The Big Picture: More Alignments

Over the last two weeks we discussed the advantages of switching to five
six-team divisions. Other options exist to accomplish our goals of less travel,
meaningful division races, and interleague play. I’ll present two this week.

The first requires the addition of two teams. I’d like to leave a discussion of
the pros and cons of expansion to another time, and just deal with the divisions
and the schedule. Since San Antonio and Las Vegas desire teams, for the purposes of this proposal the majors expand to those two cities. That puts the number of major league teams at thirty-two, which divides very nicely into four eight-team leagues. Let’s call them the National, American, Federal, and Union Leagues, giving a nod to tradition and two defunct leagues. Each of these leagues gets further divided into two divisions (which can be named after players). The division winners in each league play against each other in the first round, then the four league winners are seeded by winning percentage for the second round and the World Series.

This arrangement lends itself to an easy schedule. The teams from the same
division play each other twenty-two times, for a total of sixty-six games. They
play the other division in their league twelve times each, forty eight games.
They then play six games (a home and home) interleague, with the opposing league
changing each year. That means fans will get to see every team at least once
every three years.

This alignment results in eight division winners, an advantage over the current
wild card system in my mind. One of the things I miss from the pre-1994
alignment is the tragedy of two great teams going head to head, with one of them
losing out on the playoffs. We remember 1978 and 1993 and others races as much
for the disappointment of the losing team as the joy of the winners. I’d like
to bring that back. Also, every time a wild card team wins a World Series,
someone whines about the first round being unfair to division champions. This
eliminates the need to fix that problem.

As for dividing up the teams, my first instinct would be to put the sixteen
original teams in the AL and the NL, but that does nothing to minimize travel. The only west coast team from the original American league is Oakland, for
example. Still in the east at least AL and NL teams can stick together:

One of the criticisms of the alignment in the previous column concerned the
placement of Minnesota and St. Louis. Readers wanted Minnesota and Milwaukee
paired, and St. Louis and Kansas City in the same division. They were not
concerned with the Cubs and Cardinals keeping their rivalry intact. The above
divisions reflect that concern. Las Vegas and San Antonio use the DH, so that DH and non-DH teams balance out evenly. So every team in the AL uses the DH and none of the NL teams do. The FL has two DH and two non-DH teams in each division, making it somewhat more challenging. The UL splits the DH teams by division. So it would be possible to hold an all-DH or an all-pitchers-hit World Series.

The schedule looks something like this:

1. Play 22 games in the division.
2. Play 24 games home and home against the other league division.
3. Play 24 games against each team in the opponent league for that year.
4. Play 22 games in the division.
5. Play 24 games against each team in the opponent league for that year.
6. Play 24 games home and home against the other league division.
7. Play 22 games in the division.

Now let’s take this one more step and combine the six team division idea with
the expansion idea. This idea calls for an additional four teams to bring the
major league total to thirty six. For the sake of demonstrating the concept, I’ll put teams in Indianapolis, Nashville, Charlotte and Brooklyn.

Willie Mays Division

• Seattle Mariners
• Oakland Athletics
• San Francisco Giants
• Los Angeles Dodgers
• LAnaheim Angels
• San Diego Padres

Roger Clemens Division

• Arizona Diamondbacks
• Colorado Rockies
• Las Vegas
• Houston Astros
• San Antonio
• Texas Rangers

Bob Gibson Division

• St. Louis Cardinals
• Kansas City Royals
• Chicago Cubs
• Chicago White Sox
• Minnesota Twins
• Milwaukee Brewers

Hank Greenberg Division

• Detroit Tigers
• Toronto Blue Jays
• Cleveland Indians
• Cincinnati Reds
• Indianapolis
• Nashville

Babe Ruth Division

• New York Yankees
• Boston Red Sox
• Baltimore Orioles
• Washington Nationals
• Pittsburgh Pirates
• Brooklyn

Hank Aaron Division

• New York Mets
• Philadelphia Phillies
• Charlotte
• Atlanta Braves
• Tampa Bay Devil Rays
• Florida Marlins

I decided to go with Indianapolis instead of Portland, Oregon. A seventh west
coast team caused one team to travel a long way in two divisions, so this keeps
travel down. (Something to think about in future expansions is how much the
teams added impact travel.) Six division champions make the playoffs along with
two wild cards, just like the current system.

Scheduling would work just like in the five-six team divisions, except that
every team in a division can play all teams in another division at the same
time. So, in a year in which the Ruth division played the Mays and Arron
divisions, the season would play out:

1. Home and home in the Ruth
2. Home and home against the Aaron
3. Home and home in the Ruth
4. Home and home against the Mays
5. Home and home in the Ruth

The current division alignment and the resulting schedule result in a number of
inequities. Major League Baseball can fix that with a radical change, abandoning the league structure and realigning into six-team divisions. When baseball decides to expand again, eight small divisions might also work quite well, and as they expand further, six-team divisions work again. The trick is not to be wedded to the current AL-NL structure. Now that all clubs are really under the auspices of Major League Baseball directly, realignments could provide a new dynamic to the game, which could also bring in more fans.