Thursday, May 10, 2007

Pinto's Radical Realignment

David Pinto had an interesting column at BP today talking about a possible radical realignment idea for Major League Baseball, which, he argues, would solve a lot of the problems with the current scheduling absurdity. Here are the highlights:
  • Combine the AL and the NL teams into one league, and set up five six-team divisions.
  • Each division would play 90 games within the division each year (9 home, 9 away vs. each team), and then 72 games outside the division.
  • The games outside of any one division would be against only two of the other four divisions. Which divisions you play against rotates each season.
  • Teams currently in the AL would keep the DH at their home games. That should keep the player union happy (maybe).
  • Playoffs would include 5 division winners, the 2nd-place team with the best record, and then two short 3-game series among the remaining four 2nd-place teams to determine the final two of the 8 playoff spots (an alternative that I'd prefer would give the five wild card slots to remaining teams with the best records, rather than the 2nd place teams. That way, strong divisions are rewarded for excellence in interdivision play with more playoff spots).
This proposed system has a lot to like about it. It would set up some great rivalries between teams that currently are in different leagues (e.g. CIN v. CLE). It would cut down on travel for both intradivision and interdivision away games (at least it would if they clustered interdivision series on the schedule--and that should possible). It would avoid the disparities in how often division rivals played each other that currently exist. And, perhaps best of all, it would allow even more teams to have a shot at the playoffs--10 teams (33%) instead of the current 8--while rewarding the teams that performed the best with a bye in the first round.

Nevertheless, the biggest challenge--and what Pinto didn't try to do in his article--is to come up with good divisions. After all, if you're going to do something this crazy, you want the end result to make sense. I've been staring at Cbssportsline's map of MLB teams for a bit here, and this is the best possible solution that I came up with (forgive the division names--best I could come up with):

Western DivisionMountain DivisionMidwestern Division
Eastern Division
New England Division
LAA
LAN
OAK
SD
SEA
SF
ARI
COL
HOU
KC
MIN
TEX
CHA
CHN
DET
MIL
STL
TOR
ATL
CIN
CLE
FLO
PIT
TB
BAL
BOS
NYN
NYY
PHI
WAS
Some things to like:
  • Most natural and historic geographic rivalries share divisions: LAA/LAN, SF/OAK, SF/LAN, TEX/HOU, CHA/CHN, STL/CHN, CIN/CLE, CIN/PIT, FLO/TB, NYY/NYN, NYY/BOS, BAL/WAS. That'd be fun. :)
  • The division rivals tend to be of similar market size, more so than they are currently.
    • Using Nate Silver's data from his recent BP article, here are the average attendance spheres (=market size, except for TV) of teams within each of the five proposed divisions, plus/minus standard error:
      • Western: 7.0 M +- 1.5 M
      • Mountain: 3.6 M +- 0.5 M
      • Midwestern: 5.4 M +- 0.9 M
      • Eastern: 3.8 M +- 0.4 M
      • New England: 9.6 M +- 2.1 M
    • That's an average intradivisional standard error in attendance spheres of 1.1 M. The current divisional alignment in MLB has an average within-division standard error in attendance spheres of 1.6 M. So, the new plan would have a more level playing field within most divisions.
  • Each division has 3 teams that would have the DH, save for the Eastern, which has only two. This means there's little bias across divisions in terms of which teams need to have viable options for the DH (of course, my preference would be to get rid of it altogether, but the players' union would never allow that).
  • Again, travel would be much easier...and yet, teams would still get the benefits of an unbalanced schedule as well as the opportunity to see different teams every year (effectively, it has interleague play).
But it's not perfect.
  • Obviously there are some potential rivalries that remain untapped in this, particularly: KC v. STL, MIL v. MIN, PIT v. PHI, and ARI v. SD and the rest of California.
  • It sets up two divisions that both get far less travel than others: the West gets games in SF/OAK, and LAN/LAA, while New England gets games at NYY/NYN and BAL/WAS.
  • In contrast to the short-travel divisions, this alignment requires two divisions to travel far more than others: the Mountain division would have to fly from Phoenix to Minnesota frequently, while the Eastern division would fly from Cleveland to Miami.
...of course, all of those issues are no worse, and are often better, than the status quo. Would you miss the Reds playing any of our current division rivals? I think St. Louis is the only team that I feel a particular rivalry with as a Reds fan. And I kind of miss the Atlanta-Cincinnati rivalry.

I think there's a lot to like about this idea. Bud Selig has talked about trying to push for some sort of geographic realignment before his tenure ends.. I'm pretty skeptical that something as wild as this could realistically happen, but I think it could be a real boon for the game if it did. Not only would it improve scheduling, but it would also set up a bunch of new geographic rivalries that could make for some exciting series throughout the season. And on top of that, 10 teams would make the playoffs each season, even though four of them would be forced to go through a wild 3-game series to compete with the more successful teams.

For fun, here are what the division rankings might look like in this realignment based on last years' W/L record. Bold-faced teams would have made the playoffs, those with asterisks would get a bye past the first round. The number indicates 2006 win totals--obviously, w/l records would change when the teams played change, but this is just for fun anyway:
Western DivisionMountain DivisionMidwestern Division
Eastern Division
New England Division
OAK - 93*
LAA - 89
LAN - 88
SD - 88
SEA - 78
SF - 76
MIN - 96*
HOU - 82
TEX - 80
ARI - 76
COL - 76
KC - 62
DET - 95*
CHA - 90
CHN - 66
TOR - 87
STL - 83
MIL - 75
CIN - 80*
ATL - 79
CLE - 78
FLO - 78
PIT - 67
TB - 61
NYN - 97*
NYY - 97*
BOS - 86
PHI - 85
BAL - 70
WAS - 71
(btw, I didn't realize that the Reds would come out on top in this table until I finished it--but I think that Cleveland would have fared a lot better in that division than they did in the AL Central, so I doubt the Reds would have actually won).

It's funny...I've toyed with the idea of a major geographic realignment for years as a fun "what if" scenario, but I never found anything that seemed to work. But this system that Pinto came up with really could work. The scheduling makes sense, and with the possible exception of the midwest teams, MLB teams really do seem to naturally fall out into five 6-team divisions. I like it. So add my name to the list of those who support this plan. :)

10 comments:

  1. Absolutely, positively too radical. Dissolution of separate leagues will never happen. A more sensible solution would be to expand MLB by two teams and with some geographic jerryrigging, you can come up with 2 leagues of 4 divisions with 4 teams each. Then shorten the season schedule to 156 games comprised of 36 intra-division games (2 home and away 3-game series with each team), 72 intra-league games (1 home and away 3-game series with each team) and 48 inter-league games (1 series per season with every team alternating home & away every other year). Fill in the missing season games by expanding the first round of playoffs to 7 games (advantage for good teams) and use strict seeding throughout the post-season based solely on record. It could work! (I have a detailed proposal awaiting MLB when they ask for it)

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  2. I'm not sure that adding two teams is less radical than what Pinto suggested. All economic indicators I've seen are that the markets for MLB teams are pretty much saturated. Remember how much trouble MLB had finding a place for the Nationals?

    Portland would be a nice market size, but the politics are not friendly to adding a new professional team. Vegas seems problematic whenever it comes up (though I think it could work), while places like Charlotte, Buffalo, and San Antonio are pretty small. -j

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  3. It's an interesting idea, and one that deserves discussion. My own favorite variation involves adding two teams (perhaps international teams, like Tokyo and Seoul) and making four 8-team leagues or conferences. You play within your own league (22 games vs., just like the old days) until the postseason.

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  4. To CG: I don't like four or even five-team divisions. Not enough competition. It should be HARD to make the playoffs!

    Call me old school.

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  5. Fun stuff. I agree that the league distinction has really lost its meaning at this point. Which is too bad, but nothing can be done about it now. May as well embrace progress rather than cling to a historical artifact. Also:

    - I'd like to see all teams within a Division have the same DH rule (I of course prefer no DH). Just for consistency's sake.

    - I'd swap MN and StL and call the Midwestern Div. the Great Lakes Div. MN is closer geographically and culturally to Mil, Chicago, etc. You'd also get the "show me state" rivalry in the same division.

    - Minor point, but I'd call the Yankees' division the Northeast, since only Boston is truly in New England.

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  6. Nice discussion folks! A few quick comments:

    - I'm pretty skeptical about adding a team on the other side of the world, as the travel would be a nightmare. And there don't seem to be any good options among US cities.

    - It's been pretty clear that allowing more teams to make the playoffs via the current alignment has been a great thing from the perspective of the fans (it's more fun to root for a team that can realistically make the playoffs) and the owners/players (more playoff appearances = more $$$$).

    That said, 4-team divisions seems like too few to me as well, as it would be too easy to get weak divisions and thus weak teams into the playoffs. That's why I like the 5 divisions + 5 wild card plan proposed by Pinto.

    -I understand the sentiment of having the whole division a DH or no-DH league. But that would mean either reducing the number of teams with a DH to 12 (2 divisions), or increasing it to 18 (3 divisions). Players would freak out about the former (2 fewer high-paid jobs), and I shutter to think of the DH increasing in number in the latter scenario! :)

    -STL is sort of a wild card, and could reasonably go in either the rocky mountain, midwest, or maybe even the eastern league as I've defined them here. I didn't want to break up the CHN/STL rivalry, which is why I put them in the midwest. But your idea makes sense too--intrastate battles do make good rivalries, and revitalizing the MIN/MIL rivalry would be a good thing. I'd probably try to leave it to the those three teams to decide. :)
    -j

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  7. 2 quick thoughts

    1) The New England Division is too tough ... Boston, Phillies, NYN, NYA.


    2) NYN and NYA would never live with it being called the New England division!!!

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  8. I wonder if teams like Miami or Tampa would actually lobby to be in the Boston/NY division. They could use the extra gate, and both organizations have shown themselves to be craven enough to (publicly) place revenue over competitive advantage.

    It would wreak havoc on league-specific roto leagues. And my long-standing shunning for All Things American League.

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  9. Since when are Philadelphia and Washington DC in New England?

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  10. They're not, as Ken observed above almost two years ago. :) -j

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