Bud Selig Should Use Realignment Plan to Make Radical Scheduling Changes

A few days ago, Buster Olney reported that MLB is considering a realignment of divisions. This would help create more equality among the leagues, but Bud Selig should use this chance to revolutionize the season schedule.

Realignment to even the leagues at 15 teams each would be a great step forward for baseball. First and most obvious, it will even out the playing field. How does it make sense that a team from the NL Central is forced to beat out five other teams for their divisional crown while an AL West team only has to finish better than three?

With even divisions and conferences, there will be a greater amount of fairness for teams making the playoffs, which is what many teams and coaches are judged on.

The second advantage to realignment in this manner is that it will force a much broader interleague play. It started in 1997 as a novelty, but it soon wore off due to monotony, unfairness, and disorganization.

The current interleague system is a joke. It started with some structure, with teams playing once against the opposite division (NL East plays AL East and so on). However, once they started rotating divisions all reason went out the window. This season the Red Sox play Milwaukee, San Diego, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Houston. Someone needs to tell the scheduler that these teams are in different divisions.

Not only are these teams all over the place, but how are the schedules made equal? Because of the “rivalry” rules, they play a very tough Phillies team six games, while the Yankees are able to play the lowly New York Mets. Tell me you do not think that the AL East race will come down to less than six games.

With the new realignment system, major league baseball would be able to revamp the entire scheduling process. There are 30 teams in baseball and 162 games. Why is it impossible for every team to play each other during the course of the season?

NBA and NHL teams are able to see every team at least once throughout the season. Even the NFL has a plan for every team to face each other throughout a four year process. However, until this season, the Cubs had not played at Fenway Park since 1918.

I believe that divisions should be kept intact; it is important to continue rivalries that make baseball great year in and year out. You play each team in your division 12 times, totaling 48 games. Two series from the remaining teams in your league should suffice, with one at home and one on the road. We are now up to 108 games. Each team from the other league will play one series, alternating each season with a home and home. At three games apiece this will add up to 153 games.

The remaining nine games could be flexible. Rivalry games are obviously a big money maker, so they add in an extra series for those teams. They could also copycat the NFL, where an extra series is automatically versus another team with a similar spot in the standings the year before. This would keep fairness in play and foster more competitive games outside of the division.

The benefit of this should be immediate. As of now, the two leagues are far too distant from one another. Most fans of the American League could not name you last season’s national league MVP, simply because the name Joey Votto will not come up unless you were playing fantasy baseball. The new schedule would give more recognition to more teams and truly highlight some underrated players.

More importantly to the high executives, a result of increased interleague play would greatly increase ticket sales and television viewership. Fans have grown weary of seeing the same teams over and over again. But if Tim Lincecum was starting a game versus the Orioles, wouldn’t more fans be interested in seeing a young star perform? If the Mets travel to Kansas City, wouldn’t the normally empty stadium suddenly gain interest to see if Jose Reyes could hit another triple?

I admit baseball is not as much of a star driven league as the NBA, but there are still a lot of outstanding products on the field that can be marketed to generate interest. The major market teams alone should create quite a buzz. You cannot convince me that a Yankees/Dodgers game in Los Angeles would not be the talk of the town and sell out immediately.

The only question mark from these changes is about the designated hitter. There are three options for this: keep it universally, remove it universally, or keep the rule as is.

If you keep the rules the way they are, it might annoy managers that have to keep going back and forth between lineups. However, it might allow for a more fluent DH usage with a rotation of players while allowing regulars to get more rest and lowering the risk of injury. This will all but remove standard designated hitters that are usually aging stars who cannot field their position.

The other two options would create more equality throughout the league while once again unifying them into one entity. Whether you are in favor of the concept or not, the idea that we are supposed to compare players who follow different rules is ridiculous.

Especially in such a numbers-driven sport, can you really say that an American League pitcher’s job is equivalent to his National League counterpart? Uniformity will further create interest in the other league, rather than animosity.

In a game known for its tradition, this would be a very radical change. However, with the NFL and possible NBA lockouts, Bud Selig needs to do everything he can to grab new viewers and get them hooked on baseball. This new scheduling would be better for the fans, which would be better for the owners, which would be better for the players.