Baseball is now played across the globe. Coming to the rules and styles, you may find it being played in a myriad of variations by children, teens, and the elite professionals. The ultimate dream of any aspiring baseball player is to enter into the Major League Baseball (MLB). In this article, we will have a closer look into MLB on how it works, and you can watch the game and evaluate it at a professional level.
Two leagues
MLB consists of two major leagues as:
- The American League, and
- The National League.
There are 15 teams in each league and three sub-divisions. The in-charge of the league is a commissioner elected by the holders of all 30 teams.
Each team in the leagues has a farm system. There are a series of minor teams with players of different stages of development. These minor series are the breeding ground of the MLB players. There are scouts present at the minor leagues to assess the talent of the players. They also evaluate the high school and college players as well as from Latin America and Asia.
MLB season
A regular MLB season consists of 162 games. Most of these matches are played within a given league. However, there are inter-league plays too. Inter-league plays have teams from American League playing against the teams of National League.
Wager Bop says that, at the early years of MLB, teams of each division used to play against teams of the same division in the other league. Back by 2002, MLB changed the format in which there was a rotation schedule for inter-league games played against a team of various divisions. However, there were exceptions too for the hometown rivalries. The divisional winners advance to the championship playoff along with the wild card entry team, which has the best record amongst non-division winners.
Viewing the game
Each team in MLB will have 25 players on the active roster. There are four on-field umpires for each MLB game. One is positioned behind the plate to call balls and strikes and one each at the first, second, and third base.
At the baseball stadium, the best location to view the match will be based on your personal preferences. For example, if you want to witness the chess game held between the pitcher and hitter, it is ideal to choose a seat directly behind the home plate, which also will give you an entire field view.
Player statistics
Player statistics basically focus on the points they accumulate during the season. Some key statistics are:
- Batting average: The percentage of at-bats of a player resulting in base hits.
- RBI (Runs Batted In): Total runs hitter gets from at-bats except the runs scored through fielding errors. The batter gets an RBI when he gets a hit, sacrifice bunt, infield out, sacrifice fly, or fielder’s choice which ends in runners scoring. Also, if a batter is walked, hit by a pitch, or gets interfered, batter receives an RBI.
- Home run: Batter reaches to home safely with one swing of the bat. Most of the home runs are hit above the outfield fence but sometimes may get an inside-the-park home run too when batter hits a ball onto the field but still can round all bases safely without getting tagged out.
Another measure is OBP (on-base percentage) counting how often a batter reaches to his base, and the slugging average is the number of bases divided by the number of at-bats.
Author Bio: Sujain Thomas is a freelance content writer. He has written a unique and very interesting article on various categories and currently associated as a blogger with
