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Friday, February 13, 2009

World Baseball Classic Alternative Ideas and Suggestions.

Pitching in the World Baseball Classic seems to hurt a Major League Baseball players upcoming season. Stats have been revealed that shows 11 of the 12 pitchers who pitched in the WBC, would then have their MLB ERA increase over their prior year's MBL ERA.

WBC games are too early in the year and players are just not ready to play, yet if they play in the WBC, they are supposed to play one hundred percent.

I don't know if this would be an acceptable compromise, but what if the WBC were pushed back to the first week in April, and all of Major League baseball participated, and the games counted! The downside is ballplayers would not be playing for their own hometeam, but, in every other way, there is plenty of upside.

Perhaps when the final four teams are determined, Ballplayers could play the final weekend for their own country, provided their MLB team is still not in it.

WBC in April means ballplayers don't have to do double duty by playing in the WBC and then playing catch up with their own MLB team. Ballplayers aren't playing in the field or throwing any extra amount than any other year. MLB is paying the utmost respect to the rest of the world by saying the games count towards major league baseball standings.

The alignment of teams could be done so that the finals would feature one WBC team and one MLB team. There are a few scheduling nightmares to consider. How far a major league baseball team will last before exiting the WBC, and therefore, how do the teams that exit early begin play in MLB when the other teams are still playing in the WBC?

Another issue is does Major League Baseball really want all of its teams going all over the world, at the same time?

If that idea is too logistically hard to do, how about the champion and runner-up of the WBC doing an american tour and each MLB team plays them once in the month of April, and the games count towards the standings?

Well, I don't think anything has been resolved with this article. Just some ideas that might lead to other ideas.

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