Houston Astros Only Logical Choice in MLB Realignment

As a Minnesota Wild fan, I can understand what fans of the Houston Astros are going through at the moment. No, it's not because of their team being moved to Canada (which is the equivalent of losing the North Stars to Dallas). It's because in 2013 the Astros will move to the American League West from the National League Central in baseball's new realignment plan.

I say this because the Wild have been in a similar situation for years. They have played in the National Hockey League's Northwest Division, which features their closest team (Colorado) in a different time zone. To make matters worse, the other three teams (Vancouver, Calgary, and Edmonton) are in the Pacific time zone which makes it almost impossible to travel or simply watch their games on TV.

The Astros now find themselves in the same situation. The switch to the AL West means that they'll have one team that's in their same time zone (Texas), and three in the pacific time zone (Los Angeles, Seattle, and Oakland). A majority of their games in 2013 and beyond will start at about 9:00 local time. It doesn't sound like a good situation.

Then I started to think about it a little bit. What was the problem with the old alignment scheme?

The biggest argument was uneven divisions. A team in the AL West, like the Texas Rangers, only had to fend off three other teams to win their division. Meanwhile, the Astros, had to defeat five other teams to win theirs. Naturally, if a move was going to be made, it would have to be a NL Central team to the AL West.

That raises the question, "Why not move the Brewers instead?" It's a question I thought of when the announcement was made, and I thought it would make perfect sense to move Milwaukee back to the AL Central and play the rivalries that their older fans remember. Heck, they could even bring back the awesome blue and yellow jerseys with the baseball glove logo!

However, nostalgia doesn't work here. With a Brewers move to the AL Central, someone would have to get moved to the AL West. The only team that could make such a move would be the Minnesota Twins (the most Western team of the division), but that would make the nostalgia point irrelevant.

Also working against the Astros' favor was the fact that the Rangers have been playing the AL West for years. If one team from Texas could do it, why not two?

So we now have the Astros in the American League playing opponents out of their time zone. It's unfortunate, but there are good things to come out of a move to the American League.

The rivalry with Texas will only grow, and the Astros will make new rivalries with the other three teams in the division. Think of it like when the Houston Rockets were shuffled back and forth in the 70's from Eastern Conference to the Western Conference.

It also helps baseball as a whole. MLB will add an additional Wild Card game to its playoff schedule, and interleague play will happen year round instead of a continuous month in June. (Which by the end of, you're incredibly burned out.)

If a move was going to happen, the Houston Astros were the only team that was going to make sense. Change sucks, but it will eventually get better once the Astros get settled in. Until then,  have you met the New York Yankees?