Sunday Indulgence

Last week was somehow wall-to-wall activity without anything to show for it, so I haven't had a chance to sit around think about useless stuff until this morning. That's when I read an article about radical realignment for Major League Baseball (in lieu of adding two more wild card playoff teams, which seems, alas, inevitable). You know I wasn't going to leave this one alone. For handy reference, here's a summary of Mike Clark's proposal:

The Regional Four-League Solution

154-game season. Rotating interleague play. Top 3 teams from each league make playoffs: #3 @ #2, winner plays @ league champion. Reps of each league play 4-team bracket based on regular season record for home field. All-Star game = ??? DH = ???

What I like about this solution: It does a remarkable job of preserving the traditions of the current setup for such a radical realignment. If you look in each division, the most important rivalries, new and old, are mostly intact. The regionalizing also creates some permanent cross-city and cross-state rivalries that are currently forced into place by interleague play. The playoff system is also ideal. When the majority of your games are played within your 8-team league, it's almost impossible to have a .500 or sub-.500 team crack the top 3. All the playoff teams will have "earned" a shot at the World Series from within their microcosm. There's also a clear advantage to winning the pennant, in the form of a bye. Clark doesn't specify the series length of each round, but I'd imagine a 3-game series for the #3 vs. #2 round, then 5-game series for the league pennant, then 7-games from there on out.

What doesn't work about this solution: All radical realignments are inherently unrealistic because of all the entrenched interests and large dollar amounts involved, so what I really mean is "what doesn't work for me about this solution." For starters, I don't like the idea of expansion being necessary (see Southern League's Indy Aces and Puerto Rican team) -- expansion is an entirely different contemplation than realignment, and if it doesn't happen, this scenario doesn't work, as it leaves the Southern League unfairly shorthanded. I also can't imagine why baseball would voluntarily cut 8 games of revenue out of its season, and I don't think it makes sense to cram interleague play in there so vaguely and capriciously -- it should be an interleague system that is as balanced and sensible as the alignment. No thought is given to the All-Star game or DH, two more contentious aspects of league alignment.

All that said, this plan makes life better than my own plan that was proposed four years ago, even if it's slightly less grounded in the realm of possibility. Let's stay in the realm of "you are Commissioner and nobody will revolt if you just make over the sport as you please" and see if we can't tweak this system to make a little more sense.

The Modified Regional Four-League Solution

162-game season. AL and PCL teams play league rivals 18 times each, NL and SL teams play league rivals 21 times each (until expansion happens in the midwest and south, such as those Indianapolis Aces in the NL and maybe Raleigh-Durham Bulls in the SL). That leaves 36 games for interleague play, which will be necessary for the two seven-team leagues. The NL and SL teams will play each other 4 games each, and one select rival from the AL and PCL once (four-game series). The AL and PCL will square off against each other 4 games apiece as well, plus the one rival series against an NL or SL team. 

Same "top 3" structure for playoffs. That's genius.

The All-Star game will be North America vs. the World. Fans vote in their favorite players from Canada, Mexico and the United States to square off against players from Central America, South America, the Caribbean, Asia, and wherever else. Personally, I'd include Puerto Rico on the North American team and the rest of the Caribbean on the World team for both competitive balance and political sensibility. 

No DH. If there must be a DH, I guess the AL and SL can have it.

What doesn't work about this solution: Scheduling gets very complicated in order to preserve the interleague play. We can't eliminate interleague play because of the two 7-team leagues, but creating some one-off series between the 7-team and 8-team leagues feels as arbitrary and gimmicky as the current real-life solution. For every once-a-year Yankees vs. Mets or White Sox vs. Cubs, there's a handful of why-bother Padres vs. Pirates and Marlins vs. Mariners (alliteration rivalries?) that inject a very small amount of competitive imbalance. Expansion would solve this by eliminating the scheduling need for interleague play, but it would also bring to a halt those fun and extremely popular Yankees/Mets and White Sox/Cubs games as well. We lived without them for so long, of course, but as long as we're aligning regionally ... what's more important, historic league status or interesting geographic matchups?

The Regional Five-League Solution

162-game season. Teams play league rivals 27 times each! The remaining 27 games are split into rotating and/or arbitrary interleague series, similar to now. With nine such series, the matchups can be spread around fairly broadly.

Playoffs include each league champion and the top 3 remaining records across baseball as wild cards after that. The teams are seeded like so: the five league champions get #1 through #5, in order of regular season record, then the wild cards get #6 through #8, in order of regular season record. Teams matchup outside-in style, as in the NCAA tournament: 1v8, 2v7, 3v6, 4v5. League champions all get home field for a complete three-game series, except the worst league champion (#5). The extreme home field advantage should mitigate the possible punishment of a #2 seed squaring off against a #7 team with an equally good or even better record. The next round is best-of-seven, matchups and home field advantage still determined by seeding.

Same All-Star game as above. Forget the DH.

What doesn't work about this solution: It's too fragile in terms of expansion/contraction, and it resembles more divisional baseball than league-based baseball. There are probably too many games within each league. There's a good chance baseball interest could atrophy dangerously in, say, the Gulf League, to the point where there's a huge disparity in competitiveness between the leagues. Also, that playoff system is very un-baseball.

The Nationwide Three-League Solution

Here we get closer to the current organizing spirit of Major League Baseball, which is to give each league its own history and identity, and allow each league to span the nation. No more inter-city rivals playing in the same league, no more rigidly segregated divisions. Just 10 teams from across the country trying to win the big one. You'll note that the Federal League is filled with, by and large, younger franchises with less history than those remaining in the AL and NL. This is fine. Consider it the FOX network of baseball. At first glance, it seems devoid of any major media markets, which is a financial problem, but some of the fastest-growing parts of the country, like Phoenix and Denver and Dallas, are represented, so it's not exactly a minor league.

162-game schedule. Teams play their entire seasons within the league, 18 games vs. each opponent. There is no unbalancing based on divisions. In the playoffs, each division champion squares off in a 7-game series against the league's other division champion, with regular season record determining home field advantage. The three resulting league champions are a bit tough to deal with, but here are two possibilities:

1) Round robin tournament. One game at a time on the following schedule: AL vs. NL, NL vs. FL, FL vs. AL, NL vs. AL, FL vs. NL, NL vs. AL. Games are all played at a neutral park, Super Bowl style. The cycle repeats until one team wins seven games, which ensures at least two complete cycles (almost) and no more than three complete cycles (almost). It's a weird system, but it could create loads of nail-biting drama for each game as the teams race to 7 wins and take turns playing spoiler or burnishing their own record. There's nothing like it currently in professional sports. It would be a gas. But it would also take home team fans out of the live games, which doesn't seem right. What if the neutral site is New Orleans and it's Seattle vs. Boston vs. Houston? Somebody's getting an edge there.

2) Bring in the championship team from Japan to play the pennant winner with the best record. Have a four-game tournament of 7-game series from there. Gives Japan a chance to win the World Series, creates more international interest, and preserves the exclusivity of traditional baseball playoffs. ALTERNATE: Bring in whichever foreign team won the World Baseball Classic, although there would be some mess there in terms of which MLB players could be eligible to join their national team. Just the ones from MLB teams that didn't make the playoffs. Would players on a pennant-winning team be forced to decide? Forced to stay with the team that pays them? Too weird.

3) A five-game series between each pairing, with the better record determining home field advantage. AL vs. NL, AL vs. FL., NL vs. FL. Whoever wins two series gets home field for the World Series against the team that won one series. In the case of a three-way 1-win tie, everybody gets a trophy and we all go out for pizza at the end of the season.

That's enough ideas for one day.