That’s a dangerous idea since it might create an incentive for .500 teams to throw a game or two right before the deadline.

Yes, I already thought about that objection. In my longer version of my suggestion, I consider and dismiss it. First, that seems unlikely — these guys play to win, even in September when they are long out of the race. As the Black Sox scandal (among others) demonstrated, you generally need more than one player to throw a game, and it’s hard for them to keep quiet. In reality it would probably be accomplished by a scheming manager announcing day-to-day “injuries” to his key starters. Now, a .500 team is going to lose a lot of games, so it would be quite possible to “naturally” fall under .500 in July, but a team that did so in any kind of suspicious fashion would be the target of a lot of ire from the press, the fans, and (more importantly) the rest of baseball. Probably not enough to dissuade one of those most notorious of managers (or players), but it would dissuade some.

But, more to the poiht: what if they did? So what? It’s not going to make that big of a difference — it might make the team a bit better, sure, but they first have to overcome those additional one or two games they threw away. If some 26th (or 27th or 28th) guy is going to make that much of a difference, wouldn’t they be juggling their roster to get him on the squad anyway? A team that’s bumping along at .500 is not a team that has a lot of monster prospects held down in AAA because they’re blocked by better players on the big club. The most significant benefit might be the expansion of the bullpen, but as we well know it’s hard for a reliever to add even a full win, especially in half a season.

And the whole point of this is to tighten the races. Even in a division like the NL West a couple of years ago where even the best teams ended up around .500, this isn’t going to allow one team to come from behind and run away with the pennant. It might make things a little more interesting, that’s all… but isn’t that enough?

(I do think it would be interesting for teams under .500 at the trading deadline be allowed to expand their rosters to 30, while everybody else has to wait until September …)

That’s a dangerous idea since it might create an incentive for .500 teams to throw a game or two right before the deadline.

(I do think it would be interesting for teams under .500 at the trading deadline be allowed to expand their rosters to 30, while everybody else has to wait until September, but that’s in the interest of tightening races and giving the fans of those teams something new to look at as they play out their string)

Sweeney’s hitting .769 this spring… Somewhere, Derek’s head is exploding with the emerging idea of Junior and DH-xoxo on the 25-man roster again on Opening Day.

As much as I hate long games (and love DVR), I don’t get why baseball can’t expand the rosters to 26 – or just a simple 30 for that matter.

ALL-STAR game rosters currently sit at 36! Even if you allow for one pitcher per inning, that still doesn’t really calculate…

(NOTE) Before anyone talks about salary, does anyone think that spots 26-30 would make that much more than the minimum? I say it’s a good bargaining spot for the owners when the ‘players’ object to a cap.

one that computes the probability of a team winning a game against another team with given hitters, bench, starting pitcher, relievers and home field advantage

Notably absent from his list: defense.

The professor claims to have beaten the odds in six of the eight years he’s been using the model.

Oh, be still my beating heart. 6 of 8? If his system were 50% accurate, then the chance of “beating the odds” in 6 of 8 seasons is ~15%. Please.