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Baseball will add a second wild-card team in each league as soon as next year, or in 2013 at the latest. And in 2013, the Astros – whose sale from Drayton McLane to Jim Crane was approved – will move to the American League, creating a landscape of two 15-team leagues that will require season-long interleague play.
Both changes have been long in the making. They will create a more balanced schedule and place far greater importance on teams winning their divisions, as opposed to settling for the wild card.
Commissioner Bud Selig hinted strongly that the “play-in” game between wild-card teams, which will kick off the postseason, will be a one-game, do-or-die contest, not a best-of-three series. Television folks prefer the drama of a one-game setup, while some baseball people don’t like the idea of their playoff run lasting only one game. Others, however, didn’t like the idea of the division winners sitting idly awaiting the winner of a three-game series.
There now exists significant incentive for teams to step on the gas in September and try to win a division, which should reverse a long trend of apathy to the issue.
“The one criticism we heard was, you didn’t put enough on the division,” Selig said. “Well, now you have.”
While Selig and the owners pushed hard for the extra playoff team and round, it was the Players Association that argued for balanced leagues and divisions. The players argued that it was fundamentally unfair that the National League Central featured six teams to the American League’s West, which has four teams.
CLAYTON KOUFAX?
Clayton Kershaw might be the only one not comparing him with Sandy Koufax.
Both left-handed aces for the Los Angeles Dodgers.
And now both Cy Young Award winners.
“I’m still uncomfortable with it,” Kershaw said after winning his first National League Cy Young Award in a runway. “I don’t want to have any disrespect for Mr. Koufax. He did it for a long time. He won a lot of awards and he won (three) World Series. He threw no-hitters. Just a lot of things I’m not anywhere close to accomplishing yet. I have tremendous respect for him and would never want to ever put myself in the same category as him.”
Kershaw received 27 of 32 first-place votes and 207 points in voting by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.
Philadelphia’s Roy Halladay, last year’s winner, was second with four first-place votes and 133 points. Phillies teammate and former Mariners pitcher Cliff Lee was third with 90 points.
POWELL TO PADRES
San Diego hired Tacoma Rainiers hitting coach Alonzo Powell as assistant hitting coach under Phil Plantier. Powell finished the 2010 season as Mariners hitting coach before returning to Tacoma.
SHORT HOPS
The Cubs hired Dale Sveum as their new manager, hoping the Brewers hitting coach can help turn around the long-suffering franchise. Sveum replaces Mike Quade, who was fired by Theo Epstein, the team’s new president of baseball operations. … Ex-major league catcher Randy Knorr is being promoted from minor league manager to major league bench coach by the Nationals. … The Phillies re-signed backup catcher Brian Schneider to a one-year contract, worth $800,000. … Wally Backman is advancing through the Mets’ farm system after being named manager of the team’s Triple-A affiliate in Buffalo. At 52, the former big league infielder takes over the Buffalo Bisons, replacing Tim Teufel, who will be third base coach for the Mets next season.
