Posted on by Shannon Shark @metspolice

Leadoff: if MLB must realign, do this.

I don’t know if you saw the SI article about floating realignment:

One example of floating realignment, according to one insider, would work this way: Cleveland, which is rebuilding with a reduced payroll, could opt to leave the AL Central to play in the AL East. The Indians would benefit from an unbalanced schedule that would give them a total of 18 lucrative home dates against the Yankees and Red Sox instead of their current eight. A small or mid-market contender, such as Tampa Bay or Baltimore, could move to the AL Central to get a better crack at postseason play instead of continually fighting against the mega-payrolls of New York and Boston.

Obviously that’s a terrible idea.

Here are my choices for re-alignment, in order:

1.  Leave it alone

2.  Go back to two leagues.  No playoffs, no wild cards, no DH, the Cubs play day games and the Giants move back to Manhattan.   Obviously everyone but me hates this idea.

3.   Re-align to goose the rivalries and maximize the fun.  Years ago my fantasy football league got so big that I proposed such a scheme.  I enjoyed playing Pat more than playing Scott who I didn’t really know.  Instead of picking the schedule out of a hat, we made divisions based upon who hung out together – you played YOUR buddies, not your buddy’s friends.  Now we apply that to baseball.

“Patrick Division” (for those of you of a certain age you know what it means and yes I know Boston wasn’t in it.)

  • Mets
  • Yankees
  • Red Sox
  • Phillies
  • Toronto

Toronto unfortunately has to go somewhere, and it’s not fair to keep the O’s and strand the Nats.   Mets fans can come to hate Boston and Yankees fans can learn to hate Philly.  Nice easy road-trips for 4 of the fanbases, and like I said Toronto has to go somewhere.

Incredibly Obvious Pacific Division

  • Los Angeles of Los Angeles
  • Los Angeles of Anaheim
  • San Diego
  • San Francisco
  • Oakland

Is there anything to argue about here?  No.  It’s perfect.

The southwest division:

  • Texas
  • Houston
  • Colorado
  • Phoenix
  • Seattle: sorry but who told you to be so far north?

This one is a little messy for the Mariners but the two Texas teams together makes sense, as do Colorado and Arizona geographically.  In 25 years the San Anotonio Mariners will love it.

The central division:

  • White Sox
  • Cubs
  • Brewers
  • Cardinals
  • Royals

Not bad, right?  The Chicago fans hate each other, everyone hates a team associated with Bud Selig, the Cubs still get to hate on the Cardinals, and the Royals get dragged into some Missouri rivalry I may be making up.

The coal division

  • Indians
  • Reds
  • Pirates
  • Twins
  • Tigers

The Twins are already with Detroit and Cleveland now so you can’t nitpick that.   The Reds and Indians both play in Ohio.  I can throw a frisbee from Pittsburgh to Cleveland and there’s no jumbo market in this division. Go ahead someone and win it.

Southeast division

  • Braves
  • Miami
  • Tampa
  • Baltimore
  • Washington

I don’t care about any of these teams and they sort of all play down there somewhere.

That’s it.  I’m done.  You know how many tweaks I had to make?  None.  It’s just obvious if you lay it out. Believe me, I killed lots and lots of time in college classes re-aligning sports leagues.  This plan is a winner.

Schedule:

Play 18 games against your 4 division rivals = 72 games

9 games against two other divisions.  Each years these rotate, like the NFL.  = 90 games.

Total = 162 games.   All of Barry Bonds records still stand.

I will leave it to someone else to name the leagues/conferences/divisions/whatever.

Unfortunately all teams will have the DH.  That battle has been lost from here to Japan.

On twitter yesterday (@metspolice) some fans thought the Mets’ division was too tough.  What do you think of the plan?  Again my first choice is leave it alone.

14 Replies to “Leadoff: if MLB must realign, do this.”

  1. I like this idea. In Bud Selig’s math, Seattle would be in the 6 team Pacific division and leaving behind a 4 team Southwest division. Fight against the DH.

    1. That 6/4 split makes sense geographically, but it just seems odd to me to have a 6 and a 4. I hate it now.

      As you may have noticed I am a traditionalist, so I wouldn’t want the DH but I don’t see it going away.

  2. Switch San Diego and Seattle.

    Great Lakes Division:
    White Sox
    Cubs
    Brewers
    Indians
    Tigers

    River Cities Division
    Pirates
    Reds
    Twins
    Cardinals
    Royals

    1. it would help the mariners, but wouldnt the padres want to be with LA?

      I also like the Costas Wild Card idea. ADD a second WC..stay with me….the two WC’s play a ONE GAME playoff do or die. That motivates a team to keep playing hard in Santana. Do you wanna have to use Santana in the WC and then play the next day on the road with Mike Pelfrey starting Game 1?

  3. Keep the American and National League names. Divisions rotate every year based on the schedule rotation.Patrick Division is always AL. Pacific Division always NL. The NL did occupy the west coast first.

    Playoffs:
    Season ends,
    2 days off (allows for possible ti-breaker & travel day),
    5 game Wildcard series (w/1 travel day)
    1 travel/off day,
    5 game League Championship series (w/1 travel day)
    1 travel/off day
    7 game World Series {w/2 travel days)
    End season until end of WS: 25 days
    No baseball in November and all dads are home for Halloween
    All playoff games scheduled on Saturdays must be day games.

  4. Damn-it, never mind the Patrick and Pacific always being in the Al & NL, that won’t damn work, now will it. Still keep the AL and NL names for tradition though

  5. San Diego is more of a SW city than Seattle, especially linguisticly.
    And, you can’t have the entire Pacific Div. in Cali. Once the big-one hits and the state slides into the ocean, you have to have one team left to carry on the heritage…lol

  6. I agree with SD and SEA switching, but you lose the rivalry with the Dodgers. Those Houston-Seattle (or San Diego) division rivalry will probably be just as good as Braves-Dodgers in the old NL West. At this point, the AL and NL are gone the way of the Wales and Campbell Conferences. But so is Interleague play.

  7. dyhrd,
    Think of some of the new “real” crosstown rivalry’s that Shannon’s realignment would produce.
    A’s-Giants
    the Los Angeles’
    and imagine the elevated obnoxious fan rhetoric with 18 games a season of Yankees-Mets & White Sox-Cubs, instead of a mere 6

    1. we keep hearing about the golden age of baseball…i’d rather see more NYM-NYY then NYM-Twins, and with my rotating division plan you’ll see everyone every few years.

      Again, my first two choices are “nothing” and “one big 16 team league, you had 162 games to win it”

  8. Shannon – This is pretty good and well thought out. Only two comments, first, everyone is right, the Patrick Division is killer. In the last 30 seasons (’80 to ’09) how many titles have those five teams won combined? It seems like most of them, but it’s not quite that high.

    Second, easy fix for Pacific and South West. Put Seattle in Pacific and San Diego in South West. San Diego is so far South they are much more in line with traveling to Arizona and Texas and Colorado is not bad for them either.

    Seriously, I don’t like any alignment change at all and I don’t like moving teams between leagues if you have to do it. So in the real, cuurent MLB divisions, swap Toronto and Cleveland, Texas with KC, Houston and Colorado, and Pittsburgh and Washington if you want to shake things up a little bit. Everyone I just mentions at least kind of fits into their new division “goegraphically” speaking.

    Toronto would play 3 Northern teams regularly, CHI, MINN and DET, and Cleveland, the most easterly major city in Ohio would just face towards the right instead of towards the left when they travel.

    Texas would sort of be the fish out of water in the Central, but scheduling road trips in their division would be better as none of their current division teams are all that close to each other, so KC would be no worse off in that aspect (travel).

    Houston fits in well with the teams from the West, and Colorado is practically still an exapnsion team to me, so they can go where we say to go.

    Pennsylvania is one skinny strip of land (New Jersey) away from being an East coast state, so the East division will suit them fine and Washington doesn’t play in ANY state, so they should bounce around a little and play teams from another part of the country.

    1. Great article. You have correctly guessed my opinion. I was into the Orthodox league but I couldn’t stand up for the travel by plane and geographic restrictions. Will flesh this out to a post this weekend.

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