If I Were the King of Baseball
If I Were the King of Baseball
Bill asks this question over on his fine, fine France Hatin' blog:
If you're going to have one Wild Card per league, shouldn't the schedule be balanced in order to provide a level amount of competition?
In the American League, you can't tell me it's fair that the As have to play most of their games against the Rangers and Angels, while the Twins or White Sox can fatten themselves playing most of their games against the Indians, Tigers and Royals.
Do you:
A. Adopt a more football like post-season with wild cards for each division.
B. Adopt a balanced schedule.
C. Keep it the way it is.
D. Scrap the Wild Card and go back to a two division setup.
My answer turned out to be more complicated than I thought.
I'll preface my whole answer by saying, this is what I'd do for Major League Baseball if I were made the unquestioned and all powerful commissioner.
The first thing I'd do is restore the League Offices for each individual league.
I want the leagues to be two separate entities again. With their own offices, their own umpires, and even their own rules. I want there to be a subtle distinction between the two leagues again.
One of the way I'd do this answers Bill's question about the playoffs.
My concerns about the wild card are a lot the same. Bill says that it's not right that the A's get to play tougher teams like the Rangers and Angels, while the Twins get to play Kansas City. I'll agree with that, though I've never really gotten upset about it.
To me, the bigger wrench in the monkeyworks is interleague play. Say the N.L. Central is playing the relatively tough A.L. West. St. Louis is in the wildcard spot. It's a lot less fair to St. Louis to have to play the Angels, Rangers and A's, while Philadelphia (for argument's sake) gets to play games against K.C., Detroit and Cleveland.
Both situations are unfair, but at least within their league, the A.L. Central teams get to make up some of that stagger by playing teams in the A.L. West; the Cardinals won't get a chance to play most of the teams in the A.L. Central, like the Phillies. To me, that's a little less forgiveable.
That's a long statement, which I'll punctuate by saying my second act as Supreme Ruler of Baseball would be to abolish Interleague Play. Again, I like the separation of leagues. And having interleague play would make the schedule changes I'm about to make a little difficult.
Plus, I want any competition between the two leagues to mean something. As it works now, the interleague games mean very little, no matter what the MLB hype machine wants us to believe about the epic Detroit Tigers/Atlanta Braves series.
Act III, to ultimately answer Bill's question.
Another way I'd establish a difference between leagues is to alter the way each league is divided up, and the way it determines its pennant winner.
First, I'd keep the two tiered playoff format. For each league. I was a little on the fence about this. I could take the extra playoff round or leave it. For sake of conversation, I'd say I'll keep the two-tiered playoffs around. Until that extra round angered me.
Begin the craziness:
In the National League, I'd divide the league into four 4-team divisions. And I'd have an unbalanced schedule.
In the unbalanced format the National League would play over the course of the 162 game schedule, a team would play 54 games within their division, which would make for 18 games, or six 3-game series against in division opponents.
Which leaves 108 games to be divided among the other teams within the N.L. I'd just divide them evenly among the other 12 teams, meaning you'd play 9 games (three 3-game series) against every other team in the N.L.
The playoffs would be played by the four division winners, ranked tournament style based on their records.
Despite my irritation at the long season, both rounds would be best-of-7 series, to keep teams with a 1-2 pitching punch from running the table so easily.
Now, over in the American League, I'd move the teams into two seven-team divisions.
The postseason participants would be the top teams from each division, and then the teams with the two best records. It could be the two second place teams, or a second place and a third place team.
With the seven team divisions, you'd play 13 games against the teams in your division, and 12 against the teams from the opposing division. Which is close enough to a balanced schedule for goverment work, so the competition for those last two playoff spots would be from teams playing pretty much the same teams the same number of times.
Then, the playoffs would be played with the division winners getting the top seeds and homefield advantage. Again, Best of 7.
Yep. If I were king.
(This is what I thought about for a while at work last night after I read Bill's question.)
Bill asks this question over on his fine, fine France Hatin' blog:
If you're going to have one Wild Card per league, shouldn't the schedule be balanced in order to provide a level amount of competition?
In the American League, you can't tell me it's fair that the As have to play most of their games against the Rangers and Angels, while the Twins or White Sox can fatten themselves playing most of their games against the Indians, Tigers and Royals.
Do you:
A. Adopt a more football like post-season with wild cards for each division.
B. Adopt a balanced schedule.
C. Keep it the way it is.
D. Scrap the Wild Card and go back to a two division setup.
My answer turned out to be more complicated than I thought.
I'll preface my whole answer by saying, this is what I'd do for Major League Baseball if I were made the unquestioned and all powerful commissioner.
The first thing I'd do is restore the League Offices for each individual league.
I want the leagues to be two separate entities again. With their own offices, their own umpires, and even their own rules. I want there to be a subtle distinction between the two leagues again.
One of the way I'd do this answers Bill's question about the playoffs.
My concerns about the wild card are a lot the same. Bill says that it's not right that the A's get to play tougher teams like the Rangers and Angels, while the Twins get to play Kansas City. I'll agree with that, though I've never really gotten upset about it.
To me, the bigger wrench in the monkeyworks is interleague play. Say the N.L. Central is playing the relatively tough A.L. West. St. Louis is in the wildcard spot. It's a lot less fair to St. Louis to have to play the Angels, Rangers and A's, while Philadelphia (for argument's sake) gets to play games against K.C., Detroit and Cleveland.
Both situations are unfair, but at least within their league, the A.L. Central teams get to make up some of that stagger by playing teams in the A.L. West; the Cardinals won't get a chance to play most of the teams in the A.L. Central, like the Phillies. To me, that's a little less forgiveable.
That's a long statement, which I'll punctuate by saying my second act as Supreme Ruler of Baseball would be to abolish Interleague Play. Again, I like the separation of leagues. And having interleague play would make the schedule changes I'm about to make a little difficult.
Plus, I want any competition between the two leagues to mean something. As it works now, the interleague games mean very little, no matter what the MLB hype machine wants us to believe about the epic Detroit Tigers/Atlanta Braves series.
Act III, to ultimately answer Bill's question.
Another way I'd establish a difference between leagues is to alter the way each league is divided up, and the way it determines its pennant winner.
First, I'd keep the two tiered playoff format. For each league. I was a little on the fence about this. I could take the extra playoff round or leave it. For sake of conversation, I'd say I'll keep the two-tiered playoffs around. Until that extra round angered me.
Begin the craziness:
In the National League, I'd divide the league into four 4-team divisions. And I'd have an unbalanced schedule.
In the unbalanced format the National League would play over the course of the 162 game schedule, a team would play 54 games within their division, which would make for 18 games, or six 3-game series against in division opponents.
Which leaves 108 games to be divided among the other teams within the N.L. I'd just divide them evenly among the other 12 teams, meaning you'd play 9 games (three 3-game series) against every other team in the N.L.
The playoffs would be played by the four division winners, ranked tournament style based on their records.
Despite my irritation at the long season, both rounds would be best-of-7 series, to keep teams with a 1-2 pitching punch from running the table so easily.
Now, over in the American League, I'd move the teams into two seven-team divisions.
The postseason participants would be the top teams from each division, and then the teams with the two best records. It could be the two second place teams, or a second place and a third place team.
With the seven team divisions, you'd play 13 games against the teams in your division, and 12 against the teams from the opposing division. Which is close enough to a balanced schedule for goverment work, so the competition for those last two playoff spots would be from teams playing pretty much the same teams the same number of times.
Then, the playoffs would be played with the division winners getting the top seeds and homefield advantage. Again, Best of 7.
Yep. If I were king.
(This is what I thought about for a while at work last night after I read Bill's question.)
posted by Tommy at
07:18
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