One of the hottest topics in Major League Baseball is the potential realignment of the league. People are calling for teams to shuffle divisions, and even leagues, in order to boost the relevancy and appeal of the games. While it’s hard to argue with anyone who has good intentions about boosting the popularity of our national pastime, the way they are proposing we go about it is all wrong.
The AL/NL Dilemma
A lot of the scenarios we are hearing about involve the Houston Astros (Currently in the 6-team NL Central) to head over to the American League West (which has 4 teams). While this might seem like a good idea on paper, there is one major problem in moving any team between leagues.
Unlike any other major sport, the rules are actually different in the two baseball leagues. The AL uses a designated hitter and the NL doesn’t. Moving an NL team over to the AL means that they have to play by different rules and disrupts the league balance. By having an even number of teams in each league (even though it’s 14-16) means that the NL can play games amongst themselves and so can the AL. If there are suddenly 15 teams in each league, if all the teams are playing on a given day, there will always be an inter-league game going on. This throws off the balance of the league by creating uneven scheduling – something that will devalue the quality of the sport as a whole.
The Melting Pot Idea
Some have proposed the idea of “division-less baseball” meaning that the top 4 teams in each league get in, regardless of the division they call home. Buster Olney pointed to the 2008 season, when the Dodgers finished with the 8th best record in the National League, but still made the playoffs ahead of four other teams with better records. You would have to do away entirely with divisions for this to work, however, since the current schedule puts emphasis on inter-division games. Every team would have to play every other team the same amount of times, so there would be no scheduling bias. This is a program I could potentially get behind, although it would be a logistics nightmare. Emphasis on division play means that the teams get to play more games closer to home, even when they are on the road. It reduces travel time and travel related expenses. By replacing a few of the San Diego Padres’ trips to LA with long flights to Philly or New York is going to be harder on the players, and the team’s wallets – not to mention the impact on the environment we all care about so much these days.
A Unique Question
My question is…Why are we talking about this at all? If you want to create more balance and competitiveness to baseball, why does anyone think that moving the Astros (a terrible team from the NL Central) over to the AL West (a pretty weak division) will solve any problems? Is it so the Rangers and Astros can play each other a few more times each year? I know that as leagues evolve, change is often necessary, but this isn’t one of the changes that’s going to be good for the game at all. The league shold be encouraging teams to work on becoming more competitive by drafting smarter, picking the right free agents, and developing their farm systems; not by realigning things. The reaction, at least from the Astros players is mostly that they don’t want it. Here’s to hoping that Major League Baseball doesn’t shoot itself in the foot with this idea – keep things the way they are.
A better solution is contraction… Get rid of a few teams AND THEN get rid of the smaller divisions (to make 2 large conferences). The cream of the crop will rise to the top & the best teams will make the postseason – as they should (have all along).
Tradition be damned… People evolve, viewing habits evolve, sports evolve. They have changed divisions before without detriment to “the game” so this shouldn’t be any different.
Contraction is a pretty good solution to increasing the competitiveness. The main problem is that the American and National leagues play by different rules, therefore, it limits the amount of times that interleague play can happen and also gives extra bias to the home team.