For the last decade or so, a club like the Toronto Blue Jays has found competing to be an almost impossible task. They do not have the money to parry with the Yankees and Red Sox of the world, but have not been quite awful enough to build a farm system such as that of the Rays or Orioles. They are caught in the middle ground of being a mid-market club in a loaded division. ESPN’s David Schoenfield suggests an innovative and radical approach to fixing this issue and the general competitive balance issue:
So, yes, it’s a complicated situation without an easy (or realistic) solution. That’s why I’m here. I have one.
Change the divisions. Each season.
Why does baseball have to keep the same division format every year? Why should Tampa Bay and Baltimore always have to beat out the Yankees and Red Sox while the AL Central teams duel each other to 87 wins? Why should the Angels only have to beat out three teams instead of four in the AL West?
So the plan is to realign the divisions after every season. For the American League, there would be three basic rules:
1. The Yankees and Red Sox always remain in the AL East. It makes sense and it’s good for the game.
2. Tampa, Toronto, Baltimore, Detroit and Cleveland can play only in the AL East or AL Central. All five cities are in the Eastern time zone and having them play in the West creates logistical and television issues.
3. The Angels, Seattle and Oakland always remain in the AL West. This makes sense for logistical reasons, as well.
Now, how do we disperse the remaining teams? Simple. MLB holds a big telecast two days after the World Series ends. We put all the team names in a big ball like during the NBA lottery selection show. Teams send their general manager and a star player and Hall of Famers like George Brett and Reggie Jackson draw out the team names….
So, here’s how it theoretically would work. Each division would rotate as the four-team division once every three years. The Red Sox, Yankees and West Coast teams are locked into place. The other teams are drawn until the divisions are properly filled out.
It is an interesting plan, although one that would never, ever be put into practice for a variety of reasons. Firstly, it complicates things from a logistical point of view, particularly in terms of scheduling. Furthermore, it will kill any possible rivalries outside of those between the 5 teams that are fixed in their divisions. With divisions shifting every season, the Yankees and their fans will be unable to develop any sort of real animosity for the Rays or Orioles, for example.
However, I do believe that realignment could be one way to fix the competitive balance issue. Another plan that I have seen before (I cannot recall where, and help on a link would be appreciated) is to group teams based upon the size of their constituencies. This would result in the grouping of major market clubs together, making the teams with huge budgets compete with each other while the less affluent teams fight between themselves in other divisions. For example, the Yankees, Mets, Red Sox, Braves and Phillies could be one division, and so forth, with alignment done while trying to consider size of market as well as considering geographical issues. The issue here is that you end up creating two entirely different sports, where there may not be an impetus to grow your brand if you are only competing against similarly limited clubs. Furthermore, is it truly fair to make teams that have plenty of money traverse a significantly more difficult path to the postseason? I am not so sure.
This is a complicated issue with many possible solutions, all of which have some major flaws. What would your plan look like?
Put the Brewers back in the AL where they belong. the other Steve S.(Quote)
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This is a veery difficult issue. I don’t really think neither plan could possibly happen or even be considered by MLB, but the truth is that the sistem needs change.
Here’s what I think should/could be done: Instead of changing the divisions every year, you change them every 5 or 7 years. All GMs get together after the season, and the ones that feel their team needs to leave their division or even their league make a request bout this.
After that, a comitee of GMs, comissioners office, active players and retired all-stars, baseball writers and sports journalists analyze those requests and realign (did I spell that correctly? re-align? realign? lol) the divisions if they also feel it’s necessary.
I trust that Yankees/Red Sox or Detroit/Minesotta or Phillies/Mets GMs would never ask to leave their divisions and rivalries behind, but if that does happen, this move would be vetoed by the “comitee”. 72′Yankees(Quote)
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Eliminate the divisions all together. Make teams geographically near each other play each other more often, like we see now, to prevent the West Coast teams of collapsing due to travel.
Top 4 teams in the AL make the playoffs. EJ Fagan(Quote)
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Moshe Mandel Reply:
February 1st, 2010 at 4:42 pm
How about two divisions, with 6 teams making the playoffs- 2 division winners, and the next 4 teams. The division winners get a bye, the other 4 play a 3 game series, and then it proceeds as it does now. This allows more teams to get in, also makes divisions less important, but gives incentive to winning your division, and creates races past just the 4 vs. 5 slot that your system would engender. Moshe Mandel(Quote)
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Interesting concept put forth by Schoenfield but agreed that it will never come to fruition. An alternative to alleviate some of the issues confronting Tampa, Toronto and Baltimore would be to keep the divisions as is but add a second wildcard team.This way these clubs would have a route to the playoffs without having to beat out either the Yankees and/or the Red Sox. The two wild card teams would have a one game playoff on the day after the season ends to determine the fourth team in the respective leagues and then move ahead from there as currently takes place. The two wildcard plan would keep current rivalries intact,create an amazing doubleheader of baseball and give the team that plays the wildcard game winner a more distinct advantage than present because of the pitching that would be expended in the wildcard game. classicsteve(Quote)
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Moshe Mandel Reply:
February 1st, 2010 at 4:44 pm
I like this idea. You would also have to get rid of the whole “teams in same division cant play each other in divisional round” thing. Moshe Mandel(Quote)
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Baseball is a regional sport. It’s all about natural, LOCAL rivalries that ebb and flow depending on how competitive both teams are. This would effectively eliminate many of those rivalries.
When I was a kid, the Yanks and Royals were BITTER rivals. In my teenage years, the Yanks and Red Sox were no big deal. In my 20′s-30′s the Yanks-Orioles duked it out annually, and they had all sorts of trouble with Seattle. Since then, it’s been all Yanks-Sox all the time. But my point is, it wasn’t always that way and I guarantee it will change again many times in the coming years. We don’t need to adopt this silly plan. Steve S.(Quote)
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