Major League Baseball is the only sport with two separate leagues, with a different set of rules and one league has two more teams than the other. Hearing baseball purists say that the game should not be changed is laughable in my opinion. How can you have so much disarray?
Over the weekend, ESPN’s baseball reporter Buster Olney reported some rumored changes to the league that has gotten the entire nation voicing their thoughts on how to fix the game. Whatever comes of realignment or post season expansion, it certainly does nothing but help the Baltimore Orioles.
In short, Olney reported that the realignment proposal would create either three 5-team divisions in each league or two 15-team leagues, have interleague play throughout the season and expand the postseason to five teams from each league.
If you’re an Orioles fan and you just read that paragraph you should be jumping for joy. Baltimore can remain in a division with New York and Boston and still have success under this new system because there looks to be more balance in the schedule than there is today. Playing two of arguably the toughest teams in baseball 36 times a year automatically puts the Orioles in an up hill battle every season. A more balanced schedule allows for more parity.
Should baseball allow two more teams to make the playoffs, Baltimore’s chances at success continue to rise. MLB allows the fewest amount of teams into the postseason and even the purists we talked about above have enjoyed the excitement that the Wild Card has added. So what if they make it two?
Now sure, these rules would not have helped the Orioles greatly over the past decade, but in the future they will make the game more competitive and give Baltimore an even greater chance and taking down the $200 million power houses in the game.
Olney reports that the players are pushing this movement forward and that realignment is being “discussed” so far.
Fat chance at adding another playoff team in each league helping us. Here’s a stat for you:
Assuming that the MLB expanded the plays an entire EXTRA ROUND, like the NBA and NHL, where the top 8 make it in each league, the Orioles would still not have made the play-offs from 1997-2010. They have not finished in the top 5 of Wild Card eligible teams for that entire time span!
Nope, the league needs serious revision, they need to add predatorial teams to the northeast market, so that the Yankees, Mets, and Red Sox oligopoly on the area can go checked, while markets like the Baltimore/Washington, Missouri, and Florida all have two teams each themselves. Add teams in North Jersey, Bufflo, Connecticut, and maybe even a few more in the differect Boroughs of New York. In addition to that, add a salary cap, which might be more feasible if you didn’t have a few teams hogging most of the market share, while you have multiple teams fighting over the same market in smaller markets.
Just do it. These stupid two-game series and the 19 games against each division foe is just stupid. Every other week Divison rivals play one another now. And people need to stop bitching about interleague play. The almighty NFL plays interleague games every year and some of those years offer unfair competitive situations for certain teams playing the weaker divisions.
Ugh. Two 15-team leagues? Perpetual interleague play? It’s so dumb it will probably happen.
http://pinetarandbrickbats.blogspot.com/2011/06/15-team-leagues-no.html
Hey!
The whole alignment, and playoff structure, is already so screwed thanks to greed and commercialism, it’s hardly worth even having this discussion. Sure, WTH let’s go ahead and make it worse. It’s certainly not “all about baseball” anymore. Reality check, it’s “all about commercials”. Hey, we could have the playoffs start 3 weeks after the regular season, and just think of the possible commercial income! We could call it the NBA-MLB-NHL-NFL playoffs! Plus, if it’s good for the Yankees (and utterly screws every other team in the sport), Joe Torre will make it happen. How can a yankee manager ever have been put in that position of power without a brib involved? Can Anyone answer that question? Despicable. Even better, let’s go ahead and make comparisons to football. Gross. Baseball is exactly like a sport where overweight people bash each others heads in for hours on end. We should make baseball as much like that as possible. Remember how inter-league play got rammed down our throats as soon as the commercial potential was realized? Hello, get a clue. I was born in the wrong generation. There was a time rational people actually cared about the decisions and yes, dare I say, Integrity, involving this game. Ego, and income potential should not be the sole, driving, all consuming thoughts of the decision makers, or political body. Is there anyone still alive who remembers why the American League used to be called the “junior” league? So who cares. Just keep beating a dead horse for all the fools gold you can cash in. All teams should have multiple Designated Hitters. Starters should only have to go 4 innings, just think of the commercials!! And games could be timed to 90 minutes. A tie? Hey, more commercials, and overtime!!