We've Got Some Good Moves and Some Bad Moves

Albert Pujols and C.J. Wilson will both take flight from St. Louis and Texas, repectively, to the LA Angels. So, after several years of being in talks to acquire pretty much every big free agent that came along, the Angels finally landed a couple of big fish. Pujols is a good move. He spells bad news for any American League team that wants to get past the Angels in the playoffs (particularly the Yankees, whose pitchers seem partial to giving up homers). Wilson may turn out to be a bad move. True, he is a good, solid regular season pitcher. But last season he became the only player in history to lose an all-star game, a divisional series game, a league championship series game, and a World Series game all in the same year. (Granted, not all those rounds of playoffs have been around for long. However, it still shows that he had one bad year for clutch games.)

Baseball has added an additional wild card team in each league this year: Good move. The wild cards will fight it out amongst themselves every year with a one-game playoff. As long as the time gap between the regular season and the divisional series doesn't expand (don't give us more than two or three days off, please), this seems like a great idea. There will be as much competition between teams trying to get the wild card (home field advantage is still up for grabs), and the excitement of teams playing in a do-or-die game is guaranteed for each season.

Also, the Astros will move to the American League in 2013. Bad move. True, it will even out the leagues so that each has 15 teams. But it also forces baseball to have at least one interleague series a week - probably two, actually. One of the charms of baseball is its clear distinction between and separation of its leagues. National League: Great pitching, bad batting, no DH. American League: Great hitting, bad pitching, a DH. These are over-simplifications, of course, but that's the basic idea. The only way this system would work is if the highly concentrated interleague games played now are simply spread out over the whole season. Highly doubt that will happen. Meanwhile, an increase of interleague play would blur the line between the leagues, and take away from the importance of home field advantage in the World Series. (Thus damaging the integrity of the All-Star Game.)

Hydra
6-4-3 double play... Ballgame over! Yankees win! Theeeeeee Yankees win!