12
2011
Baseball Considers Eliminating Divisions
An article by 
According to Buster Olney of ESPN, the idea of a realignment is being mulled over in which the current six divisions would be eliminated, and instead have simply the two leagues.
Olney broke the story on his twitter saying:
In the midst of labor talks, possibility of realignment,with two 15-team leagues,has been raised
The idea is to pool all the teams together, having two leagues of 15 clubs each, and the top five seeds of each league would reach the playoffs in order to eliminate “division imbalance”. In order to do so, one National League team would have to become an American League team, and Olney states that many have fitted the Astros as a possibility due to the Astros-Rangers rivalry and the potential for its progression should the move occur.
At the very least, executives would like to take an NL Central division team and move them to the AL West due to the fact that the unequal number of ballclubs is unfair for potential postseason chances.
On Olney’s twitter feed, he said:
Three sources say talks are serious–especially given union’s willingness to realign to 15-team leagues.1 source:”It could gather momentum,”
“I’d still say the odds of it happening are less than 50-50,”
About the Author: Clayton Collier
Clayton, a Long Island native and die-hard Mets fan, started writing online about three years ago. He is currently a Journalism major with a minor in Broadcasting at Seton Hall University. Although very disappointed with the current state of the team, Clayton remains hopeful that the young prospects in the farm system will bring the Mets back to a respected franchise in baseball once again. Besides writing for MMO, Clayton is also a staff member at 89.5 WSOU, Seton Hall's modern active rock radio station. You can contact Clayton by following him on Twitter: @Clayton_Collier or E-mailing him at MaybeNextYearMets@yahoo.com
14 Comments + Add Comment
Recent Comments
- mailman: on Mets Need More Time To Get Better Understanding Of Ike Davis?: The mets not as smart as you...
- Dave In Spain: on Wheeler Pitches Five Innings, Shakes Off Some Rust: Interesting observations. It´ll be interesting to see...
- Al: on Mets Need More Time To Get Better Understanding Of Ike Davis?: He should just go away
- Metsie: on Mets Need More Time To Get Better Understanding Of Ike Davis?: If the answer to every player's struggles...
- Hotstreak: on Mets Need More Time To Get Better Understanding Of Ike Davis?: Its no longer a rescue its now...
MMO Mets Chat
Need Tickets To The Mets Game?
Check Out These Great MLB Links!
Photographs From Gordon Donovan
5389 Fans Follow Us On Twitter!
1269 Fans Like Us On Facebook!
2341 Fans Read Our Feed!
1702 Fans Subscribe via Daily Email!
Well, at least a few teams will know they are out of it sooner. That should do wonders for attendance and fan interest nationwide. In the purest sense, it seems like the right thing to do. But the inequities of baseball sometimes wind up making it more interesting for the majority of fans.
Why not? I think it would make trading at the trade deadline very intersting and would maybe and I say maybe settle the DH controversy (which sucks.) It has no affect on teams being out of it earlier becausw I know that pretty much after the first month of the season like the Mets, Nats, Astros , Cubs, to name a few.
I did not even think about the trade deadline, excellent point.
As for contention, I think it would keep teams in it longer if anything. If this were in effect last year, the Red Sox would have made the postseason over the Rangers.
This is definitely to keep more teams in it for a longer period of time. Get more attendance but you cannot have an unbalanced scheduale and have say Boston, NYY, TB and Toronto beating themselves up and then giving the 2nd wild card to Detroit because 3 teams in their division flat out sucked.
A single Division in each league would certainly produce better quality of post season teams than the current system and might even bring back the pennant race depending on what the incentive is. Last year the NYY and TB were each actively trying to NOT win the title. What a joke.
Still though….Five teams out of 15? Why? For what? Staged rounds? The team that wins the regular season is going to sit for a week to ten days. You know damn well what that’s going to mean. The best team over 162 games gets knocked out in five. Now the regular season has been rendered meaningless and after a few times of this the initial exuberance wears off, attendance falls, MLB gives us more gimmicks, it works for a few years and then repeats itself.
I’d prefer 2 division leagues with only the winner of that division going into the post season finals and then if you want have a parallel playoff of all the 2nd place teams with the winner of that getting to host the All Star game and raise a flag for a “2nd place champion” similar to what FIFA does in the Champions league. The fans of the teams that make up that 2nd tier of the Champions League are no less enthusiastic then those in the first tier but their is a clear understanding that the winner of the first tier is the real Champion.
That would keep 3-4 teams out of seven or eight alive to the last couple of weeks, give us back our pennant races and reward excellence instead of mediocrity and you would still have to win 90+ games to have a real chance at any kind of a post season berth.
Realign the Divisions with Atl, Cinn, FL, Hou, NYM, Phil, Pitts and Wash in the NL East. AZ, Chi, Col, LAD, Mil, St.L., SD, SF in the West. Balt, Bos, Clev, Det, NYY, TB and Tor in the Al East and Chi, KC, LAA, Minn, Oak, Sea and TX in the West.
Play half your scheduale vs teams in your own division, a home and home series vs the other division in your league and a home and home vs just one geographical rival on each end of the All Star game.
Most importantly it would reward excellence during the season and eliminate teams actually going for the Wild Card in order to get an easier first round opponent.
The idea shouldn’t be to keep up interest among fans of the mediocre teams, it should be to drum up more interest among the fans of the best teams. With a real chance of at least some sort of a post season tournament alive for many in mid August and yet a severe penalty for those who come in 2nd best in their division, not a perceived benefit. After all the regular season is 90% of the whole thing. Devalue that and you devalue everything.
Interesting comments. Enjoyed them. I didn’t know that soccer plays a championship game for 2nd place and calls them 2nd place champions. I always knew that soccer is the most boring sport I ever watched or tried to watch and now I am starting to uindestand why. What kind of sport would name their league “FIFA”. Oh yeah, my friends would be so impressed if I showed them my “FIFA 2nd” Championship Ring!
Well it’s more to give the lesser, smaller teams something to keep playing for while not detracting from the best playing the best.
There really is no good reason for a 2nd place team to even make the playoffs. What is the regular season for then? Oh! Because a 2nd place team could actually be better than one (or both) of the other Division winners? Then why even have divisions if we’re not assured of getting the best teams in the playoffs.
Go back to 2 Divisions in each League and only take the winners. If you want to you could take all four 2nd place teams and have a parallel playoff that would increase regular season interest and provide a tournament atmosphere and give the 2nd place teams (and fans) something to play for, post season experience but keep ‘em out of the real playoffs and we’ll get out pennant races back.
After all why play 162 games and then take teams that weren’t good enough to win a division, especially when there are six of them already.
I can’t see the owners going for this for the simple fact that, now, there are 8 teams making the playoffs (4 from each league). I don’t see owners agreeing to pare that down to 5 as this plan envisions. Plus, there is the issue that someone in both leagues will be ending their season playing an interleague series (from what I gathered from the ESPN article). Also, why would the players agree to this? By reducing the number of teams in the playoffs by 3 you’re reducing the number of players receiving playoff shares by 75, in effect, reducing the income of those 75 players.
Obviously the MLBPA will be getting some serious monetary concessions somewhere else in the next CBA if this happens. With a hard slotting system for the Draft likely to be put into effect in 2012, effectively reducing signing bonuses, it’s hard to imagine the Union agreeing to another potential income reducing idea. Unless, the playoff shares for the 5 teams greatly increases nullifying the loss of shares for the other 75 players. That seems reasonable. I just don’t see this happening this year.
Are they going to change the schedules since division play is effectively eliminated? To be perfctly fair, everybody should play everybody an equal amount of times and interleague should be done away with.
And there is also the possibility that 4 divisions could conceivably be playing for nothing.
well, two anyway
Such a stupid idea to eliminate divisions.
And move the Astros to the A.L.? Why take away the potential for an all-Texas World Series? Yes, it could happen someday.
It should be the Rockies who move to the A.L.
Duh.
MLB has to do something. Baseball is falling further and further behind football. If it wasn’t for the strike football would be dominating the sports news now. When I scan the games on MLB.TV I see loads of empty seats for the majority of games. The only thing that would help baseball is parity like the NFL has. Sure their are a few 4-12 teams in the NFL but a lot fewer than a few years ago. Can you believe we have a team in the MLB that hasn’t won a World Series in over 100 years! Here it is 2 1/2 months into the season and most teams don’t have a snowball chance in heck to win anything and we’ll be playing until October.
I don’t like the idea of two 15-team leagues. That would mean that one team in each league will always have several days off in a row, including on a weekend. That would never fly. There should be an even number of teams in each league, so it should stay 16 and 14. The other option is expanding two more teams in the AL and I don’t think anyone wants to see that happen. So leave it 16 and 14.
As far as losing divisions, I wouldn’t mind it so much. There’s a inherent problem with unbalanced schedules, anyway.
It would certainly be a throwback to the olden days for sure. Except back then, the worst you could finish was 10th (which the Mets did quite frequently). Now the worst would be 15th? Ouch.
I think we should go back to the 1969-1993 alignment: 2 divisions each, eliminate the Wild Card. This way, one of the four best teams would almost always win the World Series.
Mets’ bats erupt in the last 3 innings for the big win. Read all about it at Midwestern Met: tiny.cc/h8uey