The “Hell yes, Guy!” makes a good point about MLB in one of his latest blogs.
What it comes down to is: there are 15 teams out of the 30 in MLB that matter when the season starts. Sure, there might be a surprise or two, but accounting for the annual let downs, the numbers stay just about the same. As an Indians fan I’ve had plenty of years in each of the situations, even just in recent memory. Good years (90’s) bad years (early 2000’s) surprises (2005) and let downs (2006). I guess I would say, the most disappointing thing is that there is very little competition. I’m not saying that over 162 games there aren’t games where a bad team beats a better team; I’m just saying that we all know over the long hall there are some teams that have no shot. All you can do is pray that you’re not rooting for one.
This is part of the reason why the NFL has become so popular. Not everyone likes parity (in fact, there are more than a handful of fans who long for the “good ol’ days” when there were a couple of great teams everybody gunned for each season), but there’s no denying how exciting it is that a team can turn around its misfortune so quickly. It breeds hope after your team just went 4-12.
But in baseball, it’s a rarity for a team to jump from last to first. Baseball is all about the haves and the have-nots.
