Larry Dierker has a "Spring Training is too long" column on MLB.com:
I think every team could be ready to go in a month. Players are generally in better shape when they arrive in Spring Sraining than they were in my day. Most teams have offseason training programs to make sure they can hit the ground running in February. Agonizing over which players to cut and which to keep isn't really necessary. It seems like a big deal, and it gets a lot of print in the last week of spring training, but by the time May comes around, most teams have sent some guys down and brought others up anyway.
Some compelling arguments here, but I disagree if only to note that I would have been ready to rampage if baseball hadn't "started" today. Waiting another couple of weeks would have been like waiting for Christmas 25 years ago.
We didn't come out here to play tiddlywinks, son.
-Hal Smith
