The Unevenness of Major League Baseball

The Unevenness of Major League Baseball

Major League Baseball has had a problem for the last 20+ years. And it's driving me crazy. In 1998, MLB added the Tampa Bay Rays and Arizona Diamondbacks bringing the total number of teams in the league to 30. This is the problem. 30 is barely an even number. Divide it in half and you have 15 teams, an odd number. This means that each league has an odd number of teams. Oh sure, at one time they tried putting 14 teams in the American League and 16 teams in the National League. But they tried doing this with three divisions in each league. This just doesn't work.

There's really only three solutions: Lose the divisions, lose two teams, or add two teams. Nobody wants to see a league of 15 teams without divisions. If your team is in 12th place, it will look really bad. Plus, everyone would be playing uneven schedules.

It has been 22 years since they expanded the number of teams. This is the longest MLB has gone since their initial expansion in 1961. After the expansion of 1961, they added Toronto and Seattle for the 1977 season. Then in 1993, Florida and Colorado were added bringing the total number of teams to 28. And finally, in 1998, they added Tampa Bay and Arizona to bring the total to 30 teams.

We have now been stuck at thirty teams for twenty-two years. It's time to expand. I'd like to see them add two more teams to bring the total to thirty-two. This is the perfect number. It can be divided over and over and you still have an even number each time. But I'd like to see more than just expansion. I'd like to see a complete overhaul of how the teams are organized. So here is what I'd like to see done.

Add two new teams

I can think of four cities that would be ideal for expansion. The first is Portland. They would be a great rival for Seattle. The second two are Nashville and Charlotte. The south needs another franchise. And lastly, Montreal may be ready for another team.

Eliminate the two leagues and just have a single league

When MLB decided to have inter-league play, I think they gave up the specialness of having two distinct leagues. It was always pretty special to see two teams in the World Series that had not played any similar opponents. I think the real question for now is why do we need two separate leagues? They serve no purpose now.

Create 4 divisions having 8 teams

So now that we have one league consisting of thirty-two teams, how do we structure it? We could have two divisions of sixteen teams. We could have four divisions of eight teams. We could have eight divisions of four teams. Let's break this down.

Two sixteen team divisions won't work. The psychology of looking at the standings and seeing your team in 12th place isn't good. Eight four team divisions won't work either. The biggest reason is you will have divisions with teams in first place having losing records unless you play every game in your division. So, ideally the best configuration is to have four divisions of eight teams each.

My recommended league structure

Ok. Now that we have thirty-two teams, four divisions and one league, how do we break the four divisions down? Geographically always makes sense. So my four divisions would be East, South, Central and West. Here's my breakdown of each. The teams in each division will depend on which two cities get expansion franchises.

If the expansion teams are Charlotte and Nashville:

East Division	Central Division	South Division	West Division
Baltimore Orioles	Chicago Cubs	Atlanta Braves	Arizona Diamondbacks
Boston Red Sox	Chicago White Sox	Charlotte	Colorado Rockies
Detroit Tigers	Cincinnati Reds	Houston Astros	Los Angeles Angels
New York Mets	Cleveland Indians	Miami Marlins	Los Angeles Dodgers
New York Yankees	Kansas City Royals	Nashville	Oakland A's
Philadelphia Phillies	Milwaukee Brewers	Tampa Bay Rays	San Diego Padres
Pittsburgh Pirates	Minnesota Twins	Texas Rangers	San Francisco Giants
Toronto Blue Jays	St. Louis Cardinals	Washington Nationals	Seattle Mariners

If the expansion teams are Charlotte (or Nashville) and Portland:

East Division	Central Division	South Division	West Division
Baltimore Orioles	Chicago Cubs	Atlanta Braves	Arizona Diamondbacks
Boston Red Sox	Chicago White Sox	Charlotte or Nashville	Los Angeles Angels
Detroit Tigers	Cincinnati Reds	Houston Astros	Los Angeles Dodgers
New York Mets	Cleveland Indians	Miami Marlins	Oakland A's
New York Yankees	Colorado Rockies	St. Louis Cardinals	Portland
Philadelphia Phillies	Kansas City Royals	Tampa Bay Rays	San Diego Padres
Pittsburgh Pirates	Milwaukee Brewers	Texas Rangers	San Francisco Giants
Toronto Blue Jays	Minnesota Twins	Washington Nationals	Seattle Mariners

If the expansion teams are Charlotte (or Nashville) and Montreal:

East Division	Central Division	South Division	West Division
Baltimore Orioles	Chicago Cubs	Atlanta Braves	Arizona Diamondbacks
Boston Red Sox	Chicago White Sox	Charlotte or Nashville	Colorado Rockies
Montreal	Cincinnati Reds	Houston Astros	Los Angeles Angels
New York Mets	Cleveland Indians	Miami Marlins	Los Angeles Dodgers
New York Yankees	Detroit Tigers	St. Louis Cardinals	Oakland A's
Philadelphia Phillies	Kansas City Royals	Tampa Bay Rays	San Diego Padres
Pittsburgh Pirates	Milwaukee Brewers	Texas Rangers	San Francisco Giants
Toronto Blue Jays	Minnesota Twins	Washington Nationals	Seattle Mariners

If the expansion teams are Portland and Montreal:

East Division	Central Division	South Division	West Division
Baltimore Orioles	Chicago Cubs	Atlanta Braves	Arizona Diamondbacks
Boston Red Sox	Chicago White Sox	Houston Astros	Los Angeles Angels
Montreal	Cincinnati Reds	Kansas City Royals	Los Angeles Dodgers
New York Mets	Cleveland Indians	Miami Marlins	Portland
New York Yankees	Colorado Rockies	St. Louis Cardinals	Oakland A's
Philadelphia Phillies	Kansas City Royals	Tampa Bay Rays	San Diego Padres
Pittsburgh Pirates	Milwaukee Brewers	Texas Rangers	San Francisco Giants
Toronto Blue Jays	Minnesota Twins	Washington Nationals	Seattle Mariners

Scheduling

Since we have four divisions of eight teams each, it is easy to set up the schedules. My idea is to play your division and one other division each season. The other division can be rotated each year so that over three seasons you still play every team in the league. So let's break down the schedule. There are two options.

 

The first one is a heavily weighted in division schedule. Each team will play the other seven teams in their division 16 times during the season. This gives them a total of 112 games. Then they play all the teams in another division 6 times during the season for a total of 48 games. So in all, they will play a 160 game schedule.

The second one is a more balanced schedule. Each team will play the other seven teams in their division 14 times during the season. This gives them a total of 98 games. Then they play all the teams in another division 8 times during the season for a total of 64 games. So in all, they will play a 162 game schedule.

Playoff Structure

In a perfect world, I would only have the four division winners make the playoffs. But in our current world of more is better, we need to have some wildcard teams. So my playoff scenario would consist of the four division winners along with eight wildcard teams. I like the idea of a single game wildcard scenario like we have now. So I would take the eight teams with the best records outside of division winners and seed them by record and have a one game wildcard game for each of them. Then those winners would be seeded from 5 to 8 while the division winners would be seeded 1 to 4. I would also like to see the division winners host every game of their first round series. They should be rewarded for winning their division.

Designated Hitter

The designated hitter is the elephant in the room. What do you do with the designated hitter if there are no separate American and National Leagues? I think I have a solution that will work for both fans of the DH and those opposed. Here's my solution:

We make the DH a permanent part of the game. However, we tie the starting DH to the starting Pitcher. As the long as the starting pitcher is in the game, the starting DH remains in the game. If the starting pitcher is removed, the DH slot must now be considered a PH and therefore the starting DH must be removed as well. So in effect, we have a DH to start the game, but that player is, more than likely, removed at some point of the game.