Open up your ears and turn up your hearing aid, Mr. Selig, I am going to tell you how to save the great game of baseball. It has nothing to do with steroids or junk like that. Let's stop kidding ourselves, all professional athletes are going to find ways to gain an edge, whether it is legal or illegal. So, frankly, that is a mute point to me. This article is going to be all about how to make baseball for people in cities other than New York, Boston, LA, Chicago... you know, the teams that win, BETTER. The way I have this league set up, there will be pennant races from coast to coast. You know what that means, more interest all over the country.
Currently the league is setup with 3 divisions in 2 leagues. East, Central, and West are in the American and National Leagues. This setup is the first problem with the league. In a division with the Red Sox, Yankees, and Rays, how can you expect a Baltimore or Toronto fan get excited about Opening Day? The answer is you can't. So that is problem number 1. Baseball needs realignment. Leave that Traditionalist shit at the door, this system in place has only been in place since 1995. The game and the world we live in has changed since then. Baseball has to change with them, or risk becoming an obsolete game that nobody born after 1972 gives a rat's ass about.
As it is now, the divisions and leagues are broken up like this...
AMERICAN LEAGUE NATIONAL LEAGUE
East Division East Division
Boston Red Sox Atlanta Braves
New York Yankees Philadelphia Phillies
Toronto Blue Jays Florida Marlins
Baltimore Orioles New York Mets
Tampa Bay Rays Washington Nationals
Central Division Central Division
Minnesota Twins St. Louis Cardinals
Cleveland Indians Milwaukee Brewers
Kansas City Royals Cincinnati Reds
Detroit Tigers Chicago Cubs
Chicago White Sox Pittsburgh Pirates
Houston Astros
West Division West Division
Los Angeles Angels LA Dodgers
Oakland A's San Diego Padres
Texas Rangers San Francisco Giants
Seattle Mariners Colorado Rockies
Arizona D'Backs
With these 3 divisions, the winner of each division and the next best record are able to make the playoffs. These division give unfair advantages all to some teams by having them beat out fewer teams in order to make the playoffs. The Rangers made the playoffs last year by winning their division, beating out 3 teams. The Reds, on the other hand had to beat out 5 other teams to win their division. The logic here is flawed. These divisions unjustly reward some cities, while punishing others. The first thing I would do as commissioner is abolish these divisions.
First things first, there needs to be the same amount of teams in each league. This can be accomplished easily, just by going back to the way things were before the strike of 1994. Put the Milwaukee Brewers back into the American League. That will make each league have 15 teams.
From there, split up each league into only 2 divisions. One division has 8 teams and the other has 7. I know people are saying this will create a competitive disadvantage for the teams in the 8 team division. But with the way the playoff spots will be handed out will take care of that built in bias. If I was running the league, the divisions of each league would look like the following...
AMERICAN LEAGUE NATIONAL LEAGUE
East Division East Division
Boston Red Sox New York Mets
New York Yankees Philadelphia Phillies
Tampa Bay Rays Florida Marlins
Baltimore Orioles Atlanta Braves
Toronto Blue Jays Washington Nationals
Detroit Tigers Pittsburgh Pirates
Cleveland Indians Cincinnati Reds
Milwaukee Brewers
West Division West Division
Chicago White Sox St. Louis Cards
Minnesota Twins Houston Astros
Kansas City Royals Chicago Cubs
LA Angels LA Dodgers
Oakland A's San Diego Padres
Texas Rangers San Francisco Giants
Seattle Mariners Arizona D'Backs
Colorado Rockies
These are the new alignments in my MLB. The winner of each division will win a playoff birth and a bye in the first round of the playoffs. The next best 4 records from either division will be awarded the final 4 spots in the playoffs. This will give teams incentive to win their division on the final game of the year. I remember years back when the Dodgers had a game with an NL West rival where the winner won the division and the loser got the Wild Card. The game was essentially played like it was a Spring Training game. Mike Piazza actually said that how his team was approaching the game. That is no way to create excitement in the game of baseball. That is why this simple re-alignment will make a world of difference.
This will also create numerous pennant races between numerous amounts of teams. Many more teams will be in the playoff hunt, meaning more fans will show up to parks in the dog days of summer. If you can somehow create a spike in interest, then you can create a spike in revenue. This will be an important part of my argument later. When there is an icentive to cheer for your team, like making the playoffs, people will do it. With training camps starting in August in cities like Washington DC, wouldn't it be better if the Nationals were 4 games out of the final playoff spot instead of 29 games back of the dominant Phillies or Braves? This move gives much more teams a fighter's chance to get into the playoffs. If there is anything our current system has shown us, it's that if you get in the tourney, anything can happen.
With 6 teams in the playoffs, there will clearly be an extra round of playoffs. To make up for this extra time, the insufferable season that runs into October has got to be cut short. The season will be cut to 145 games. 162 is just a number. There is nothing special attached to it, so again, the Traditionalist can go suck an egg.
With this extra 18 or so days the new league has to play with, they can hold a Best-of -5 series between the 4 Wild Card teams. They would be ranked according to their record. This way, you don't have a 95 win WC team being hosted by a 87 win division winning team. After this true "Wild Card" round, just like in the NFL, the two winning teams would play the division winners respectively. There would be no rule about not playing some team from your division or anything like that. The people in power made that rule for the sake of making rules. It makes no logical sense. The playoffs be all 7 game series from there on out. In baseball you play 145 games (In my version) and then expect to pick the best team in a quick series of 5 games. The Wild Card round it is fine for, but make the final 3 rounds best of 7.
The final proposal of my plan would be that the MLB needs a special day. The World Series will never be the Super Bowl, but the Super Bowl is on Sunday every year and is that day's namesake. Baseball needs a day. The World Series falls during football season so the weekend is out. The World Series should start every second Tuesday of October. Play the game in the afternoon. Make it a tradition. Take that day over. Baseball is all about traditions, but most of them aren't any good. Americans love holidays, and they especially love holidays in the middle of the week. A Tuesday afternoon in the middle of October with the crisp air and beautiful foliage is the perfect backdrop to the opening of the World Series. Opening Day is such a pageant, it is time to make the end of the season the same way. 2 years ago, the season ended on a shortened 3 inning game. Nobody outside New York or Philly cared. On that Tuesday, make it a holiday. Make it special. Baseball has a chance to do something right for a change. For some reason, I just don't think they have the will to make it happen.
Brewers are switching leagues? I like the idea though.
ReplyDeleteThey were in the AL originally, homeboy.
ReplyDelete100% agree
ReplyDelete