Major League Baseball - Interleague Question

In My Humble Opinion
21

Not really; the spread, if you go by points (which conveniently were equivalent to wins in baseball, until the idiot idea of giving teams a tie for losing) was about the same as a major league division today, if not wider. Also it was a 5-team division most of that time.

Look, it kind of HAS to be true. Think of it this way; presently we have an East Division, a West Division, and a Central Division. Take all the teams out of the Central Division, and place them back into either West or East. The space between positions in the East and West HAS to be smaller now. It’s can’t possibly be otherwise, unless all the teams in the Central are all better or all worse than any team in the East or West.

22

Scrap the entire League / Division configuration & re-organize the whole mess. 2 Leagues / 2 Divisions each, room to expand or contract & no interleague until the WS. You’ll end up:

(1) Balancing the schedules
(2) Giving the fans more regular season cross-town / intracity rivalries
(3) Shortening the regular season to 145 games and move the World Series back to September
(4) Scrapping the wildcard before baseball becomes like the NHL
(5) Getting rid of these inane opposite coast games that start too late (10PM) or too early - 4PM)

Eastern League: 14 Teams - 16 Games vs Intradivision Teams = 96 / 7 Games vs Each Interdivision Team = 49
NorthEast Division: Toronto, Boston, NYY, NYM, Philly, Baltimore & Washington DC
SouthCentral Division: Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Florida & Tampa Bay

Western League: 16 Teams - 15 Games vs Intradivision Teams = 105 / 5 Games vs Each Interdivision Team = 40

MidWestSouth Division: Milwaukee, Cubs, ChiSox, Minnesota, Kansas City, St. Louis, Texas & Houston
WestCoast Division: Seattle, Colorado, San Fran, Oakland, LA/Anaheim, LA Dodgers, San Diego & Arizona

Don’t tell me about tradition; it left the building decades ago. And don’t ask me about the DH; that’s stretching this hijack to a place I’m sure the OP doesn’t want to see it go.

23

I dunno Rick. It seems your assumption only holds true if there wide gaps between teams added to a division where there are already wide gaps between each team in a division. If it is a close race your theory doesn’t hold water, does it? I haven’t done the research (and don’t intend to do so either :wink: ) but if you take a compressed Central division (ie, the teams are closely bunched together) and add it to a compressed East or West division, then it is still compressed, isn’t it? Like I said, we need a stat or probability guru here, I think.

24

That may be the worst realignment plan I’ve ever seen. No offense.

The whole point of geographically close teams being in opposite leagues is that it encourages fans to see both teams, since they’ll see two sets of opponents. Why would anyone go to see Atlanta play the Mets when they can go see them play the Yankees the next week?

I do favor realignment on a small scale. If there was a way to get one team out of the NL Central and get the Rangers out of the AL West (where they have a major time zone disadvantage) I’d be for it. Bud never should have moved the Brewers into the NL Central, because it threw the leagues out of balance and now the divisions are lopsided (5-6-5 NL, 5-5-4 AL).

And I think any reduction in the season should be back to the 154-game schedule that worked just fine until the 1960s.

25

I think Bob Costas has suggested that if we have to have interleague play and 3 divisions per league then the Astros ought to be moved to the AL West so the Rangers will have a natural in-division same time zone rival, with 6 five team divisions. That’s not a bad idea. Of course, there would be a least 1 interleague game every day, since there’d be 15 teams in each league lest someteam be idle every single day.

26

I’d be in favor of a realignment that enabled teams in the same division to play an identical schedule. That’s my main problem with interleague play. If only there were two viable candidate cities for expansion! That would allow 4 (22 games each = 66), 4 (6 = 24), 4 (6 = 24), 4 (6 = 24) and everbody in the same division plays against the same division (cycling through the other league - you’d play a team every four years) in the other league (6 = 24), leaving the new balanced schedule at 162 games, playing enough games against your own division teams to be meaningful, easing the interleague issue, and as a side bonus, doing away with the wild-card.

Also, the AL should do away with the DH.

Also, I’d like a pony.

27

This is only an advantage, sort of, if you live in New York, Chicago, LA, or the Bay. And even then it’s not THAT big a deal.

If you play your “rivals” over and over it takes away from the thrill, and in any event “rivalries” are not easily predicted. The Yankee-Red Sox rivalry is actually a fairly recent invention; for most of the history of the two teams, the Red Sox were a pimple on baseball’s ass, playing to a mostly empty Fenway; about the only reason they’re still in Boston is the Braves moved first. It never would have occurred to anyone the two teams had a “rivalry.” And for the brief and very distant period of time when the Red Sox were a dynasty, the Yankees were a joke. That may well be the case again five or ten years from now. For all we know the next great rivalry could be Marlins-Cardinals, or Blue Jays-Angels, or Mariners-Royals, and the increased Yankees-Red sox matchups could become an anachronistic bore.

The advantage of playing games away is that it’s of interest to all fans, not just fans in the four big media centres. Everyone gets to see someone different; as a Jays fan, I was thrilled the first time the Braves came to town. It was cool, and everyone sitting around me at the stadium agreed.

I know New Yorkers and Bostonians don’t realize this, but few people outside New York and Boston give a crap about their rivalry. Similarly, there seems to be a belief among Cubs and Cardinals fans that the not-so-epic struggle between the Cardinals and their hapless rivals matters to anyone outside those fan bases. Increasing those matchups would be of some interest to those fans, but the novelty would wear off, and it’s of no value at all to fans of the Tigers, or Rangers, or Mariners, or any number of other teams not party to those “rivalries.”

I don’t understand why you would want to move the World Series “Back” to September. It’s always been in October. That’s one of the cool things about it; pennant races in September, World Series in October.

I also don’t see any point in reducing the length of the regular season schedule. It’s always been about as long as it is now, expanding only once in modern times (from 154 games to 162) and it’s not even any longer in terms of TIME than it ever really was, since travel advances allow them to play every day now. I don’t want less baseball, I want more.

Baseball would only “become like the NHL” (or the NBA) if you added four more wild cards.

Like it or not, the number of postseason berths is a necessity unless you want to scale back the size of the major leagues, which I don’t support. And anyway, the Division Series have given us some really terrific baseball. The 1995 Mariners-Yankees series still stands as one of the classic postseason series of all time. I love the Division Series. I get to see more baseball, and it’s not so watered down that lots of losing teams make the playoffs.

Hell, you could make the postseason even more exclusive if you went to 1968 alignments and just had two playoff teams. That’s even less like the NHL, right? But it’s obvious to everyone that have a 16th place team would not be in anyone’s interests. Allowing lots of fans to have hope their team can make the playoffs without having a lot of crappy teams in the playoffs is the balance that has to be struck, and I think they’re at that balance now.

Nope, don’t like it. As a fan, I want to see my team play many opponents. I’ll stay up to see a few late games, or sneak a listen on my radio. I see no advantage here at all.

I have a much different realignment plan but I’m busy, maybe next time…

28

Lest you think no one is interested, I am. I warn you though, if it involves moving the Orioles out of the AL…

29

None taken. But based on the number of Yankees fans I know, I can’t think of any who’ve gone to Shea to see the Mets play anyone but their Yankees. I have to assume you’d be just as hard pressed to find any Wrigley field regulars who venture in to US Cellular Field.

Well, I consider a big advantage…especially considering the fact you hit upon 4 of the lagest markets. These might be a bit of a stretch, but what about Pittsburgh/Cleveland, Cleveland/Cincinnati, Baltimore/Washington DC, Tampa Bay/Florida rivalries cropping up? By your ‘geography doesn’t matter / see something different’ logic, MLB should start flying teams to play the Tokyo Giants, where evening games played there would start at 6AM here.

I ment back directionally - not historically. October 20-somethingth is too late in the year to be starting the World Series. It’s too cold & the NFL is already into Week 7.

Well, when the league expands once more to 32 teams, you can have 4 divisions of 4 teams in each league. I don’t like the wildcard because baseball is more about divisional standings than W-L records. I agree the post season is as enjoyable as it was pre-wildcard…I just consider it an anomaly.

This is where I’ll most vehemently disagree with you. From an East Coast persons point of view, these opposite coast trips are a total waste. In my neck of the woods, for the 24 games the Yanks make the trip out west (of which probably 20 are West Coast night games), the Sports Bars are like ghost towns, the televised games are sponsored by ‘Body By Jake’ (who probably pays about $5 per minute in advertising fees) and no one even knew what happened the night before.

30

I thought interleague was a crock when they came up with it. I have since changed my mind, or maybe I’m just used to it. I did go to a Giants/As game a few years back and had a blast. There was such good energy in the park, what with both teams getting cheers. (Of course, Giants/As fans don’t loathe each other, the energy might not be quite as pleasant at a Sox/Cubs game.)

I also like the unbalanced schedule. Although I am getting tired of playing the Rockies. We couldn’t get a hit at freaking Coors? What the hell was that about? :: grumble ::

31

Rick, I agree with your main point but your facts about Red Sox attendance are incorrect. From 1912 when Fenway opened through 1952 when the Braves went to greener pastures in Milwaukee the Red Sox outdrew the Braves 34 out of 41 years, and often by large margins. From when Fenway was remodelled in 1934 through the present the Red Sox’ attendance has exceeded the league attendence average in all but 11 years (and 3 of those years were during WW2), and in every year since 1966.

Source: Baseball-Almanac.com

32

That despite the fact that Braves Field had a larger seating capacity, and better sight lines for that matter.

Perhaps if the Braves had been winners during the Twenties and Thirties while the Sox were sad sacks, things might have been different. But they weren’t. The Sox started winning and had a genuine star in Ted Williams to take over the dominant place in New Englanders’ hearts, while the Braves were getting pounded with a perpetually-ordinary bunch. The 1948 pennant didn’t do it for them because the Sox were in it until that playoff game too.

What was that about playing your rivals taking away from the thrill? If you see another team all the time, they *become * rivals in a way. Even if they suck, it’s still satisfying to get them off your back. Note the beanball wars the Red Sox and Devil Rays have had in recent years, and that’s just the players. But a team you see only for 3 games every 3 years is just an oddity, unless they bring some stars with them, and even then the stars are the attraction, not the team. The novelty of seeing, say, the Colorado Rockies in Fenway wears off pretty quickly, and isn’t replaced with any other emotion. Yes, I’d rather have the Rays in town instead.

33

I’m going to explain my personal baseball fantasy in another thread. However, I’ll address this one idea here: It’s bad.

Four four-team divisions absolutely guarantees two things:

  1. The average quality of playoff team will be worse.
  2. Teams with losing records will begin making the playoffs.

I’ve run a lot of simulations; four four-team divisions virtually guarantees many, many seasons where a mediocre team, and sometimes even teams with records like 78-84, will make the playoffs, and teams with 99-63 records will not. The one significant advantage of a wild card system is that you guarantee that the two best teams in the league will make the postseason.

34

I love interleague play. I love a lot of the matchups.

Angels/Dodgers
Mets/Yanks
Braves/Red Sox
Rangers/Astros
Reds/Indians
A’s/Giants

This is cool stuff.

And I don’t think **John **'s re-alignment scheme is all that bad. But I think that either baseball needs to X out a couple of teams or move them. (or move out their owners) I love seeing that Nationals. I bet they love playing home games with people in the stands. I can’t understand why Oakland doesn’t draw and the hated Giants do. Maybe they need to go somewhere else. Maybe they can move into Pacbell Park (and maybe they can move the Giants out into the bay)

I really don’t mind the DH. But either the NL should adopt it or the AL should drop it. One set of rules.

35

Nah. I think the DH is un-natural and a Sure Sign of the Decay of Western Society, but having it around makes for more spirited bar-room discussions and allows us National League fans to look down our noses at our lesser brethren, ie those who root for AL teams. (Honey…it was a joke! Put down that Red Sox souvenir bat…honey… :smiley: )

And the Giants need to be moved farther than just out into the bay. Okinawa perhaps.