relief pitcher face a minimum of three hitters or finish an inning.

Then there's the expanded playoffs, from 10 teams to 16. This breaks down to the divisional champion and runner-up making the playoffs, plus two wild card teams. As long as it doesn't push the World Series into November and beyond, sounds good to me. IF baseball stays with this format in the future, tho, it had better shorten the regular season. Could see it going back downs to 154 games. Or even to 146. A larger playoff  field means more television money shared among all teams, so the owners might go for that.

How about Toronto's Blue Jays? Banned from playing at home by the Canadian government (due to the surging Covid-19 numbers in the US, Canada wasn't comfortable with the back-and-forth flights. So, up until this past weekend, the Blue Jays were without a home. They thought they had one in Pittsburgh, but Pennsylvania said no to that. Baltimore was tossed around as a potential perch, but that didn't work out.

So the Blue Jays will now nest in Buffalo, home of their Triple A ballclub, the Bison. The organization will have to do a few improvements to bring the stadium up to snuff, like lights for night games (think television).  As an aside, I'm probably the only one in the state of Wisconsin who owns a Buffalo Bison hat. Have had that since the late 1980s, thanks to a business trip by my wife.

About those "crowds" we saw during Saturday's Brewers-Cubs game: cute attempt. Looked like they were laid in from a video game. A step up from the over-size photos we're seeing in a lot of ballparks (where's that dude in the orange Marlins hoody who is always seated behind home plate?)  They should have mixed into the video crowd some mustard-stained shirts, spilled beer, overweight fans and a fight or two. This was a Milwaukee-Chicago game, so some realism would be nice.

Speaking of fights, I thought we would see one Saturday when the dugouts emptied. There has always trash talk coming from dugouts, but without crowds, the players can actually hear what the opposition is saying. Javy Baez has always been a little chirpie, and when he took exception to an inside pitch, the Milwaukee dugout gave him some grief. Javy didn't care for it, and both benches emptied to mill around in front of their dugouts.

Guess the baseball powers-that-be have made it VERY clear that there should be no on-field dust-ups, to maintain social distancing, etc. Pity.