This is Joel Hanrahan. Joel Hanrahan is a nice story, he may also very well be a great guy, I don’t know. I do know that he would be about 100th on my “list of American born MLB pitchers who should be representing the United States in any international competition.” However, because MLB teams have found every little whine and moan ever to keep their players from representing teams in international competition, Joel Hanrahan is on the World Baseball Classic roster. As recently as 2007, Joel Hanrahan had a 6.00 ERA in the major leagues, now he is one of the seven or eight best available American-born relievers? That’s how we want to expose the great game of baseball to other people? With Joel Hanrahan?

This is just one of the few major flaws with the World Baseball Classic, which has, in spite of all the obstacles in it’s way, become a really enjoyable event to watch. I think there is about zero chance of most of my solutions to the World Baseball Classic’s problems ever being implemented, as I am a blogger, and do not have any money of my own to throw into the Bud Selig slush fund. That said, In 2006, I would have given you a 0% chance of Joel Hanrahan ever making a World Baseball Classic team, so I’m going to be a little optimistic and post them anyway.

1) The Olympic Rule NEEDS to go

The ridiculed international rule to start an extra inning with two runners on base will be used at this year’s World Baseball Classic, where it will be implemented beginning in the 13th.

Under the rule, each half-inning starting with the 13th will begin with runners on first and second. The regular batting order will be used from where it was the previous inning.

This is not baseball. Please stop pretending it is. None of the WBC games have had to resort to this, thankfully. Because if they did, it would be a travesty. I have a solution for the problem of most extra-inning games outlined, by two other proposed rule changes. Even if I didn’t, watching two catchers lob batting practice from the mound is much preferable to watching teams start with two runners on. This is like penalty kicks or college footballs overtime system: ways to settle the game that go beyond the game itself. That is not the proper way to end an athletic contest. I would rather see ties introduced after 12 innings, like in the NPB, than deal with this rule. And I loathe ties.

2) The timing of the tournament

A lot of different ideas have been thrown around about the timing of the tournament. The one I like the most is, I believe, a Joe Sheehan idea (let me know if I’ve credited the wrong person). Essentially, Spring training starts two weeks earlier, and then we have an extended All-Star break where the tournament can be squeezed in. This ensures that the players are in playing shape, and it also gives a nice extended injury recovery period for teams in exchange for their representatives being given the additional risk for injury. It’s not a completely fair proposition, as star production is more important than role player production, but it’s a nice consolation prize. I also think there is some benefit in that it seems like with the attention span of America going down every year, it would be nice to get a little breather and focus on something else for a little bit, then get geared up for the rest of the season.

Some would argue that this would throw off the rhythm of every other four years. Well, okay, take the break every year! I’m sure that you could put together qualifying tournaments. Or worst case, you could go back to having an actual All-Star series, which would actually give a little legitimacy to the idea of the All-Star game winner being given home field advantage.

3) Reseves and pitch counts

Okay, I enjoy the pitch count rules and I think they do need to stay to help sate injury-worried owners, but they need to be raised to far more than what they are. With the switch to mid-season, the starting pitchers would be in better shape, and wouldn’t need to be babied so much. More importantly, relievers are historically much less important than good starters: this format completely marginalizes good starting pitching. I would put the pitch count at 110 for starters, after which they could not pitch for four days. For relievers, 35 in one outing, or throwing on back-to-back days would be causes for rest.

My other idea, which would come in effect for both extra inning games and to deal with injuries, would be to create an additional five player reserve team that would travel with the actual team. The reserve team would be able to play in extra-inning games, as well as immediately be available to replace a player on the real roster in the case of any injury. More importantly, the manager could sub in players from the reserve team to the actual team between games. This gives a lot more flexibility in terms of roster decisions (players like Joe Nathan or Grady Sizemore, who had only light injuries, could have been carried on the reserve team until they were ready to play) and for the cases of extreme circumstances.

4) Injuries

With the fact that it occurs while players are in peak performance for their teams ruining the stupid arguments like “I have to get used to my new teammates” or “I am not in game-shape”, there would be only two legitimate reasons to not play for the country if selected.

A) The player does not want to play. This is fine, but it has to be proved that his controlling club had no influence on the decision. Owners need to just accept the fact that this is the will of many against the will of the few. Someone who recently had a child or something and wanted to duck out of the WBC, that’s fine. Owners blocking players, that should be punishable with big fines.
B) Long-term injuries. There would be an injury legitimacy board established with leading sports medicine types (paging Will Carroll!), and if in the eyes of the board, a player would not be able to play without impediment, he would be given an actual pass. Players who could play in the second week would be allowed to replace someone on the roster at that point, and so on.

I think I pretty much have covered the rest of what I have to say about this in the other topics. Bottom line: unless a player is seriously injured or actually doesn’t want to play, he should be playing. It’s in the best interests of the game. This isn’t like the NFL where the injury attrition rate is so high that you could argue that they shouldn’t even play the Pro Bowl.

5) Working on the pools

WBC has messed up in both of it’s attempts to create a good system for the pool rounds. The first time, they opted for the right system (round-robin) but with atrocious tie-breakers when the obvious one (run differential) was right in front of their face. In this years version, we have a double-elimination system where the last game is guaranteed to be meaningless. Korea just beat Japan in a game that meant absolutely nothing. Japan was already going to win the pool, and Korea was already going to advance despite the fact that if they lost, they would have two losses in a double-elimination tournament. The correct answer is simply to have round-robin with run differential. The first loss doesn’t eliminate you. The second loss arguably doesn’t eliminate you. Every game has meaning and more games are played.

The hosting system needs to be worked on. We’ve had Puerto Rico, the United States, Mexico City, Tokyo, and Toronto. That’s all. I understand that some of the ballparks around the world are lacking in amenities, but that didn’t stop them from using spring training parks with small capacities in 2006. Here’s my idea: the winner of each pool gets to host a first round pool next year. I know that somewhat limits what some of the pools could be (I doubt the US are gonna be able to travel to Cuba in a pool) but it just makes more sense to give an actual reward and eliminate some of the home-field advantage that those five countries have. Tell me TV fans wouldn’t be interested in watching baseball from Cuba or Venezuela or Korea or the Dominican Republic to see a little bit more about what their fields and fans look like. Or lets say that the Netherlands somehow pulls off this miracle shocker. Imagine Amsterdam hosting the US team and what that would do for baseball over there.

Why do we need a second pool for the big teams to graduate to in the first place? It would be one thing if the WBC was a huge hundred team monstrosity like the Champions League that needed to do gradual elimination, but if we’re already going to cut down to eight teams, why not just call have them all play single-elimination with run differential as the tiebreaker for seed? The other thing that would allow us to do is make the round-robin a little longer. Six games, I think, would be a much better format. You could have each pool host play two games a day for six days, then call it a week and travel to the finals host.

As for the finals host, I would hope one day that we could make it so that the champion of last year’s tourney is the host of the tourney. That said, since most of the TV audience at this point is American and time differences would be an absolute killer, how about letting the All-Star game host take the tourney from the top 8 until the game grows enough to justify the Champion=host idea? That gives them much more bang for their buck then just MLB’s two real crowd draw events: HR Derby and the ASG itself, although I’d argue the futures game is exciting in it’s own right.

How about if the Homer Derby features four Americans and four internationals? Yuniesky Gourriel against Adam Dunn, Shuichi Murata vs. Ryan Howard. Put the WBC Final and the All-Star Game on in the same day. You could even have some players go right into the locker room and change jerseys.

It would be something amazing for the true fans. Which is why it will probably never happen.