Re-Alignment: Fixing Baseball, Part 1

There has been much calling lately that Major League Baseball needs to be fixed, that it is too lopsided, too favorable for big market teams.  There needs to be more parity.  While I don't necessarily think that baseball has seen an unfair tilt (see my opinion here), I do agree that some things could be done to improve the game and keep the fans more interested, which, after all, is what it is all about.

I will start here in Part 1 by looking at divisional alignment and scheduling.  In Part 2, I will talk about the playoff format and who gets in, who hosts who, tie-breakers for division and wild card titles, etc.  But before we get to all that, we have to deal with 162.

Below are my new divisions, an East and a West in both the AL and the NL:

AL EAST

New York Yankees

Boston Red Sox

Tampa Bay Rays

Toronto Blue Jays

Baltimore Orioles

Detroit Tigers

Cleveland Indians

AL WEST

Los Angeles Angels

Texas Rangers

Seattle Mariners

Oakland Athletics
Chicago White Sox

Minnesota Twins

Kansas City Royals

NL EAST

Philadelphia Phillies

Florida Marlins

Atlanta Braves

New York Mets

Washington Nationals

Pittsburgh Pirates

Chicago Cubs

Cincinnati Reds

NL WEST

Los Angeles Dodgers

Colorado Rockies

San Francisco Giants

San Diego Padres

Arizona Diamondbacks

Houston Astros

St. Louis Cardinals

Milwaukee Brewers

I didn't bother with worrying about contraction of teams, because I don't think that is an easily achievable reality. 30 teams is a nice round number anyway.  As you can see, I started with the current East and West divisions, kept them as is, and moved the Central division teams as accordingly as possible.  I did my best to respect time zones when compiling the divisions.  This doesn't have to be set in stone, but at least it keeps the Braves out of the NL West.

Scheduling is where we begin to tackle the parity issue:  First, no more unbalanced schedules.  In the AL, each team will play the other AL teams 11 times, for a total of 143 games.  In the interests of making money, we will keep interleague play (although I don't particularly care for it) for a total of 19 games which will bring us to 162.  In the NL, each team will play the other NL teams 9 or 10 times (this will rotate on a yearly basis as to which teams meet more often), to equal 143 games (this is a bit more complicated due to the greater number of teams in the NL than in the AL).  They will also each play 19 interleague games.

Why is this more fair?  Well, first of all, now the Red Sox don't have to play the Yankees any more every year than the Rangers do.  And the Yankees and Red Sox don't get to beat up on a bad Baltimore team more than teams from other divisions do (Boston was 16-2(!) against Baltimore this year).  If, as a fan, you are going to complain about parity in performance, we need parity in terms of opportunity as well.

Additionally, the schedule will have a performance based aspect.  The interleague schedule will be determined based on the prior years division finishes (winners playing winners and 2nd place teams, 3rd and 4th place teams competing, and so on).  This is similar to how the NFL determines its schedule each year.  With an extra 19 games against mid-level teams each year, if a budding mid-market team can't make up ground against the big, bad large market teams who are beating up on each other in the heavyweight division, well then they don't deserve to be in the playoffs that year (see Detroit, ca. 2009).

The bottom line is that there will always be teams with better resources (and, mostly, better allocation of those resources) than other teams.  A salary cap will not fix that, and isn't necessary.  All a salary cap is going to do is put money in the pockets of the stingy mid (and small)-market owners who can afford to be big (and mid)-market but would rather count pennies in their pockets than win championships for their fans.  So let's tackle this problem from another angle, and hopefully give these teams a better chance to make the playoffs, and not a guarantee that they will make more money.  Because that's the parity the fans want, right?