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MLB discusses realignment

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Big fan of this. Teams don't get hosed because they're in the AL East/NL East anymore.

polaroid

miss you

love you brother

:archie:

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=6651634


A simple form of realignment being seriously considered has been raised in the labor talks between Major League Baseball and the players' association, according to four sources: two leagues of 15 teams, rather than the current structure of 16 teams in the National League and 14 in the American League.

According to a highly ranked executive, one consideration that has been raised in ownership committee meetings is eliminating the divisions altogether, so that 15 AL and 15 NL teams would vie for five playoff spots within each league. Currently, Major League Baseball has six divisions.

A source who has been briefed on the specifics of the labor discussions says that the players' union has indicated that it is open to the idea of two 15-team leagues, but that the whole plan still hasn't been talked through or presented to the owners.

"I'd still say the odds of it happening are less than 50-50," one source said.

A sticking point involves interleague play. Because of the odd number of teams in each league, it is possible that a team in contention late in the season will have to be playing its final games in interleague play.

One of the biggest issues that would have to be resolved in any realignment resulting in two 15-team leagues is which of the National League teams would switch to the American League.

Two highly ranked executives believe the Houston Astros would be a possibility, because a switch to the AL for Houston would foster a rivalry between the Astros and the Texas Rangers.

"There are still a lot of details that would have to be discussed," one source said.

Buster Olney is a senior MLB writer for ESPN The Magazine.
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Not sure how teams in the NL East are getting "hosed" exactly...

Anyway, it's interesting how the article mentions that adding the Astros to the NL would create a rivalry between them and the Rangers. The only thing it fails to mention is that most rivalries are born from highly contested, homologous pursuits. Removing divisions takes away the very nature of those types of rivalries. If those teams aren't competitive against the 14 other teams in the league, proximity alone doesn't create a rivalry. The reason that teams like the Cubs and Cardinals, Yankees and Red Sox have deep-rooted, historical rivalries comes down to the fact that they have contentiously vied for the same division title for decades. Throwing them all in a keno bubble intrinsically destroys those rivalries. It sounds like a horrible idea to me.
 
Daft
Wouldn't new rivalries be born from the new setup? It's a give and take.
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There is a far lesser chance that rivalries are born due to the fact that there is a lesser liklihood that the same teams will constantly be competitive for certain playoff slots.

Would the Yankees and Red Sox games mean as much if they were both 10 games ahead of the closest competitor in a 15 team field with 4 playoff slots? Or would it mean more if they were battling for a division title between each other year in and year out?

I don't know of any rivalry that is not division derivative. If you remove three divisions from each league, it seems to me that you effectively remove 2/3 of the traditional rivalries.
 
MonkeyF0cker
There is a far lesser chance that rivalries are born due to the fact that there is a lesser liklihood that the same teams will constantly be competitive for certain playoff slots.

Would the Yankees and Red Sox games mean as much if they were both 10 games ahead of the closest competitor in a 15 team field with 4 playoff slots? Or would it mean more if they were battling for a division title between each other year in and year out?

I don't know of any rivalry that is not division derivative. If you remove three divisions from each league, it seems to me that you effectively remove 2/3 of the traditional rivalries.
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Fair enough.

But are rivalries the root of why they would make this change?

They'd be adding 2 playoff spot with this new format and eliminating the hose job (lol) that teams in the AL East/NL East endure on a year to year basis.


I'm pretty sure that is what's at the core of this potential realignment.

But I could be wrong because wine does those things.
 
Off topic but since this thread is talking baseball.

I watched 9 Men Out the other day, I had seen it before years ago but decided to watch again anyways. I am watching it and I notice Game 5 and realize that Chicago just lost the Series but wait a minute they are about to play Game 6. So I am thinking this is a mistake that got past the film editors. It was baffling to me that something as big as this could have been missed so I had to look it up. Sure enough there was a time when it was a 9 game series.

The World Series began in 1903 when Pittsburgh of the older National League (founded in 1876) invited Boston of the American League (founded in 1901) to play a best-of-9 game series to determine which of the two league champions was the best. Boston was the surprise winner, 5 games to 3. The 1904 NL champion New York Giants refused to play Boston the following year, so there was no Series. Giants' owner John T. Brush and his manager John McGraw both despised AL president Ban Johnson and considered the junior circuit to be a minor league. By the following year, however, Brush and Johnson had smoothed out their differences and the Giants agreed to play Philadelphia in a best-of-7 game series. Since then the World Series has been a best-of-7 format, except from 1919-21 when it returned to best-of-9.

Read more: The World Series Infoplease.com
http://www.infoplease.com/ipsa/A0112302.html#ixzz1P2kbFW3U

http://www.infoplease.com/ipsa/A0112302.html

I've never been much on trivia so it's not surprising I didn't know this.
 
There was talk of a one game playoff for two wild card teams in each league as well. I'd be more open to something along those lines than dismantling the entire divisional structure of the sport. I think they're just bouncing around ideas for now to see what hits and misses.

I'm not sure how or why they are trying to extend the postseason much further though. It's practically snowing during the World Series in the north already...
 
Daft
I'll be taking a trip to www.dictionary.com for this one.
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Me too.

Bloody hell MF. Definitely a first for me on a gambling forum.

adjective
1. having the same or a similar relation; corresponding, as in relative position or structure.
2. corresponding in structure and in origin, but not necessarily in function: The wing of a bird and the foreleg of a horse are homologous.
3. having the same alleles or genes in the same order of arrangement: homologous chromosomes.
 
wal66
Astros make sense based on the reason they gave but why wouldn't they simply put the Brewers back in the American league I wonder?
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Because Bud Selig is the commish and they own the Brewers. They LOVE the Cub fans coming up every year and guarantee 6-9 sellouts. At one time, he wanted MLB to fold up the Twins. White Sox-Milwaukee was never much of a rivalry either.

Eight Men Out was a great movie Wally, and factually correct. If you are into that sort of stuff, here is a great website for you:

http://www.originalcurse1918.com/

Great book and website about how the Cubs threw the 1918 WS.
 
I am always open to change so I'd say go ahead and give it a shot.

Personally I feel that, if the goal is to lessen the hosing of teams that can't compete with the mega-salary teams in their division - a salary cap would be a better solution. But I guess that would be a much tougher fight.



Is that even the reason they are considering this? I'm not seeing any reason at all stated in that article.
 
Muddy - one concern that players have is why would you want to sign as a FA with an NL team? There are two more teams so it is harder to make the playoffs. It should have been 15 in each league from the start. If you have bonuses involving the playoffs, go to the AL. NY, Boston, and the AL west would be the desired destinations of FA's.
 
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