[Syd Thrift]

The “epidemic”, if there is one, is more about the season being too long. I don’t think making it very slightly longer for a couple teams will affect that, especially not in November and December. I suspect it’ll make those games a little more fun for the fans and competitive for the players but to be perfectly honest it’s not really those games that get sloggy, it’s the ones in the middle to late part of the season when it’s shaken out who the big contenders are and who’s going to tank for high lottery picks. If this happened in, say, February, I think it’d ring a lot harder. Leave March for the NCAA, and then April is the playoffs (and the playin which, frankly, also adds a good deal more drama at the end of the year where there wasn’t any prior).

Otherwise, I don’t know, maybe fans just have to get used to it. I don’t hear about a “load management epidemic” in baseball because nobody wants to be Cal Ripken anymore. For that matter catchers commonly missed 30, 40 games a year and that’s just accepted. Basketball players used to play all 82 games and 40 minutes a night; they also used to be washed up an awful lot by the time they were 30. Take the good with the bad, I say.