A new view for MLB standings
I stumbled across an interesting article on Hardball Talk the other day titled 'A wonderfully sensible realignment and optimization plan' that focused on how baseball might improve its scheduling and the resulting competitive imbalance problems inherent with its asinine unbalanced schedule and divisional alignments. As a guy focused on helping companies optimize its given resources, I find this proposal compelling and exciting. First, a quick review of the proposal:
1. Move the Colorado Rockies to the American League. They lack a history in the National League and help balance out travel in the American League.
2. Play a balanced schedule within your league with a few extra games against current divisional rivals. The proposal suggests treating the Rockies as a traditionally AL West team and the Houston Astros as a NL West club.
3. Combine all three divisions into a single league table where the top team earns home-field advantage throughout the playoffs, the next two teams automatically qualify for the post-season, and the next two teams earn the right to play a play-in series to the become the fourth team to round out the playoff bracket.
There are other details that make for an improved overall competitive balance when compared to MLB's current setup. Check out the link above to see more.
In this new setup, the standings would look like this:
A couple of things jump out:
1. The White Sox, despite their slow start, would be very much in the thick of the playoff race.
2. The addition of a fifth playoff team dramatically expands the competitive opportunities for teams further down the standings.
3. The idea of combining the standings into a combined table makes so much more sense than Bud Selig's idiotic proposal of making divisions pliable, whereas a team like the Blue Jays could compete in the AL Central while rebuilding and then switch back to the AL East when competitive.
With 33% of the teams in each league making the playoffs, is this something worth supporting? The risk is the fifth playoff team will be added but none of the scheduling and competitive balance problems of today's baseball schedule and competitive balance.
