Not happy about the Astros moving. But I guess if it was going to happen, right after they blew up the team is a good time.
This is just another step on the way to the “National Conference” and “American Conference.”
Oh, and universal DH. Get used to the idea. It’s coming.
If you’re going to go with two even leagues and move teams between leagues, they might as well just totally re-align across geographical lines. At this point, the AL and NL aren’t separate in umpiring or management. It seems to just be the DH that separates them.
The NBA and NHL do just fine splitting geographically, and it will be a phenomenal savings in terms of travel, both in expense, and in terms of the players’ energy levels. Don’t half-ass it, MLB - do it totally and do it right.
My instinct is to be just as unhappy about the Astros’ move to the AL as I have been with most of Selig’s/team owner’s moves in the last couple of decades.
I could learn to live with it if it’s a sign that MLB may be wending its way back to a balanced schedule. If each team in a division plays the same number of games against the same teams, I’ll be good with that.
I see no reason to continue the Mets-Yankees, Cubs-White Sox, etc., series every year. They can play each other every three years, when their turn rolls around.
If they’re going to move a team to the AL to even things out, then maybe they shouldn’t have fucking moved Milwaukee to the NL in the first damn place. They should just move them back to the AL Central and move the Royals or Twins to the AL West.
How would you do it, though? MLB’s teams aren’t nicely arranged geographically.
I tried a three conference system:
Ruth Conference
NY Yankees
NY Mets
Boston Red Sox
Toronto Blue Jays
Washington Nationals
Philadelphia Phillies
Baltimore Orioles
Tampa Bay Rays
Miami Marlins
Atlanta Braves
Musial Conference
Chicago Cubs
Chicago White Sox
St. Louis Cardinals
Pittsburgh Pirates
Detroit Tigers
Cleveland Indians
Cincinnati Reds
Milwaukee Brewers
Minnesota Twins
Kansas City Royals
Mays Conference
Texas Rangers
Houston Astros
Colorado Rockies
San Diego Padres
San Francisco Giants
LA Dodgers
LA/Anaheim/Etc. Angels
Oakland Athletics
Seattle Mariners
Arizona Diamondbacks
This isn’t perfect but it’s the best I can do. You still have time zone jumps, and there’s no particularly good reason why the two Texas teams are in the Mays and not the Musial but you need two Central Time Zone teams in the Mays. It’s also much more fair to the Ruth Conference teams, whose travel is limited to one time zone and generally shorter distances, than the other conferences.
I sort of ran into a wall, though, in figuring how the schedule would work. If you played six games against every other team in the major leagues that’s more games than the season allows, but it’s the only travel-friendly split. You could play just 3 games against extraconference teams, alternating home/road by season, which is 60 games, and split 102 games amongst your conference opponents, which is 11 poer opponent plus an extra one against three each year, rotating. That’s highly unbalanced but I guess it’d work.
Then you still have eight playoff teams. Award the top three seeds to the conference champions plus five wild cards.
If you want just a little playoff expansion I can’t think of a very good way to do it.
Baseball doesn’t work well with having to schedule games against a large number of opponents **because of the need to play every day. ** If I could set 5 games per opponent or whatever this would be easy, but it’s impractical to have single games or a lot of 2-game series.
Early indications are that we will you your first wish, albeit it expanded interleague play. From what I’ve heard the schedule will be
18 games against each division rival (72)
6 games against every other team in the league (60)
3 games against every team in the equivilant division in the other league, ie al east vs nl east (15)
3 games against each team in one of the other divisions in the other league alternating every year. (15)
It isn’t ideal, but I dumping the unfairness of 4/6 team divisions and making the schedules more consistent is worth doing. It should also be a good test of how popular interleague play is when not scheduled in such friendly time slots.
To me the penalty has to be sufficient enough to make the last game of the season worth playing for. I don’t see an extra road game accomplishing it. Yankees still wouldn’t pitch Sabathia on the last day of the season if that was all that was at stake. Having to play a play-in game however, makes it a much more interesting decision.
It’s never time to stop griping about the DH.
Amen.
I’d hate to think that the final fall-out of this is the adoption of the DH in the NL. And in the past I’d think it impossible. But with Bud, after the ASG fiasco, anything seems possible.
And, IMO, no thanks on another round of playoffs - the magnificent last day of the season would have been meaningless this year with it, right?
Exactly right. When I first heard of the possibility of adding another wild-card team, one of the options being spitballed was to have a one-game play-in between the two wild cards. Then you’d continue with the playoff system as it is now. That would serve as a real penalty for making the playoffs as a wild-card … your pitching rotation would take a huge hit, particularly in contrast to the division winner that was waiting for you. I could have gotten behind that notion.
But, nooooo. The owners can’t stand the idea of making the playoffs, but not being guaranteed a home game to rake in more dough. That’s why you’re not going to see a best-of-three with one team only having the third game at home. There’s no guarantee that team gets a home game, if they lose the first two. The owners are too focused on the ticket/concession income. So now it looks like we have a whole additional round of playoffs, pushing things even further back into late October. Don’t like. Do not want.
And just to verify your thought here - if they’d had two wild cards for 2011, you would have added Atlanta in the NL (89-73) and Boston in the AL (90-72). The next closest teams were San Francisco in the NL (with 86 wins, three games back of the Braves) and the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim/Orange County/West Coast/California/Mind of God in the AL (also with 86 wins, four games back of the Red Sox). So that last night of baseball really wouldn’t have meant anything as far as who made the playoffs and who didn’t.
I agree with you about the playoffs, but i’m not sure that’s the right argument to make about it.
Sure, with an extra Wild Card and another round of playoffs, this year’s spectacular final day wouldn’t have happened as it did. But a new round of playoffs wouldn’t, in and of itself, eliminate the possibilities for an exciting climax to the regular season. There will always be seasons where the playoff teams are decided before the last week, and where the last week is just a formality, and there will always be seasons where it comes down to the wire. Adding an extra round of playoffs won’t change that; in fact, the addition of two more WC teams would, in terms of sheer probability, actually increase the chance that one or more teams would be playing for a spot on the very last game of the year.
But, as i said, i still agree with you about keeping the postseason like it is.
One thing i like about the way baseball works is that it’s hard to make the playoffs. Eight out of 30 teams is, i think, a good number. Some argue that two more won’t change things much, but i prefer it like it is. The playoff series are something of a crapshoot, and giving more teams a chance to benefit from the luck involved in the playoffs is, i think, a bad way to run the game. The playoffs are a reward for consistent performance over a long season, and shouldn’t be diluted by allowing more 86-game winners to make the postseason.
RickJay:
Well, people aren’t nicely arranged geographically. The Mountain and Pacific Time zones combined have only 8 teams, so unless you’re going to add two more and make 8 4-team divisions (or 4 8-team ones), or unless you relocate two teams to smaller western markets (ain’t gonna happen), two teams in the Central Time Zone will need to be folded into a “west” division.
Why the Texas teams? Well, first of all, Texas is thought of as a “western” state in the cultural mind. Also, the Texas teams are closer to Arizona, LA and San Diego than Minnesota and Kansas City are to Denver, the SF Bay Area and Seattle.
Here’s an off-beat suggestion: How about 5 divisions of 6 teams each, with 3 wild cards making the playoffs? That would break up geographically pretty nicely:
Northeast: Red Sox, Yankees, Mets, Phillies, Pirates, Blue Jays
Southeast: Nationals, Orioles, Reds, Braves, Marlins, Rays
Central-East: Tigers, Indians, Cubs, White Sox, Brewers, Cardinals
Central-West: Twins, Royals, Astros, Rangers, Rockies, Diamondbacks
Pacific: Mariners, Athletics, Giants, Dodgers, Angels, Padres
Not so much interesting as unfair. Suppose the Yankees are 8 games ahead of the 2nd wild card, which has already clinched a wild card. Then the 2nd wild card can get their rotation prepared, while the Yankees might burn their best starter trying to win the division, giving a big advantage to the team 8 games back.
Overall, when you look at how far behind the second wild card would often be, many times in the same division, it is exceedingly unfair to reward them with a 1-game playoff.
Not to mention that it would water down the reward of making the playoffs, which would significantly reduce my interest. 8 teams is really a perfect number. Just in terms of how difficult it should be, I would be fine with only 6-7 teams making it, but being a power of 2 allows the most fair playoff format so 8 can’t be improved upon.
Sign me up! I like having a lot of the big spenders in the same division too - although that really, really sucks for the Pirates… how about swapping the Nationals or Orioles and the Pirates?
Then, cut it down to one Wild Card and give the top two overall records byes into the semi-finals - now you have a nice race to be top-2 as well as a fight amongst all the non-division winners for the WC spot.
And, of course, do away with the DH.
While that’s absolutely true, it would mean other years would have had really meaningful games or playoff games with an extra wild card, but did not. If you add a fifth playoff spot you’re simply creating the possibility of two teams fighting for the difference between finishing 5th and 6th, just as now they fight over 4th and 5th.
It doesn’t matter where you draw the line; you have a more or less equal chance at a dead heat going into the last day of the season.
Personally I like the idea of more playoffs but only if other things were changed - hacking a few games off the regular season to fit the damned playoffs in, for instance. And to be honest I wish there were more MLB teams but that’s just me. Superexpansion! Go to 36 teams, I say!
32 is one of the ideal numbers but even placing two more teams is going to be tough for a while at least.
There’s still room for the Fresno Fireballers of Los Angeles.
Oh, it’s absolutely the wrong argument. But it has emotional appeal, and shines a bit of light on MLB’s motivations, which have absolutely nothing to do with competitive excitement and everything to do with $$$$.
Baseball teams play 162 years to decide who is the best. What’s the point of all those games if you’re going to let a third of the teams into the playoffs? Of course, next we’ll hear that the expanded playoffs will be coupled with a reduction in the regular season…