Ok, with 30 teams and six MLB divisions, seems easy to divvy up. Yet, not all have 5 teams. Is this good? Why can’t the Astros hop over to AL West?
Because if you had 15 teams in each league, you would have to two teams playing interleague games all the time. This is not considered desirable as interleague play is supposed to be “special”.
It’s also hard to figure out who would want to switch leagues anyway.
Actually, the Brewers already switche leagues, I think to make the current situtation, to avoid the problems already mentioned.
Few NL owners would want to switch over to the AL because then you have to compete with Boston and New York to win the pennant. The NL has a little bit more parity in its finances.
Didn’t they consider moving the Diamondbacks to the AL West for 2002 so Texas could play in their natural division (AL Central, where they aren’t 2 time zones away from the rest of the division?)
The Diamondbacks would have been switched to the AL if Selig had gotten his contraction plan through. The Diamondbacks apparently agreed to allow themselves to be switched to the AL without their permission if it was done before 2002.
Selig announced this soon after the Diamondbacks won an extremely exciting and emotional World Series.
It wasn’t exactly one of Selig’s shrewder PR moves.
I don’t understand this. It’s not the NFL, where every game is an event that takes place the same day as every other game. Baseball games are played whenever, and there is almost never a time when all teams in a league have played the same number of games.
What am I missing?
It’s because baseball teams always play series and not individual games. If you had an odd number of teams, you’d either have an interleague series every week or a team would be down for 2 or 3 days while they waited for an opponent.
You’re right. Baseball is not like the NFL, where the games are played basically one day a week, nor even the NBA where games are played any day of the week, but an individual team will play one or two days in a row, then get several off. Baseball teams play 162 games in fewer than 180 days, leaving fewer than 18 days off in 26 weeks. The most common day off is a Monday, Thursdays less so, and Tuesday or Wednesday pretty rare. You never see a Friday, Saturday, or Sunday off – too good an opportunity to sell tickets.
To follow your plan, every weekend day there would be a team in each league that were either playing each other, or not playing at all. Neither option is looked on with favor. Better to have 14 and 16 team leagues, and divide them into threes as best you can.
DD
Ah, makes perfect sense. Thanks for the explanation, guys.