A Proposal

So, here's my proposal for how to mix up the structure of Major League Baseball. It's partly based by some musings about Interleague Play, and I think I have a pretty good solution for that conundrum.

First, the teams:

National League:

Eastern Division:

New York Mets
Philadelphia Phillies
Pittsburgh Pirates
Washington Nationals

Southern Division:

Atlanta Braves
Florida Marlins
Houston Astros
St. Louis Cardinals

Central Division:

Cincinnati Reds
Chicago Cubs
Milwaukee Brewers
Colorado Rockies

Western Division:

Arizona Diamondbacks
Los Angeles Dodgers
San Fransisco Giants
San Diego Padres

American League:

Eastern Division:

Boston Red Sox
New York Yankees
Toronto Blue Jays
Baltimore Orioles

Southern Division:

Texas Rangers
Tampa Bay? Rays



Central Division:

Chicago White Sox
Cleveland Indians
Detroit Tigers
Minnesota Twins

Western Division:

Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
Oakland Athletics
Seattle Mariners
Kansas City Royals

The motivating factor in my coming up with this plan was the observation that baseball used to have a power-of-two number of teams, back before expansion when there were only eight teams in each league, and that it would be nice to have a power of two again: this requires adding two more. To me, this feels like "completing" expansion. New Orleans was the only real American city that I could think of that lacked a major league team, and it struck me that Puerto Rico could perfectly easily have a team; there's plenty of baseball there already. And, given sixteen teams in each league, the only way to really cash in on the power of two is to have four divisions: each division winner goes to the playoffs, no wild card required. I also think the Rays might be available for moving away from Tampa Bay, which has never looked like it could sustain a major-league team.

So that's the teams. Now for the schedule. My idea is to have 18 games against each in-division team, which is 54 games. Then 7 games against each team in the league but out of the division, which provides another 84 games, a total of 138. That leaves 24 games for Interleague Play, and here's my vision for that section of the schedule: one three-game series against each team in one's own division but in the opposite league, and one three-game series against each team in one other division from the opposite league. And the teams in each division would all face the same other division from the other league.

The benefits of this system are as follows: the rivalries of interleague play, most notably the Mets and Yankees, would be preserved, BUT the schedule would still be competitively balanced. Each team in each division would play the same exact schedule as the other teams in that division, other than not playing against themselves. And while teams from different divisions would have radically different schedules, they also wouldn't be playing for the same playoff spots. And each team would play 23 of the 31 other teams in baseball each year, and all 31 other teams every three years. I think this is the only reasonable way to maintain a competitively balanced schedule while also accommodating the desire to play teams, any teams, in the other league.