Tom Davis idea for baseball schedules. Does it make sense?

[Gurgi]

He wants to combine the American and National Leagues into a single league.

There would be five divisions and not six as there are at present.

The way he figures it would work is you play your five division opponents 18 times a piece.

For 90 games against your own division.

Then you play each of the other teams in the whole league three times a year. For 72 games a year.

90 games against your own division. 72 against the others.

Of the 24 other teams you would play 12 series at home and 12 series on the road. The next year you reverse the teams you played at home and away to allow each team to come to your park at least every other year.

I wonder how the divisions would look after this?

North East Division

Boston

NY Yankees

NY Mets

Philadelphia

Baltimore

Washington DC

Southern Division

Atlanta

Tampa Bay

Miami

Houston

Texas

Cincinati

California Division

San Fransico

Oakland

Los Angelos Dodgers

Los Angelos Angels

San Diego

Arizona

North West Division

Seattle

Denver

Minnesota

Kansas City

Saint Louis

Milwaukee

Central Division

Toronto

Cleveland

Chicago Cubs

Chicago WhiteSox

Detroit

Pittsburgh

[Gurgi]

The teams divisions is my idea

Tom suggest Seattle be in a division with all the California teams.

[Can_of_corn]

Oh those division look pretty balanced.

I would rather they keep the two leagues and eliminate divisions entirely. I really don't need to see the Yankees 18 times a year.

[skanar]

The teams divisions is my idea

Tom suggest Seattle be in a division with all the California teams.

I'd put Colorado in the southern division so Cincinnati can be with teams who are nearby. Maybe split up the Cubs and White Sox.

This feels like an expansionless, leagueless version of the regional realignment idea I proposed in the Two-New-Ideas thread. Sounds like an interesting plan to me. Though I do prefer my own, of course.

[luismatos4prez]

Did he say anything about the playoffs for a 5 division league?

[isestrex]

Did he say anything about the playoffs for a 5 division league?

3 Wild Cards.... or Bye weeks?

[orayole]

Move Arizona to the South Division, Cincinnati to the "north west" and call it the central, Seattle to the California division and call it West, and call the "central" division the North and the North East would be called East. North, south, east, west and central.

I'd probably shuffle around a few other teams in the North and central.

[luismatos4prez]

3 Wild Cards.... or Bye weeks?

Three wild cards seems like the best way to go about it.

[Migrant Redbird]

It torpedoes the traditional World Series. Of course, the tradition began eroding as soon as they began expanding and splitting into divisions.

[getfoul]

I've thought of the same format, although I don't think you can separate the Cardinals from the Cubs, or not have the Brewers in the same division as the Chicago teams.

I'm really concerned as a White Sox fan that they'll eventually do something like this. It would absolutely be nauseating to play the Cubs 18 games every year. It's stale now. It would be worse then.

My idea:

Lose divisions--you don't need divisions when 5 of 15 make the postseason.

Move the Astros back to the NL, and move the Rockies or D-backs to the AL. Both leagues equal by time zone which plays into travel---7 east, 4 central, 4 pcf/mtn

Play your old division teams 11 games over 4 series

Play your other ten league teams 10 games over 3 series

Play 18 interleague games, including at least 2 of 3 road series in same time zone.

Top 3 in each league make the playoffs based on a close-to-balanced schedule.

4 and 5 seeds play each other 1-game to get in.

It's clean. It's fair. And it still maintains league identity.

[DrungoHazewood]

My first thought was "well, Tom Davis came up with it, so it's probably crazy." But it's no crazier than 1000 other realignment/scheduling ideas, and everyone has a few of those. If you throw out the prerequisite of keeping sacred 113 years of AL/NL tradition it opens up a lot of possiblities. But that seems somewhat unlikely, given baseball's and baseball fans' traditionalism.

Whenever you're discussing scheduling and realignment and playoffs and the like I think the key things to focus on are: a) A setup that maximizes the enjoyment of the most fans and teams, and b) Doesn't give ridiculous disadvantages or advantages based on happenstance from 50 or 100 or 150 years ago (i.e. New York gets 20M people giving all their disposable income to the franchise which gets to use 100% of it to better the organization, while Kansas City gets 115 wheat farmers to give them the equivalent of a 15-game plan.)

With that in mind, I'd come up with ways to have multiple tiers of championships and multiple paths to meaningful games. One of my favorites is regional leagues to minimize travel expenses, while giving some heft to winning one of ~4 League Championships, on the way to the World Series, and the International Cup. And I'd even figure ways to have Club Championships between the best teams in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Mexico, the US, Indy Leagues, etc.