There are whispers about realigning the divisions in baseball, or just blowing them up. There are two motivating factors behind the MLB doing this. First is they are trying to add that fifth playoff spot for each league. Right now that is messy because it would have to be a second Wild Card team. The problems still arises with the second team where the second team could have a vastly better record than one of the division record.
The plan would then be to either realign the divisions show they are more competitive or just remove them completely. The main advantage of removing the divisions is that the problem of stacked divisions will be fixed for all of time. As you probably know, strong teams fluctuate over long periods of time. A stacked division this generation is not the same the next, so a simple realignment would not do the trick. The disadvantage of this is they want to make the leagues even if there are no divisions, probably by moving the Astros into the American League so they could be rivals with the Rangers. The problem here is now each league would have 15 teams. So either two teams, one in each league, always are off, or they will need to play interleague games all the time. The switch off doesn't work because teams would have to take turns not playing on the weekend, which has the best attendance rates.
The people that will make the uproar about daily interleague play would be the same people that would make an uproar about blowing up divisions in the first place. According to 105.7 in Baltimore, they say the chance of any of this happening is about 50%.
Just for fun, Ken Rosenthal suggested a new alignment:
AL Atlantic:
– Blue Jays
– Yankees
– Mets
– Orioles
– Nationals
AL Greater Lakes
– Twins
– Tigers
– Indians
– Pirates
– Teds
AL Pacific
– Mariners
– Giants
– Athletics
– Dodgers
– Angels
NL East
– Red Sox
– Phillies
– Braves
– Rays
– Marlins
NL Midwest
– Brewers
– Cubs
– White Sox
– Cardinals
– Royals
NL Southwest
– Rockies
– Diamondbacks
– Padres
– Rangers
– Astros
You can read his reasoning here and his proposal is as he says, radical. He does back it up with a thought process so I feel bad dismissing it with the following statement but the problem with the current alignment will occur with his as well. Some teams will rise to the top, there will be some divisions that for long periods of time that will be stronger than the others, and at the end of the day we still have the 15 vs 15 problem.
At the root of all of this is this question:
Are the leaders of the MLB ready to make it more like the NBA and NHL?
