Thoughts on realignment
by BrRoyal on Jun 12, 2011 3:05 PM EDT
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PrintMLB Commissioner Bud Selig has recently floated the idea of realignment for the new collective bargaining agreement. Perhaps this is simply a negotiating ploy, but many media outlets are taking the talk seriously, particularly as a means of improving competitive balance. It certainly makes an interesting alternative to a hard salary cap or increased revenue sharing, not to mention easier to pass. The initial proposal is to abolish the divisions and move one NL team to the AL, making two 15 team leagues. The playoffs would be expanded by one team, with the top five from each league making the cut. I have some thoughts on the proposal, as well as my own proposal for realignment after the jump.
At first glance, this seems to make things more difficult for teams like the Royals who (in theory--almost happening in 2003) could play over their heads and catch their division in an off-year to make the playoffs, or even sustain some extended success within the division as the Twins have done. Instead, they would have to have the fifth best record in the league. (They currently sit 12th out of 14 AL teams. Come on over, Houston!) Furthermore, there are complaints about what this would do to Interleague play. Seeing as I have no idea how to work the schedule, I'll leave that to the experts. I'd like to get your thoughts overall on realignment as well as on my proposal.
Proposal (mostly off the top of my head):
Return to two divisions in each league (listed alphabetically):
AL East - Baltimore Orioles, Boston Red Sox, Chicago White Sox, Cleveland Indians, Detroit Tigers, New York Yankees, Tampa Bay Rays, Toronto Blue Jays
AL West - Houston Astros, Kansas City Royals, LA Angels of Anaheim, Minnesota Twins, Oakland A’s, Seattle Mariners, Texas Rangers
NL East - Atlanta Braves, Cincinnati Reds, Florida Marlins, New York Mets, Milwaukee Brewers, Philadelphia Phillies, Pittsburgh Pirates, Washington Nationals
NL West - Arizona Diamondbacks, Chicago Cubs, Colorado Rockies, Los Angeles Dodgers, San Diego Padres, San Francisco Giants, St. Louis Cardinals
The common speculation is that Houston would move to the AL for balance and for a rivalry with Texas, so I chose to move them, but there are other possiblities.
What makes this format palatable is the desire to expand the playoffs. Here, the top two teams from each division make the playoffs, as well as the team with next highest record in each league as the wild card. With the top two teams qualifying, even if two teams (oh, let's randomly say the Yankees and Red Sox) run away with their division, the other teams still have a chance at the wild card as it is less likely (though it would happen on occasion) that three great teams in one division would leave everyone in the dust. If they so desire, the league could even choose the top three teams from each league and have 2nd and 3rd place have a play-in game or three game series (double-header anyone?).
Further notes:
- I have no idea what this would mean for scheduling (especially Interleague play).
- There seems to be no real way to split up the Yankees/Red Sox to further improve balance without one moving to the NL, which seems very unlikely considering the history of both franchises.
- If MLB is interested in expansion in the future, adding one team to each 7-team division should be simple.
This is my proposal. I'd like to hear your reactions as well as your thoughts on realignment overall.
Finally, just for a little humor, I love this quote from Rosenthal:
Selig got nowhere the last time he pushed for a restructuring, following the 2000 season. His plan was for the Diamondbacks and Rays to switch leagues, the divisions to be reorganized and the NL to drop the wild card. The owners balked.
Nearly a decade later, Selig will need to be convinced the battle is worth renewing. In his mind, the rich-man, poor-man setup of the AL East might be less than persuasive.
You'd think a baseball reporter would have a better grasp of math. Then again, it's Rosenthal
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Thanks to Selig for giving me a reason to not work on my thesis!
It had been a long time since I had composed a fanpost. It’s tiring. Makes me grateful for the guys who do it regularly. Thanks!
Toronto Blue Jays
You left out the Toronto Blue Jays. Assuming that they would remain in the AL East and that would be an eight team division as compared to the seven team AL West.
Reminds me of the old AL West from back in the 70's.
With MLB wanting to add more playoffs and additional wild cards, this could work. Don’t know how much affect for Astros it would make to move. It is kind of silly to have 16-14 team leagues, then have one division have only 4 teams in AL.
This type of stuff doesn’t really matter too much to me since KC has been so bad for so long.
re: scheduling
Everyone makes a big deal about this and says it’s a problem because it means there will have to be at least one interleague series being played at all times. My only response to this is: “So?”
You take all the interleague matchups and sort them based on expected relevance. The most irrelevant series gets played the last weekend of the season. The next-most irrelevant series not involving either of the two teams in that series gets played just before. So on and so forth, until you’ve basically gone back to the middle of August. Then you just slot the remainder of the interleague series through the rest of the season.
Bottom line, nobody outside of Maryland really cares if Baltimore and Washington are playing on September 27-29, and nobody will unless one of those teams actually looks like a legitimate threat going into the season. Yes, you’re occasionally going to have teams which greatly exceed their expectations and end up playing interleague games in the thick of a pennant race, but you can minimize that. (Of course, from here it’s not much of a stretch to implement something akin to the NFL’s parity scheduling, where the worst teams from a given year inherently play an easier schedule the following year. Obviously, there are both good and bad aspects to such a schedule, but the possibility is there anyway.)
My new blog: Those Other Guys. Critiques welcome.
Everyone makes a big deal about this and says it’s a problem because it means there will have to be at least one interleague series being played at all times. My only response to this is: "So?"
Because interleague sucks.
Relive Royals History at royalsretro.blogspot.com
"Because interleague sucks"
I don’t see why some people feel this way. Before interleague play, every team played against only half of the teams in MLB. That was the most odd, artificial scheduling construct imaginable. Interleague play makes sense and it’s interesting. Fans get to see their team play other teams and other stars. It also allows for some good local/regional rivalry series. Sure there are also some bad interleague series, but they aren’t any worse than some of the intraleague series. Playing against more and different teams is a good thing.
You may know me as NYRoyal.
by Scott McKinney on Jun 12, 2011 9:08 PM EDT up reply actions 2 recs
I don't like playing some games under different rules
If the AL eliminated the DH or the NL added it, I have no problem with interleague, but it’s ridiculous that we have to have AL pitchers bat next week and sit Butler or Hosmer. No other sport has its teams play games under different rules in the middle of the season. It’s like having NFL teams go play under CFL rules in week 7.
I don't think it's that simple
If you only had one interleague series going on at a time (to take care of the 15th team in each league), you’d only have 54 interleague series a season, or just less than 4 per team (54 series involving 2 teams apiece divided by 30 teams), which is at the low end of what we’re playing now.
However, if we’re putting teams all in one division, I assume we’re getting rid of unbalanced schedules. There’s no real way to do that if teams are playing 50 series within their league and 4 against the other league (162 games divided by 3-game series equals 54 series). For one thing, each team will play a different set of teams for interleague. For another, there’s no way to evenly distribute the 50 intraleague series across the 14 other teams in the same league. If you go to 42 intraleague series (a round robin three times – obivously games at home will not be balanced), you get 12 intraleague series per team, which is 2 to 3 times as many as we’re playing now.
You could cluster most of those series in the summer so they don’t affect the playoffs as much, but for those of us that don’t like interleague (how ridiculous would it be to have to sit Butler or Hosmer for 12 series a year!), this plan has a lot to dislike.
and there are 14 other teams in the league. 2 series against each team (a round robin home-and-home) would be ideal for levelling the playing field, but that means 28 series against teams in your same league and 26 left to play against teams in other leagues.
You're making a flawed assumption right from the outset.
You’re not just playing 54 interleague series. During the traditional “interleague” portion of the schedule, you might have three, five, seven interleague series going on at once. You only limit the “one interleague series at a time” portion of the schedule to the final 45 games and perhaps the first 45 games as well.
Mathematically, it works out if you play each team in your league ten times, and play 22 interleague games total. That’s a little quirky, though, and leaves lots of two-game series. Really, the BEST way to make the schedule work is to expand by two teams, but hahahaha.
Alternatively, if you have divisions, you could go 12 in division (48), 8 intradivision (80), all scheduled as four-game series, bringing you to 128. A total of 8 four-game interleague series would then bring you to 160… and I wouldn’t even be remotely opposed to shaving two games off the schedule to accomodate.
My new blog: Those Other Guys. Critiques welcome.
That was just the jumping off point
The only way to play a roughly balanced schedule under existing structures (with teams playing two series a week) is to triple the amount of interleague games.
Playing each league team 10 times (presumably in four series to balance home field advantage?) would require changing baseball’s whole scheduling structure of two series a week or extending the season by five weeks (at an average series length of 2.5 games instead of 3 games, a season has 65 series instead of 54, and at 2 series / week, the season extends from 27 weeks to 32 weeks)
The unbalanced schedule makes scheduling much easier. Trying to make a single division format fair would be far more difficult than people appreciate, I think.
Having 32 teams makes scheduling much easier, too.
three-game series except as noted:
a) eight games vs. non-divisional league teams (1 4-game series home, 1 away) = 96
b) 12 games vs. divisional teams = 36
c) eight randomly-selected interleague series = 24
d) six games vs. designated interleague rival = 6
12 weeks of the season would consist of everyone playing 3+4, the rest of the weeks would be 3+3. On the 3+3 weeks, some teams would have to have Monday off, some Thursday, to prevent barren dates. This isn’t really much different from current scheduling, although every team will have a few stretches of 16 days without a day off through the year. On the other hand, the season would only be 24 weeks long (taking ASG into account).
You have to randomly select the non-rival interleague series rather than use a formula precisely because the existence of a designated interleague rival makes using a formula impossible. If you get rid of the designated rival altogether, then you can go with:
a) nine (play 3 home and 6 away against half the non-divisional teams one year, reverse the following) = 108
b) still 12 = 36
c) 6 3-game interleague series (3 home, 3 away) = 18
In this scenario, you use the NFL method with a twist for interleague; you play an entire division except the team in the same position as you, and you play the three teams in the same position as you in the other divisions. However, since all series are 3-game series, the season lasts 28 weeks (ASG included). On the flip side, every team has one day off a week, period.
My new blog: Those Other Guys. Critiques welcome.
I've heard talk of two 15-team, three-division leagues with 5 playoff teams
AL West: Texas, Seattle, LA of A, Oakland, Houston
AL Central: Cleveland, ChiSox, Detroit, Minnesota, Kansas City
AL East: NYY, BoSox, Toronto, Baltimore, Tampa
NL West: San Diego, Arizona, Colorado, SanFran, LAD
NL Central: ChiCubs, Cincy, StL, Milwaukee, Pitt
NL East: Atlanta, Florida, NY Mets, Philly, Washington
This is what I have seen.
I’d like to see them go to two even leagues, but I’d also like to see them take on a universal rule regarding the DH, and that obviously hasn’t happened yet.
What would be the most interesting is dividing divisions along more geocentric rivalry lines, but this will never happen:
Western League:
North: Seattle, Detroit, Minnesota, Milwaukee, Toronto
Pacific: LA of A, LAD, Oakland, San Diego, SanFran
South: Kansas City, StL, Arizona, Colorado, Atlanta
Eastern League:
North: ChiSox, ChiCubs, Cincy, Cleveland, Washington
Atlantic: NY Mets, NYY, BoSox, Philly, Pittsburgh
South: Tampa, Baltimore, Florida, Houston, Texas
We’ll see how it goes. I appreciate the pro-active nature, but I am unsure of the implications.
Vi veri veniversum vivus vici
I'm certainly willing to accept change
…but all I really care about is that the Royals don’t get stuck in a division with some really large market teams. One of the good things about the current alignment for the Royals is that they are in a mostly small-to-medium market division.
You may know me as NYRoyal.
Interestingly enough though
Three of the top five largest payrolls in the AL are in the Royals division
http://content.usatoday.com/sportsdata/baseball/mlb/salaries/team
Relive Royals History at royalsretro.blogspot.com
Three of the top six
Yankees, BoSox, and Angels are all bigger than the ChiSox on that list
I really don’t get why some people are so against interleague. It seems absurd to me that the NFL and NBA have teams play across leagues and it’s absolutely no big deal. Maybe do something with the DH first but the Royals playing San Diego isn’t worse to me then them playing Oakland or something
My stories a lot like yours only more interesting because it involves robots!
No divisions
I like the “no divisions” idea.
I would alter it a bit so that the playoff team from one season play each other more the next season. Maybe giving it just a hint of promotion/relegation.
by Trey Hillman's Chin on Jun 13, 2011 12:11 AM EDT via mobile reply actions
I like the no-division thing as well
makes winning the League Pennant much more impressive and meaningful. Some kind of changes to enhance competitive balance would be needed as well though.
I love promotion / relegation style leagues, but I don’t think it works for pro-ball very well. It would be great for college sports though.
2011 Royals Review NCAA Bracket Challenge Winner, by process of attrition
But winning the pennant would still require beating 4 other league teams in the playoffs
If they put every team together in the same division, I don’t understand why we’d also expand the playoffs. If it’s one division, take the winner of each league and put them in a best-of-15 World Series. Then the team that wins can truly say that they’re the best in baseball.
Otherwise, this plan just looks to me like it’s creating distraction so that they can further dilute the playoffs and take baseball one step closer to the NCAA tournament — a great sporting event that only occasionally crowns the best team as the champion.
I only mean promotion/relegation in a very vague sense.
I just like the idea of the previous playoff teams playing a slightly harder schedule than everyone else. Every team would still play every other team in the league.
Right now, the unbalanced schedules are kind of randomly distributed. This would be unbalanced with a purpose.
by Trey Hillman's Chin on Jun 13, 2011 4:02 PM EDT up reply actions
Taking the top 5 records
sounds like east coast (read New York/Boston) bias to me.
Out of the last 4 years, NY and Bos have both made the playoffs twice (07 and 09). In 2008, NY stayed home with the 4th best record. Last year, Boston missed the cut with the 5th best record. (For completion’s sake, Seattle and Detroit tied for 5th best record in 07, and Texas failed to make the playoffs with the 4th best record in 09.)
So, it sure sounds to me that this plan is trying to increase the odds that both NY and Boston make the playoffs every year. No thanks.
Tension is the enemy. - Charlie Lau
by aHorseWithNoName on Jun 13, 2011 4:04 PM EDT reply actions
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