As part of Bud Selig’s in-plane tweaking of baseball, he’s drawn up several realignment concepts. A month ago we discussed two concepts and the motivations behind them. This time, we’re focusing on one seemingly simple plan that will assuredly draw both proponents and detractors. Conveniently, he’ll get to throw a few things against the wall at the owners meetings this week and see what sticks.
As much as we’ve focused on the plight of the A’s, Rays, Dodgers, and Mets, there is one ownership situation that’s flying under the radar. Jim Crane, who tried previously to buy the Astros and last year, the Rangers, is the only bidder of the Houston franchise this time around. He’s expected to be rewarded for his patience with a rather smooth, drama-free purchase. Longtime owner Drayton McLane has been looking to get out for a while, and Crane is the only guy bidding going into this week.
Crane’s n00b owner position puts Selig in a position where he could take care of realignment and interleague play in one fell swoop by switching the Astros to the AL West starting in 2012. Any pain for the franchise would be cushioned by automatically gaining a new in-state division rival in the Rangers. Also, remember that under the old two-division-per-league alignment, Houston was in the NL West.
The problem with going to fifteen teams in each league is that at least one interleague series would have to be played at all times (barring off days). Those already predisposed to disliking interleague play will hate this even more because it ceases to sequester interleague games into their own period (late May/June). However, it allows schedulers to stretch out the series so that highlighted interleague matchups are always featured on the weekends to maximize revenue.
To that end, I’ve mocked up a schedule of interleague games for next year. To quiet down the criticism, the actual number of interleague games would be reduced from 18 (for AL teams) or 15 (for some NL teams) to 12, including each team’s natural rivalry games. A cut of the schedule is below, with a link to the full schedule if you can click on the graphic.
Looking at the schedule, you’ll notice that during the first half of the season there are often two interleague series occurring simultaneously during the week. In the second half, that dies down. If the league wanted to go to 18 interleague games per team, additional series could be scheduled in this manner throughout the rest of the season. It has its issues, but as a compromise plan it might work. At least it would fix the ridiculous 15/18 game imbalance in the NL, which to my knowledge no one in the media has really critiqued nearly enough.
Added 3:30 PM – Table showing game distribution per division and interleague.
newballpark.org 
I like your plan, ML. And you’re right that the media rarely if ever critiques the absurdity of the current scheduling format. Cutting Interleague games down to 12 per year would also be great, though I’m highly skeptical of that ever happening.
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But this plan could have an negative impact on the sale price of the Astros, since it would change a huge number of their televised away game start times to 9 or 9:30 p.m. Central time, same problem the Rangers have now. Remember that one of the prime goals of Selig’s realignment and scheduling changes has been to ensure that each team plays the vast majority of its schedule at times that are good for the local TV audience, thereby maximizing local TV revenue.
I love it. I think it’s brilliant. The idea of taking advantage of the sale of the Astros to facilitate something that improves equity for the rest of the league seems great to me.*
Another thing that I don’t think the media has been giving enough play to: how an expanded playoff would basically kill any movement to shrink back down to four total divisions.
If they add a “wild card round,” with a fifth playoff team in each league, that obviously works well with giving three first round “byes,” to the three division champs. But that also kinda destroys any movement to shrink back down to four total divisions, which is my preferred scenario. Having five playoff teams come from two divisions is awkward – you’d be giving a first-round bye to the top wild card, but not the second and third-best wild cards. It just seems like a tougher sell to the casual fan.
I think the “expanded playoff”/10-team format proposal would basically lock us in to having six divisions from this point forward.
*I still think that the best way to handle the DH/no DH debate is let the home team pick whether or not to us it in all games, and in both leagues. Best of both worlds. We would get to watch the very best-hitting pitchers hit, we would be spared the awful ones. And, it provides the home team an extra slight additional home-field advantage, which is a good thing, because the baseball home-field edge is troublingly small.
I love this idea. Its basically the same idea that I proposed in the previous thread, a month ago. It make so much sense.
Oh, also, why would anyone opt for plan B over plan A?
agree, B doesn’t balance very well. if the A’s and Angels play the East 6 times and the Central 12 times, and the Astros and the Rangers play the East 12 and the Central 6, the Mariners would have to play both divisions nine. If all five West teams played the Central 12 times, the East wouldn’t get enough interdivision games.
@bc – Good point. B doesn’t work unless there are 4 divisions, not 3.
This is ridiculous! If you are going to have interleague play, rotate the opponents every year. For instance one year Oakland plays NL East Teams and the next NL Central and finally the next year NL West, This is basically what the NFL does. Not every team has a “Natural Rivalry” Get rid of this concept, it is purely a gimmick and has teams battling for playoff spots, yet having different interleague schedules.
I used to think Selig was alright 20 years ago, but the older he gets, he is becoming a complete nutcase!!!
Move the Astros to the NL??? This is a complete joke!! They are a National League team. End of discussion. It sounds like Selig is trying to go out with a bang and is more worried about how he will be remebered or how his legacy will be thought of. This is the exact problem George Bush had in his last 2-3 years in office,
I guess I never realized what a big ego.Selig has afterall!!
I didn’t mean the plan above wasn’t well thought out. I just can’t believe that this topic is even an issue! Why is Selig even discussing it?
Theyv’e already messed things up, but could do further damage. Pretty soon they will be having the playoff’s resemble a college type tournament! With countless teams. There is a big difference between a playoff and a tournament.
This whole topic really iritates me,
@Robo – Rotating opponents and this plan aren’t mutually exclusive. Teams could easily replace natural rivalries with other teams. The big markets (plus the A’s) won’t do it because those series are cash cows. I don’t think there’s ever going to be a perfect way to implement interleague play. If there’s a way to make it more fair and less painful for teams, MLB should strive for that.
This is a great idea, especially with option A. Though I still think moving the Brewers back to the AL where they began would make more sense and upset the traditionalists less. Put them in the AL central and KC in the AL west. Unfortunately, there just aren’t enough major league cities in the western time zone to avoid scheduling flaws. Two teams from the central time zone will have to play in the western division no matter what.
+1 on returning the Brewers to their ancestral AL home and shifting the Royals to the West.
Maybe I’m missing something, but having 2 and only 2 IL series at once is no better than having no interleague series in an MLB with 15 teams in each league. Then you have 13 teams in each league not playing IL series that need to play each other, which obviously can’t happen because 13 is an odd number. So you’d need to play either 1 or 3 IL series at all times. Maybe that’s not what you’re suggesting.
Here’s how I would handle the rotating IL opponents (moving Milwaukee to the AL):
18 teams have natural rivalries (Oak/SF, Ana/LA, Tex/Hou, ChW/ChC, Cle/Cin, TB/Flo, Bal/Was, KC/StL, NYY/NYM). They will be in Group A. The other 12 teams will be in Group B.
All teams then play 6 IL series in the following rotation:
Group A teams play two series against their natural rivals, series against 2 other teams from Group A (so once every 4 years), and 2 teams from Group B (once every three years).
Group B teams play three series against Group A teams (once every two or three years-this works because the 9 Group A teams playing 2 series per team need 18 opponents in Group B, which adds up to three series per team for each of the 6 teams in Group B), and three series against other Group B teams (once every two years).
Milwaukee is never going back to the AL. The great Braves teams made Wisconsin “National League territory” back in the 1950s, and Selig always wanted to get his ex-Pilots into the NL. IIRC, when the Brewers finally moved to the AL in 1997, it was quite popular in Milwaukee, since it was associated with a return to the city’s baseball glory days.
“Unfortunately, there just aren’t enough major league cities in the western time zone to avoid scheduling flaws. Two teams from the central time zone will have to play in the western division no matter what.”
Correct. Still, it doesn’t change the fact that none of the central time zone teams wants to be one of the unlucky ones that’s forced to play 30 or so road games in the Pacific time zone. The Rangers are stuck (their placement in the revised AL West in 1994 was supposed to be “temporary”). But other teams, including the Astros, have the option to block any move to a western division.
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One solution that might work would be to require the Pacific teams to start home games against the Rangers and realigned Astros no later than 6 pm PST. That would give the Texas teams 8 pm local start times for their telecasts, which should be okay for the ratings. Wouldn’t be good for A’s, Angels or Mariners attendance — but on the other hand it’s only a handful of games each year, so it might be workable.
“Milwaukee is never going back to the AL. The great Braves teams made Wisconsin “National League territory” back in the 1950s, and Selig always wanted to get his ex-Pilots into the NL. IIRC, when the Brewers finally moved to the AL in 1997, it was quite popular in Milwaukee, since it was associated with a return to the city’s baseball glory days.”
Well, by that token, Washington should move to the AL since that was “American League territory” from 1901-1972. And if you want to get really technical, Baltimore and Cleveland had NL franchises up until 1899, so aren’t they “National League territory”?
And Milwaukee’s sure changed territories a lot (first the Miluwakee Grays of the NL in 1878 for a year (folded), then the Brewers of the AL in 1901 for a year (became the Browns), then the Braves of the NL in the 50’s and 60’s, then the Brewers of the AL in the 70’s through 90’s, and now the Brewers of the NL.
Maybe, since everyone apparently wants to be in the NL, we should move all the AL teams there and call it all the National League, and then carve out divisions as we see fit.
And I even forgot their time as an American Association city in 1891 (as the Brewers).
As long as Selig is the commish he will not allow the Brewers to switch leagues twice in barely more than a decade.
So are we going to get a mega-post on the Vikings new stadium plan?
No megapost. Less than 500 words is enough.
“Well, by that token, Washington should move to the AL since that was “American League territory” from 1901-1972. And if you want to get really technical, Baltimore and Cleveland had NL franchises up until 1899, so aren’t they “National League territory”?”
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I wasn’t suggesting that Milwaukee literally belonged to the National League. But the people there, to judge by the reaction when the Brewers switched, WANT to be an NL city. From the point of view of Wisconsin baseball fans, they never should have had the Braves taken away from them, and the Cubs are a far more interesting rival than the White Sox or Twins ever were. So the Brewers are never going to volunteer to switch back to the AL.
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I said I thought it made sense to move the Brewers back to the AL. I never said I thought it would happen. For all the reasons Simon and ML have noted, I’m sure it won’t happen. Another option that would make sense (but won’t happen) is to move the Dbacks to the AL West and Houston to the NL West. Alas, as evidenced by the ongoing saga of the A’s eternal limbo, what makes sense rarely happens under Selig’s watch.
@simon94022 – 6pm start times on a weekday would kill attendance. The A’s stands don’t reach that day’s max until the 3rd inning or so as it is. People are coming in from all over the bay area after work and school, and it’s difficult for all of them to get there by 7. Moving the games up an hour might cause some of those people to not even bother, since they’d lose two or three more innings.
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Maybe this isn’t quite so much a problem with a stadium in a downtown area with a good light rail/bus system/spread out parking garages, but it is a problem with the A’s where they are located.
“Another option that would make sense (but won’t happen) is to move the Dbacks to the AL West and Houston to the NL West. Alas, as evidenced by the ongoing saga of the A’s eternal limbo, what makes sense rarely happens under Selig’s watch.”
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Yes. And the expansion franchise terms that were given to Arizona and Tampa Bay included a provision that those clubs could not veto a league switch by the Commissioner at any time before the 2002 season. Selig actually proposed switching the them in 2001, and Tampa Bay favored the move. But the D-Backs pleaded that a move to the AL would destroy their franchise (yes, really), so Selig backed down. Today the D-Backs would be able to veto such a move.
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The key to Selig’s leadership — which despite his bad press has actually been extremely effective — is that he tries to ensure that each decision leaves all 30 owners happy and, even more importantly, no team owner extremely unhappy. That approach makes MLB’s decision-making very slow and often results in highly critical media, but eventually it does get things done.
I don’t think I would classify Milwaukee as “Natinal League Territory” The Braves are a National League team who did play there at one tine, but they left.The Brewers are not the Braves, but I guess Selig has a hard time understanding.this. I think? they even have put up retired Braves Players/Numbers plaques all around Miller Park. That would be all right in a museum type context, but has nothing to do with the current Brewers. The Pilots/Brewers are an American League Team that has been moved to the NL.
I understand why in his mind,Selig did this ,but it was pure self gratification.
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He has to be a magician not to leave either Wolff or Neukom extremely unhappy.