Fixing MLB – There will likely not be any information contained inside this article that you didn’t already know. And that’s actually baseball’s biggest problem. MLB is exciting, and with the long season they have, absolutely anything can happen in a given game.
A team can throw a no-hitter one day, and then score zero runs in seven straight games. You can score 35 runs one day, and zero the next. Any player can be the star on a given day, depending on how the opposing pitchers are.
But the viewership numbers continue to disappoint, as the league’s best players remain relatively unknown to the average fan. There are three ways to fix baseball’s lack of popularity. And again, it’s sad that you have probably heard this all before.
Fixing MLB – Market Your Stars
How many commercials have you seen Mike Trout in over the past five years? And if you answered any number higher than zero, did you even know it was him? The unofficial face of baseball’s name is relatively recognizable, but not everybody would know who he was if they bumped into him in the street. The marketing campaigns are lacking.
Jacob DeGrom and Max Scherzer have been battling for NL Cy Youngs for four years now. Why isn’t there a campaign that pits the two of them against one another? McDonalds has old commercials with Joe Flacco/Colin Kaepernick and Michael Jordan/Larry Bird. Why can’t they do one where they see who throws the most unique pitch to home plate?
The lack of “commercial appeal” in baseball players is incredible. Most every NBA team has at least one player starring in either national or local TV spots. NFL quarterbacks are generally the epitome of popular. But baseball players are always left in the dust.
The league is going to need to find a way to add exposure for the star players. Because if this doesn’t happen, it will continue to sit behind basketball and football in popularity. The NBA and NFL have no issues with this. It’s all with MLB.
Fixing MLB – Get a New Commissioner
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the biggest problem in MLB is the man running the league. Rob Manfred has made mistake after mistake, proving to be a horrible successor to Bud Selig. We just didn’t know right away how bad he would be.
For starters, what kind of individual calls the World Series trophy “a piece of metal”? What if I told you that person was the man in charge of running MLB? Manfred also opted not to punish any of the Astros players for the cheating scandal, where they stole signals and banged drums to indicate pitches for years. Houston was a win away from the World Series the very same season after they were caught.
Those two things by themselves would be bad enough. But, after the Dodgers won the World Series, it was discovered that Justin Turner had tested positive for COVID. This was announced after they had won, as the reason he had been pulled early. Turner was celebrating with his team, no mask at all, after the team won.
And guess what Turner’s punishment was? He didn’t get one. MLB owners, please vote Manfred out. He has no clue what he’s doing. All he has is a Cornell degree. It seems like he doesn’t even like baseball.
Fixing MLB – More Folks Like Trevor Bauer
If you don’t follow Trevor Bauer on Twitter, get on that right now. His handle is @BauerOutage and you need to press that follow button right now. It’s amazing that with all of the incredible content he has put out, that he has just 415K followers and is still short of a million.
What Bauer does that many don’t, is go way outside the box. He literally tweets at every MLB team every day, trying to get the fans to convince them to sign him. He and his agent, Rachel Luba, are making his free agency a tweet-fest for all of Twitter to see.
CBS Sports baseball writer/host Danny Vietti did a 32-account bracket to determine the best baseball account on Twitter in 2020. If you just had to guess, who do you think won? Trevor Bauer. That’s right. He went to the championship and eked out a win against Jared Carrabis, another account you should also be following for great content.
The final round between Carrabis and Bauer had over 117,000 folks voting in just a 24-hour timeframe. If that doesn’t tell you what you need to know, well, then, clearly, folks aren’t listening or paying attention.
Baseball players have a much lesser social media following than their counterparts in the NBA and NFL, and even the NHL at times. If you can’t be recognizable to the average follower on Twitter, chances are your sport is doing you dirty.
IMPROVE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA GAME, @MLB. Trevor Bauer is just what you need. So maybe just take it and run with it.
