Baseball a "favorite" to return as an Olympic sport

[Todd4State]

By 2020.

http://espn.go.com/olympics/story/_/id/13056825/baseball-softball-submit-proposal-2020-tokyo-olympics


And hopefully with MLB players.

[Smitty]

And hopefully with MLB players.

I think MLB players have prior obligations in July and August.

[Todd4State]

It's definitely bad timing as far as MLB is concerned. I'm hoping for something similar to what the NHL does for the Olympics because they have the same issue.

[Dawg61]

I think MLB players have prior obligations in July and August.

Let our college players go. Baseball needs to be in the Olympics. I want to play vs Japan and all the Central/South American countries. There's enough good players or maybe even put an age cap on it and have the best 16-17 year olds. Make it like the High School World Series.

[Todd4State]

Let our college players go. Baseball needs to be in the Olympics. I want to play vs Japan and all the Central/South American countries. There's enough good players or maybe even put an age cap on it and have the best 16-17 year olds. Make it like the High School World Series.

I'm fine with that if Cuba will go along with it.

[Quaoarsking]

Every 4 years, extend the All Star game from 3 days to 10 days. Put the Olympic baseball during that period. MLB starters will pitch exactly one game.

Do something like 6 teams qualify, full round robin over 5 days, whoever's in first gets the gold. No major restructuring of the MLB (and Japanese, Cuban, etc.) seasons, and the absolute best players in the world get to play.

Maybe take 8 or even 10 teams and let rosters be like 50 so that lots of people get to play. Every team could play 2 games per day, but with huge rosters you could limit each player to 1 game per day and pitchers would be on an absolute pitch count.

[Smitty]

We already have the World Baseball Classic that works pretty well for the Pros. I hope that event turns into something great and I wish we could do like soccer and play a few games every off-season. Let the WBC be the World Cup of baseball. The Olympics doesn't even sniff the Word Cup in soccer.

But I also know that the training and rest for pitchers is pretty darn critical and these guys are HUGE money investments for the MLB teams.

I say put baseball back in there and send the very best that college has to offer and win the damn thing. You really don't need to "play together" and gel like a football or basketball in this sport. It would be easier to deal with the MLB too saying Olympics for your extremely recent draft picks trumps going to rookie ball.

[I seen it dawg]

Too much money to be lost for MLB to do an Olympics in middle of the season. College guys. Or at most minor leaguers.

[Quaoarsking]

We already have the World Baseball Classic that works pretty well for the Pros. I hope that event turns into something great and I wish we could do like soccer and play a few games every off-season. Let the WBC be the World Cup of baseball. The Olympics doesn't even sniff the Word Cup in soccer.

But I also know that the training and rest for pitchers is pretty darn critical and these guys are HUGE money investments for the MLB teams.

I say put baseball back in there and send the very best that college has to offer and win the damn thing. You really don't need to "play together" and gel like a football or basketball in this sport. It would be easier to deal with the MLB too saying Olympics for your extremely recent draft picks trumps going to rookie ball.

The World Baseball Classic blows though. I think it always will as long as it's in February -- MLB teams are probably more willing to let their pitchers start one "international" game in the middle of the season (especially if all of MLB takes a week off) rather than the early days of Spring Training.

[Smitty]

The World Baseball Classic blows though.

I just don't see baseball being a viable Olympic sport unless there was a good deal of pre-Olympic qualifying and only 4 teams participated in a tournament with 5 game series'.

The WBC is very early. It's the best thing we have to be similar to the soccer World Cup.

[ShotgunDawg]

How about using using minor league players at AA or below?

I think this could work because there would be better players in the Olympics, more parity, & it would also give big time, young minor league prospects the opportunity to make a name for themselves before becoming big leaguers. This would also help MLB sell more jerseys, etc when these players reached the big leagues because they country would already know some of their young stars just like college football does for the NFL.

What if instead of big leaguers, the US Olympic team was players like Byron Buxton, Alex Bregman, Dansby Swanson, Tyler Jay, etc... It would make the team better and also allow the country to get to know future MLB stars before they get called up.