Not yet. He backed the acquisition of Santana, only to lose out to the "cooler heads" of Cashman and Hal. Now he writes that the multi-division setup isn't fair because bad teams go to the playoffs and good teams don't. He is, as always, transparently self-serving. But he is, as what is looking more and more like always, absolutely right.
Little Stein writes:
The biggest problem is the divisional setup in Major League Baseball. I didn't like it in the 1970s, and I hate it now. Baseball went to a multi-division setup to create more races, rivalries and excitement. But it isn't fair.
You see it this season, with plenty of people in the media pointing out that Joe Torre and the Dodgers are going to the playoffs while we're not. This is by no means a knock on Torre -- let me make that clear -- but look at the division they're in. If L.A. were in the AL East, it wouldn't be in the playoff discussion. The AL East is never weak.
St. Louis winning the World Series -- that was ridiculous. The Cardinals won their division with 83 wins -- two fewer than the Phillies, who missed the postseason. People will say the Cardinals were the best team because they won the World Series. Well, no, they weren't. They just got hot at the right time. They didn't even belong in the playoffs. And neither does a team from the NL West this season.
He also calls revenue sharing a "socialist system" that's un-American. Hank for President? How about Hank for King.
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One more thing. Hank has correctly identified the problem as lying in the divisions, not the wild card. The wild card is often comes in for criticism by purists, but the wild card teams often have better records than one or more of the first-place teams, as this year shows in the AL and NL alike. Why not have one league-wide division and pick the best four teams from that?
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