I enjoy thinking about league realignment. While I think the 3-division format has been very successful, I also don't feel like the various divisions (and leagues, really) have a lot of individual identity anymore. It also demonstrated that change can often be a good thing. And so, more and more, I've been thinking that constantly changing around leagues and divisions would bring a lot of excitement to the game. It would also help get rid of some of the inequities we're seeing between leagues these days--or, depending on how you do it, it might formalize those inequities in an interesting way.
Tango checked in with some new ideas about realignment recently. His idea is to take the top 6 teams over the past 4-year period and let them pick their division rivals (6 divisions, maybe across two leagues, but maybe not). Or, take the top-6 teams and assign other teams in groups of 6 based on geographic proximity. Then, after 4 years, toss out the old divisions and draw them up again based on recent performance. Sounds exciting and fun to me!
Here's a quick scenario along those lines, based on a combination of the past three-years' win totals (2005-2007; 4-years provided too much of a legacy effect for some teams). I'm going to combine Tango's idea with one from David Pinto and use five six-team divisions within one league. Each division will play two of the other divisions during a season, chosen on a rotating basis. This gets rid of the 16/14-team league imbalance we currently have, and has some other scheduling advantages as well as some exciting playoff scenarios. DH would be home manager preference, announced prior to the start of every series. And like Tango's proposal, I'm grouping teams in sets of five based on their win totals and proximity. I am keeping teams from the same metropolitan area away from one another so they don't interfere with each others' markets.
| A | B | C | D | E |
| NYY | ANA | BOS | NYM | CLE |
| STL | SDP | PHI | CHW | MIN |
| ATL | OAK | TOR | DET | HOU |
| TEX | SEA | MIL | ARI | LAD |
| CIN | COL | WSN | FLA | CHC |
| TBD | KCR | PIT | BAL | SFG |
And a map of the above divisions:
You can get division ranges to be smaller if you allow teams in the same metro area to be in the same division, but this isn't too bad. Maybe not as tight as the divisions currently are, but certainly no worse than they were when the Reds were in the NL West.
And while this system does try to keep teams lumped by proximity, it also strives to keep the divisions balanced from a competitive standpoint. I think it does this really well. There are some divisions with teams on the rise and on the decline, but they often seem to balance each other out. The weakest division is probably "B," with San Diego, Oakland, Seattle, and the Rockies all apparently declining a bit this season. But even in that case, all of those teams have been playoff teams in recent years. Pretty darn solid. And, of course, it would get revised every few years to remain current.
Anyway, fun stuff. Again, I don't expect that something like this will actually happen, but I think it would probably be a good thing if it did.
Good Lord, man. That's some complex stuff.
ReplyDeleteI will save a lot of bandwidth by just saying I disagree with your premise. I derive full satisfaction from the game of baseball as it is typically played on the field (by teams other than the Reds, anyway), and believe it can thrive without further gimmicking-up.
Well, naturally I disagree. I don't see it as a "gimmicking-up", but rather as a means of improving the distribution of competitive teams among divisions, improving the schedule, abolishing the competitive disparity between the AL and NL, and relieving the "need" for interleague play.
ReplyDeleteAs I said, though, I don't have any illusions that something like this would actually come to pass. Baseball's big on tradition, and this is almost certainly too radical to get much traction.
Furthermore, I'm not really inclined to try to convince anyone that it's the way to go. I just think it's a fun idea. -j
I have no issues with it, interleague play as already pretty much mucked things up. One question I have with five leagues how would the playoffs be done?
ReplyDelete5 division winners and two wildcards with the two WC teams having a one game play in and the winner playing the team with the best record or something else.
One reason why it would fail is that there would be no Redsox/Yankees games for ESPN to shove down peoples throats or at least not as many.
Don't know how many other ways you could do this and keep division from being loaded with teams from the same metro area though.
@Shawn, I think your proposal for playoffs would work. Or you could just do three wild card spots--that would be pretty easy.
ReplyDeleteAnother option, which works as a way of "penalizing" wild card teams (to make it harder to be a wild card team and win): allow five wild cards, but make the four with the worst records play a 3-game series to determine the final three who square off against the division winners. Curt Schilling proposed something along those lines a while back, and I like it.
As for the Red Sox/Yankees thing...you're right, of course. But it would allow baseball to break from the focus on those two teams and would help showcase other teams. I saw an article a while back arguing that the focus on the Red Sox and Yankees during the regular season is causing problems in the playoffs, because when those teams get eliminated, no one wants to watch any more. It would probably be better for baseball, long-term at least, to get away from focusing so much on those two teams. This system would help with that, assuming they're always among the top 5 teams in baseball...
-j
Not really comfortable with that many teams making the playoffs. Rather avoid having teams with losing records get hot and be the world champion. It would also probably kill the trade market since only a small handful of teams would be out of it.
ReplyDeleteWith five divisions you need three wild card teams...just to keep with the current playoff format. double that up to six for a one game play in and you are getting close to half the league and as such teams that really aren't good having a chance no matter how slim of winning the World Series.
I think you stick with the five division winners and three wild card teams and then throw everything out the window. Seed the playoffs, best teams play the worst regardless of division.
This of course could lead to a Yankee/Red Sox world series which would probably be monsterous in ratings.
I certainly think that one can have too many teams in the playoffs. But I'm not sure that two more slots would really change things that much. And I like the idea of making the wild card teams really work for their shot at the series by surviving through a short series, ideally with minimal days off to set up some rotation problems and put them at a disadvantage in the next series.
ReplyDeleteBut again, I think a 5+3 arrangement would work just fine. Having three wild card slots available would set up a pretty exciting September every year...
-j
I assume there would be an unbalanced scheduling, correct? If not then what is the point? Simply put all 30 teams in the pot and let the top 6 or 8 or however many eams that baseball wants in the playoffs to rise to the top. And what about current rivalries? Just chunk them out the window? I would assume new rivalries would start up, but you never know. With five divisions I also assume there would be just one league. What about the DH? Does it stay or does it go? Let's just leave things the way they are. Change isn't always a good thing.
ReplyDeleteScheduling is one of the big advantages of this system. Teams play 90 games within the division (18 per team), plus 72 out of their division (6 per team). Clean, no mess, and every team in a division plays the exact same teams so there's perfect (or as perfect as it gets) balance within a division.
ReplyDeleteAs for current rivalries...which ones? The only one that seems to have a lot of teeth these days is Yankees vs. Red Sox. The Reds certainly don't really have strong ones, unless you count a dislike of the Cubs. The Dodgers/Giants one used to be pretty heated, but I haven't heard much about it of late. I think rivalries are pretty overrated.
And as I said in the original post, DH is home manager preference, announced prior to every series.
It would work. It won't happen, but it would work.
-j