Last month I tossed off this article about realignment and interleague play mostly as a short thought experiment. Now, according to Buster Olney, Selig and MLB are taking the prospect of a one-team realignment seriously. The change, which could arrive as early as next year with the next CBA, would send Houston to the AL West. That would create two 15-team leagues with 5-team divisions throughout. It would also cause interleague play throughout the year. (I mocked up a schedule of such games throughout the season.) On Baseball Tonight, Olney characterized the probability at less than 50/50 at this point, but it could develop momentum as talks progress throughout the summer.
Simple change has Houston moving to AL West
Key to the realignment plan is Olney’s assertion that the players are very supportive. Unlike the tension-filled CBA stalemates for the NFL and NBA, there is a prevailing notion that a CBA for baseball could be approved by the end of the season. Houston is the frontrunning realignment candidate, though Florida has also been discussed. Olney also brought the possibility that approval of Jim Crane’s ownership bid may be dependent on his accepting realignment. Houston Chronicle baseball writer Richard Justice is onboard with the switch.
The intriguing wrinkle to the talks is a newly floated idea that divisions should be eliminated, leaving only two 15-team leagues. Like the divisional arrangement, the playoffs would be expanded to 10 teams (5 per league), with each league constituting a “single table” format much like the one used for Premier League soccer. The 4th and 5th place teams would have some kind of elimination game or series to start the playoffs, with the winner facing the top seed next.
How the teams would finish in 15-team, no-division leagues if the season ended today.
This kind of change is being championed by teams in the AL East, thanks to the difficulty of unseating the big money Yankees and Red Sox at the top of the division. Realignment along these lines could increase the chances of third Eastern team making the playoffs. What it really does is reduce the chances of any team with less than 90 wins going to the postseason, which personally is fine with me.
Anyone yearning for a return to the balanced schedule will get it with the elimination of divisions. As shown in the table below (C), each team would play everyone else in the league 10 or 11 times. No, that’s not the magic number of 12 that makes it possible for teams to visit every city twice a year, but for the 10 opponents with 11 matchups, two trips would still be possible. For the remaining four 10-matchup opponents, scheduling would require a mix of 6 home/4 road games.
* - 10 opponents with 11 games (3-3-3-2), 4 opponents with 10 games (3-4-3)
Also on Baseball Tonight, Tim Kurkjian suggested that because of the level of detail that would have to be worked out, there’s little chance any kind of realignment could happen in time for next season. That doesn’t make much sense to me. MLB receives drafts of schedules well in advance so that they can smooth over any issues. The process is automated, for the most part. It shouldn’t take a year of analysis to determine want the impacts are for each team from a revenue/cost standpoint. It could easily be completed by the end of the season. Of course, we’re talking about MLB and Bud Selig here, and if there’s anything we can count on, it’s Selig’s “deliberative” process.
newballpark.org 
I don’t know how I feel about the lack of divisions. While I love the idea of returning to a balanced schedule, and if we have to have interleague play I am fine with Houston joining the west. I like the geographic diversity that divisions brings. While I feel bad for the Rays, O’s and Blue Jays at the same time I don’t want to see three AL East or NL East teams in the playoffs every year with their bloated payrolls. I love your write up though. Do you have a preference?
Why don’t they just go all in and expand to 32 teams and at the same time still use the threat of contraction to bully communities into financing brand new stadiums? Collect 2 huge expansion fees for the owners and avoid the headaches of year long interleague play while at the same time complain about how everyone’s going broke.
why is it again that they can’t just blow it up and align two leagues geographically? Ignoring the purists, it just make more sense travel and $$-wise. Oak, sf, sea, ariz, sd, la…etc in the same division! Ny & bos would be interleague (as it is they only visit once now due to unbalanced schedules now). NL & AL divs are eliminated but for historical/practical/and competitive values, NL and AL eams retain no DH in NL stadiums and must DH in AL stadiums. Sounds crazy I know but logical at the same time!
Sure, add two more teams: Vegas and San Antonio. If we can get back to a balanced schedule and end interleague play, I’m all for it.
@dwishinsky – I’m a little worried about the no-divisions format in that if it works out like the Premier League it will permanently enshrine the haves-and-have-nots economic system. Other than that I don’t have any real sentimentality towards the divisional system.
As for other forms of realignment/expansion/contraction – Given Selig’s predilection for playing with this stuff, I’m certain he’s floated any number of concepts over the years. The fact that this one is getting serious attention shows how unlikely the others are.
I also think the DH will be gone 2 CBA’s from now – say, 10 years. So moving to a 15-15 and having constant “interleague” play won’t really be that much of an adjustment if both leagues are playing by the exact same set of rules 10-15 years from now.
i don’t think you can have two 15 team leagues. reason why it’s 16 in the nl ad 14 in the al currently is because if you have an odd # of teams per league, that leaves out one team in each league that doesnt have another team to play for a given series. won’t work.
never mind. you’d just have the one team left over in each league playing against each other then so they’d have interleague thru out the season for the most part.
NSJ: DH won’t be gone. Union won’t stand for that, as it would lose 14 (or 15) starting jobs. And Starting jobs are much better than backup roles to them.
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I prefer the 3 division format, but would welcome a 5 team per situation. I don’t want, with the economic disparity and the amount of teams period, a no division, 2 league system. It would mean that the rich teams would always be in, the poorer teams always out, and the West would get the short stick.
Why Houston to AL West? Texas-Dallas is already there. I thibk it would be Az. Or Co worst case. Then, interleague games would be much more attractive. Elimination of division looks interesting but that only goes to support wealthier teams.
ST, its probably because Houston has a new ownership, and they thus would be more vulnerable/agreeable to switching leagues.
Zonis: It’s a Union concession, agreed…but all it takes is for them to receive something in return. And I’m not saying that it will happen in this upcoming CBA, I’m saying I think it’s about 10-15 years away.
As it currently stands, most players hate DHing. So, it’s an undesirable role that maybe the Union won’t think is worth strongly fighting for a decade from now.
Move Milwaulee to AL Central and move Kansas City to AL West. Actually I would like to see a return to 2 Divisions in each league. That was the best set-up! and…..No more playoff teams!!!
Moving Houston to the AL west also gives Texas a 2nd divisional team in their time zone which they would like.
ML: If the teams played everyone in their league only 10-11 times, wouldn’t it reduce travel significantly leaguewide if they only visited each ballpark once?
I’m thinking of the A’s playing six games at Yankee stadium Tuesday-Sunday, then hopping on a plane and playing the next five or six in Toronto, etc. And that’s their only visit to those stadiums all year. Then those teams spend almost a week in Oakland later in the season.
Benefits of the “one-trip” schedule:
*The 5-6 game regular season series might feel a bit more like a playoff matchup.
*Players travel less, which they would like, and owners save costs on flights.
*Teams would face an opponents’ entire pitching staff in that series. No more getting lucky and missing the opponents’ ace starter in a short weekend series.
@ST and @Zonis, I agree it has to be Houston that switches — it wouldn’t be surprising if Bud made privately made that a condition of approving the new ownership. I’d rather see Colorado make the jump, but both Rockies and Arizona have refused in the past because of more marquee matchups in the NL West. And Milwaukee jumped at the opportunity to go to the NL in 1998 because of the Cubs and Cardinals. They aren’t moving back.
The no-divisions format is not going to happen, because too many teams would have to approve. Keep in mind that realignment is an area where each team has an absolute veto. Too many teams (probably the majority) would oppose shifting a larger part of their road schedule to different time zones, which makes their local broadcast rights less valuable. The main reason for the current alignment and unbalanced schedule is so teams like the A’s play the vast majority of the away games in the Pacific time zone. This is especially a concern for Eastern time zone teams, because their West coast road games start at 10:30 p.m. EDT, when nobody except the chronically unemployed can watch. They want to have as few west coast games as possible.
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Of course, there’s also the possibility of NBA-style geographic realignment which Selig proposed in 1997, with the eastern teams becoming the “American League” and the western teams the “National League”. But that demolishes tradition, in a sport that markets tradition heavily. It also breaks up midwestern rivalries. And it works against the less-popular team in each of the 2-team markets, since that franchise no longer has its league affiliation to distinguish it, so they might become the LA Clippers.
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Also, any no-division format brings us back to the problem that led to divisions being created in 1969 — how do you sell tickets for games between a 13th place team and a 15th place team?
Dude must be going to a Wrigley Field that exists in an alternate universe. I was there just this past year, and it’s so bursting with awesome that it boggles the mind. Concessions were surprisingly easy to deal with for a park that old. I can’t think of a single thing I didn’t like about it.
Seems like some folks want things that are new and shiny just for the sake of having things that are new and shiny.
Don’t like it. Why mess with something that’s working for everyone but the AL East. Do we really give a crap about Baltimore?
Very interesting to hear that realignment of the Astros is actually being considered.
Though I know it will never happen, I am a proponent of the minor league system of playoffs, where the winner of the first half of the season plays the winner of the second half. This allows a team that had a horrible start to still have a chance in the playoffs. I don’t know if there is any widespread support for this type of playoff configuration, but I would be supportive of such a change.
Diamondbacks are a candidate to switch leagues: Realingment: D-backs, Astros two candidates to move to AL
I would keep the Divisions and move Houston to the AL West. Play two 3 game series each week for 26 weeks for a 156 game schedule. Play each team in your League 9 games (three 3 game series) for a total of 126 (14 x 9) League games. Each team would play 2 home series and 1 away series against 7 teams and 2 road series and 1 home series against the other 7 teams rotating every other year.
Each team in each Division would also play one 3 game series against each team in two of the other three divisions in the other League for a total of 30 interleague games. Play no games against the third Division. Rotate Divisions on a three year basis. 126 +30 = 156 games. This way your Division rivals have the same schedule that you do each year.
Playoffs: Six teams from each League. The 3 Division winners plus the 3 non-division winning teams with the best records. Seed the six teams by winning percentage with the top two teams getting a first round bye. So #3 plays #6 and #4 plays #5 in the first round. Winners play #1 and #2. First round best 2 of 3. Second round best 3 of 5. League championship and World Series best 4 of 7.