Will Hunter Pence and the Astros be playing in the AL soon?
One of the hot topics in baseball the last couple weeks has been the suggestion of possible realignment to even out the leagues to 15 teams each. Although I am a bit of a baseball purist and generally do not like change, I support this idea if it is done correctly. Here is the plan I have come up with in my own head.
Ever since the expansion to 30 teams in 1998, the National League has had two more teams than the American League. For a while, I considered this to be payback for the days of my childhood when it was the American League that had the two extra teams. Obviously, the reason for the uneven balance between the two leagues is because interleague games would need to be scheduled throughout the entire season if each league had an odd number of teams. But sine we are about 15 years into interleague play, and it appears to be a permanent fixture at this point, I don’t see it is a bad thing to spread these games throughout the entire season. For me, the positives outweigh this one negative.
The primary reason for realignment would be to create a more balanced system and a leveling of the playing field. With just four teams in the AL West, logic dictates that those teams have a better chance at winning their division each season than do the six teams in the NL Central. Similarly, all American League teams have less competition when it comes to the Wild Card race. The NL Central part of this story has been somewhat nullified by the fact that the Pirates pretty much don’t count when it comes to yearly contenders in that division. So for me, the advantages of the AL West teams is the most unfair thing about the current system.
So what should be done? Most of the realignment rumors have been focused on the Astros moving to the AL West. The Diamondbacks have also been mentioned, but that would mean the Astros would need to shift to the NL West as well. So the way to make this work with the least amount of change would be the Astros switching leagues. Personally, I would prefer to see the Brewers move back to the AL Central and then ship the Royals to the West. But as long as Bud Selig is around, there is no chance of that happening. I would put the ball in the Astros court and give them the decision: stay in the National League but move to the West where they would have no obvious division rival, or move to the AL West and create an intriguing division rivalry with the Rangers. If they choose to stay in the NL, the Diamondbacks would move to the AL West.
Next is the matter of the schedule. Interleague games would need to be scheduled throughout the entire season, but this is doable while keeping the number of interleague games the same as it is right now. Some people have argued that it wouldn’t be good to have teams playing interleague games in September during pennant races. While that may be true, there are always plenty of interleague games between likely non-contenders anyway, so why not shift a few of these to the last weeks of the season? Does it really matter if the Pirates are playing the Orioles in the last week of the season instead of June? It’s not going to be a compelling matchup at any point in the season, so why not have them play each other in meaningless September games? Keep in mind that there would only need to be one team from each league playing an interleague series at any given time, so the number of teams that would need to play interleague games down the stretch would be minimal. Also, I don’t think compelling interleague games in August or September would be a bad thing. Can you imagine how big a Sox/Cubs or Yankees/Mets series in late August could be if one or both teams are in contention?
While I’m on the topic of interleague play, I would like to see one other change made. I think the natural geographic rivalries should continue to be played every season, but I would scale it back to one series per year. I think we have reached a point where these games aren’t nearly as big as they once were, and part of that is because of how often they play each other now. Sure, they still draw big crowds, but the overall excitement and buzz about these games isn’t like it used to be. I think scaling it back to one series a year could fix that. Plus, it would reduce some of the current issues with teams benefiting from playing much easier interleague schedules than their division rivals. The other problem with the current system is that these geographic rivals are playing as many games against each other as they are against some teams in their own league. That has never seemed right to me.
With all six divisions having five teams, a system could be set up where each team plays one series against every team from one of the divisions in the other league, plus that one series against their natural rival. So now teams would be playing almost the identical interleague schedule as their division rivals. The division matchups would be rotated every year, so every team would be guaranteed to play every team in the other league every third year (and every six years at home). In this system, the natural rivals could continue to play a pair of series against each other on those third years when their divisions are scheduled to meet up anyway. But otherwise, it would be just one series per year. I think this setup makes a lot more sense than the current interleague schedule, which seems to be completely random outside of the geographic rivalries.
Some more radical realignment plans have suggested the abolishing of divisions. All 15 teams in the league would be grouped together with the top four (or five, or six) teams making the playoffs. I do not support this idea. First, I think division titles are meaningful accomplishments, so getting rid of them would just give teams one less thing to play for. No, a division championship shouldn’t be a teams ultimate goal, but it is still a notable achievement. But more importantly, getting rid of divisions would take away from a lot of existing rivalries and create travel nightmares for some teams who would have to make more frequent cross-country road trips in a balanced schedule scenario. Having said that, I would be in favor of slightly reducing the number of games played against division teams in order to get a few more games against the other teams in the league. My plan would call for 14 games against teams in the same division (down from the current 18) and eight or nine games against the other teams in the league. The only significant imbalance here would be that each team would play three series against most of those intraleague, non-division teams, meaning that one of the teams would get to host two of the three series. But this happens already in the current system, so I don’t think it is a big deal. It would be easy enough to make sure the team with the extra home series rotates each year. And of course, the total number of home/road games would remain at 81/81 for every team.
Finally, there is the matter of the playoffs. It sounds like it is almost inevitable that the baseball playoffs will be expanded to at least 10 teams. I do not support this. I think this is where MLB stands above the rest of the major professional sports. The more teams you include in the playoffs, the less significant the regular season becomes. I find the NBA and NHL regular seasons to be almost meaningless since they play for six months to not even eliminate half the teams. So my preference would be to keep things exactly as they are now: 4 playoff teams in each league. I wouldn’t mind seeing the first round expanded to a best of seven series though. But since it sounds like additional playoff teams is almost a done deal, my recommendation would be to have two wild card teams face off in as short of a series as possible. Even a one game playoff to determine that wild card spot would be preferable to a longer series which would require the rest of the playoff teams to sit around for a week or longer. Expanding to six playoff spots per league would be even messier. So the fewer, the better in my book.
Thoughts? Do you have your own plan in mind, or are you against all forms of realignment?