How can anybody be even talking about expansion and/or realignment in Major League Baseball when MLB is staring down the barrel of a lockout on December 1?
Yet web pages like MLB Expansion are doing just that — and that page conveniently includes a link to the the MLBPA's proposal to forestall a lockout, offered up on Wednesday.
But back to expansion and realignment: most respondents to the aforementioned page apparently support the idea of having four four-team divisions in each league. Obviously they don't follow the NFL, where this has led to numerous teams making the playoffs with records of below .500 (and indeed, at the time the 1994 MLB season — baseball's first year with three-division leagues — was called off by a strike, the Texas Rangers were a staggering 10 games under .500, yet were still in first place in the American League West).
This is why leagues containing two eight-team divisions would be the vastly superior alternative — with the same American League and National League, but patterned on the American and National Conferences that the NFL had, respectively, from 1950 through 1952, with the eastern teams concentrated in the American League and the western teams concentrated in the National League. This would also greatly reduce travel expenses, which could become a grave issue if the tension in the Middle East worsens.
The most obvious new alignment is as follows:
American League, East Division:: Baltimore, Boston, N.Y. Mets, N.Y. Yankees, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Toronto, Washington
American League, North Division: Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, Minnesota, St. Louis
National League, South Division: Atlanta, Carolina*, Houston, Kansas City, Miami, Tampa Bay, Tennessee*, Texas
National League, West Division: Arizona, Colorado, Las Vegas A's, L.A. Angels, L.A. Dodgers, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle
*Denotes expansion team
So far as the regular-season schedule is concerned, every team can play three of their seven division rivals 10 times and the other four nine times (66 games), the eight teams in the other division of the same league six times each (8 x 6 = 48) with 48 interleague games, three vs. each team (3 x 16 = 48), for 162 games (66 + 48 + 48).
And now for the playoffs: the division winners get a first-round bye, while the second-place teams get home-field advantage in the best-of-three Wild Card Series, in which the better of the two second-place teams plays the worse of the two wild cards while the worse of the two second-place teams plays the better of the two wild cards, with no restrictions on same-division matchups.
The lower seed should be guaranteed home field in Game 2 of the Wild Card Series — because every team that makes the playoffs is entitled to at least one home game.
In the Division Series, which should be best-of-five (otherwise we will be eating our Thanksgiving turkey during the World Series), the division winner with the better record always plays the Wild Card Series winner with the poorer record, while the other division winner always plays the other Wild Card Series winner. Again, no restrictions on same-division matchups.
Both the League Championship Series and the World Series remain best-of-seven, with the division champion that had the better record hosting Games 1 and 2, and, if necessary, Games 5 and 7, so as to give the better teams more of an edge (the NBA is now doing this).
And instead of having only 12 teams share in the postseason Players' Pool, that number should be increased to 16 (the "first division;" i.e., the top four teams in each of the new divisions), the World Series winner getting 33% of the total, the World Series loser 22%, the League Championship Series losers 11% each, the Division Series losers 3.75% each and the Wild Card Series losers 1.5% each, with the remaining 2% divided on the basis of two "points" to each third-place team that does not make the playoffs and one "point" to each fourth-place team not doing so.
This means that if both wild cards come from the same division in both leagues, the non-playoff third-place teams receive 0.7% and the fourth-place teams 0.3%; if both wild card teams come from the same division in one league, but not the other, the one third-place team that doesn't make the playoffs receives 0.8% and the three fourth-place teams that don't make it each get 0.4%; and if the wild cards come from different divisions in both leagues, all four fourth-place teams receive 0.5% each.
Now that wasn't too complicated — was it?
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