Bud Selig was horrible for baseball in so many ways.
I generally agree that Selig bungled a ton of things... But a lot of his screw ups were circumstantial and semi-unavoidable; or things he inherited. And a ton of problems were totally interconnected.
It's actually the San Francisco Giants that are the root cause of everything that's ever been bad about baseball, except the DH.
Before Selig, the NL expanded with Denver and Miami; and then correctly vetoed the sale of the Giants to Tampa Bay. So the Florida politicians seeing Tampa go 0-for-3 trying to get a team, called MLB before congress on anti-trust. New Commissioner Selig gave Tampa the Rays to make the problem go away.
Which was fine... except they needed a 30th team (ideally a 31st and 32nd, too). And there weren't many/any candidates. Of the seven other candidates that lost to Denver/Miami, SIX had either just built minor league stadiums after losing the bid (Buffalo, Charlotte, Nashville), had territorial rights problem (DC), or were in adjacent markets to the teams that caused this whole problem to begin with (Sacramento, Orlando).
MLB had to recruit and work with Phoenix to make it happen; which allowed Jerry Colangelo to set his terms of an NL team; leading to the realignment mess... which made them consider interleague play. And the Brewers and eventually Astros switching leagues and now the terrible schedule of this year.
Selig also combined the NL and AL into MLB as one league office, which was smart and needed and overdue. But he bungled that process which is what led to the Giants ACCIDENTALLY getting San Jose as part of their exclusive territory.
But it should be noted that Selig also spearheaded MLBAM, which invented MLBTV and streaming and brought in BILLIONS (And benefited NHL greatly, too).
