Monday, September 17, 2012

Rays Schedule: Unfair & Unbalanced

When it came to the high number of games MLB teams play against in-division rivals, Stu Sternberg once told me "any change is really in our favor."

Unfortunately for Rays fans, Sternberg was wrong.  Instead of balancing out the schedule as it once considered, MLB added one more game against division rivals next year, bringing the Rays' total to 19 against each the Red Sox, Yankees, Blue Jays, and Orioles.  Sternberg doesn't like that.

It will make the incredibly tough task of winning a wild card even harder for the Rays, but FOX Sports' Ken Rosenthal suggests an interesting fix.
One way to mitigate the Rays’ disadvantage would be to scale revenue sharing so that Tampa Bay would receive a greater percentage than a low-revenue club such as the Cleveland Indians, who compete in a division with lower payrolls.
Rosenthal, who very reasonable explained in 2011 that contraction will never happen, that the Rays have nowhere to go, and that revenue sharing is working, adds another intelligent thought to baseball's ever-evolving equality argument.

2 comments:

  1. Mariners fan from Orlando here, though I do watch a number of Rays games on TV.

    I've always felt that the media has been too quick to point out the Rays attendance numbers, and pinning them down as relocation candidates without getting all the facts. I'd actually posit that their revenue issues (ie attendance, sponsorships, new stadium) are not some pressing problems that everyone makes them out to be... not yet, anyway.

    The only way I can see the situation down there becoming critical is if their current run of winning seasons comes to an end without the stadium issue being resolved.

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  2. Thanks for reading - I think you'll find a lot of the points you make throughout the blog!

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