A Change Should Come

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1) Give interleague play a rest

Originally, I was going to put interleague play in the Keep column, because there's value in the rare appearance of stars from another league in your home stadium.

But the more I reflected on it, the more I feel that interleague play bleeds more joy from the game than it provides. The thrill is truly gone. Unless you have a particular rooting interest in a team from outside your league, an interleague game is more of a nuisance than anything else.

If anything, each interleague game forfeits an opportunity to play a division or league rival with whom your team is competing directly for a playoff spot. In addition, interleague play takes a hammer and chisel to what balance the major league schedule has. Teams competing for the same playoff spot already don't play the same quality of schedule. In a short stroke, the wide-ranging interleague schedule exacerbates that problem.

Interleague play is unique, but so is giving one team four outs in an inning. I know AL-NL games are here to stay, but I can't help feeling that the sport could benefit from a break.

2) Stop making roster decisions based on spring training stats

This one's a little fuzzy, and besides, I might as well come out against the American way, right? It's true that denying players the right to win a spot in the majors thanks to a hot Spring Training is like denying the very right to competition -- except spring training is not really competition.

Rather, it's a mere month of exhibition games played on the most unreliable field you can find: a field filled with minor leaguers as the primary competition. The idea that management should choose a guy who has a hot 40 at-bats or dozen innings pitched, when everything in that player's history argues against it, is a romantic story, but also a phony one. Almost inevitably, that player will fall apart when the regular season comes.

What's the harm? The harm is that the guy who has proven his worth over a previous season --whether that guy's a rising 22-year-old prospect or a 32-year-old vet who still has talent --- can be sandbagged for someone who just has a few good weeks to his name. You see, I'm all for the American way and letting the best man win. I just think the best man proves himself over more than a handful of games in March.

3) Allow trading of draft picks

The amateur draft is hamstrung in its goal of improving teams down on their luck, when those teams can't (or won't) meet the salary demands of the highest-caliber draftees. Because teams are banned from trading draft picks, they end up picking a lesser talent, leaving the richest teams dibs at bigger fish. The ability to trade picks would preserve their value for these shy-spending teams, giving them some leverage instead of leaving them looking for consolation prizes.

The risk is that teams will mortgage their future in a desperate and perhaps flawed effort to prop up their present -- the kind of thing that made the NBA institute the Ted Stepien rule against trading first-round picks in consecutive years. So I'm not saying there couldn't be limits. But to deny teams any right to trade draft picks is to deny them a means to improve.

4) Make postseason starting times earlier

I can live with ballplayers shivering in the late-October cold. They're grown men who signed up for whatever the union of Mother Nature and the baseball gods has to offer.

But postseason baseball games should never start after 7 p.m. in the East. And when I say "start," I don't mean the moment the announcers start their pregame jabber. I mean first pitch. With commercial-laden postseason games frequently crossing the three-hour mark, there's no excuse for having a series of contests ending at a time when a huge chunk of people can't stay awake.

And speaking as a West Coaster, let me just say that I'd rather see people stuck at work out here miss the first few innings than see people, well, everywhere miss the last few.

The issue, of course, is the money that MLB receives from television for starting games at the prescribed hour. The solution? Leave some money on the table. Heresy, I know -- but in essence, baseball should buy back some control of the game. It's not as if baseball isn't rolling in the dough. They can afford to ever-so-slightly dam this revenue stream.

If you need to give the owners incentive to do this, tell them that letting young fans actually see the end of games will make them more likely to become big-spending customers when they grow up. Baseball has gone on long enough ending its games in late-night. It's time to keep those finishes in prime time -- and a World Series day game wouldn't hurt, either.