With all the talk around the 2020 plan floated by baseball, let’s all stop lying to each other. This is about money, and this is about TV Money.
So let’s stop pretending we care about half this sport and get right to it. Here’s my plan for radical realignment, and you TV executives know I am right.
THE TV DIVISION: Yankees, Mets, Red Sox, Cardinals, Cubs, Dodgers….and lets just run this like Vince McMahon….this year we let the Astros in because we need a villain, and let’s throw in the Phillies since they have a few storylines (Girardi, Wheeler) that ill work will with their division rivals.
That’s it. Did I leave YOUR favorite team out? Yeah, I did. You know why? Because nobody cares about them. Nobody cares about the Nationals, nobody cares about Mike Trout. N O B O D Y C A R E S.
The TV Division can play games at 7:30pm so people in the East and Central Time Zones, where the vast majority of the population lives I remind you…
As for the rest of the teams? Hey if the Brewers want to play the Rockies, that’s nice. Go enjoy yourselves. ESPN and FOX will be televising The TV Division.
You people in Los Angeles that can’t possibly watch baseball before 5pm – you can watch the Angels play the Giants, Padres and Mariners and all the invisible teams of the West Coast. Maybe if Bonds unretires we can McMahon the Giants into the Phillies’ spot in the TV Division, but until then, enjoy your West Coast League.
And let’s go one further – all 8 teams in the TV division automatically make the playoffs. If you want to add teams from the two Loser Divisions so we can all pretend those teams matter at all, that’s fine – but the Yankees, Mets, Red Sox, Cardinals, Cubs, Dodgers are all automatically in the playoffs every year because that’s all TV wants anyway. You think they want Twins-Royals? Stop lying to yourself.
Everything MLB is talking about this week is putting money over safety, so I am just ripping the band-aid off and being real. Let’s stop wasting time with Diamondbacks games, and let’s stack the TV deck. The NFL figured this out when they started flexing Sunday Night Football and creating the Good Game Sundays at 4:15. This is just the next level. Yankees-Red Sox it is. Over and over and over. It rates. It’s what people want. As it might as well say on the money grab uniforms, Just Do It.
