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Expansion Mistakes

© Greg Spira

In another self-inflicted blow for baseball, the expansion draft for Arizona and Tampa Bay turned out to be a non-event. Baseball publicized the heck out of the draft, but made mistake after mistake in putting the package together. First, they inexplicably refused to make the established' teams protection lists published. This hobbled the attempts of the fans and the media to follow the draft. Baseball officials claimed they hid the lists to protect the feelings of unprotected players, which proved to be nonsense since the protected lists were allowed to be publically released days after the draft.

Then major league baseball scheduled the most exciting part of the day for most fans - the announcement of the big trades made in conjunction with the draft - late at night after the whole draft was finished and the live tv coverage had ended. The few fans who sat thru the endless draft coverage, watching the expansion franchises pick player after player who even ardent baseball fans had never heard of, had their coverage of the event cut off right before the most dramatic moments of the night.

The ESPN coverage of the draft did little to help the situation. With the exception of Joe Morgan, all of ESPN's analysts were incessantly upbeat about every single selection, sounding like cheerleaders instead of analysts. The result was that we learned little about the players picked despite the scheduling of far too much time between each pick.

It's hard to blame the picks themselves on major league baseball, but the fact that both teams made numerous strange picks, especially in the way they picked up lots of middle relievers, certainly didn't help the draft. Tampa Bay especially seemed to go out of its way to pick up players with certain athletic tools instead of the proven ability to play good baseball.

The last two expansion teams, Florida and Colorado, were able to become respectable within years after they entered the league. By using free agency and developing strong farm systems, it's likely that Tampa and Arizona will be able to perform similarly. However, it seems clear that their expansion drafts will not be the key to any success they achieve, and that years from now no one will have any reason to remember the 1997 draft. Baseball's plans call for it to expand one more time in the next few years, and it would be a good idea if both baseball and its new teams learn from the mistakes of this draft. Through no fault of the game on the field, baseball has damaged its fan base severely over the last decade, and it needs to do everything it can to win back its audience.

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