ESPN’s Buster Olney broke a story this week citing “MLB sources” that the powers that be are seriously considering major changes to the structure of the league. Here are the highlights:
-Two 15 team leagues
-Eliminating divisions (which would mean a balanced schedule)
-Five playoff teams from each league
The article is unclear whether interleague play would remain intact but one owuld assume it would not given the elimination of divisions and a return to a balanced schedule.
My initial reaction as an Orioles fan is shouts of joy but honestly I don’t think we need to get rid of divisions. I love the idea of balancing the leagues, Olney states that the likely teams to move would be either the Houston Astros or the Florida Marlins, it always seemed silly to me that one league was larger than the other especially with the AL West having only four teams. It speaks to the competitive imbalance in the American League. Why are the A’s seemingly always in it – well they only have to compete against three other teams for their division and then there are the omnipresent financial differences in their division vs. the others.
Moving to a proposed single league and balancing the schedule would certainly even that playing field and you know that Toronto and Tampa Bay fans love the idea, but if I am any other team in the AL I am fighting this thing. Moving to a single and five playoff seeds would would make it very feasible that entire current divisions would go unrepresented and some seasons will be ending a lot earlier than normal. Of course, the first couple times that starts to happen you will prbobaly see more owners calling for more restrictions on overall salaries or better revenue distribution. Right now the Angels don’t need to compete directly with the Yankees and Red Sox, under this new system they most certainly would.
I honestly don’t think they need to go that far. Move the Astros to the AL West, dump interleague play and balance the schedule – that’s it. As I said above I think the divisions makes reaching the playoffs more realistic for more teams, even for the Orioles. As daunting as the AL East is every year I can’t imagine how hard it would be one fo the top five of 15 as opposed to being the number one or two team out of five.
Simply balancing the leagues and schedule would go so far, a lot further than many realize in my opinion.
