We talked about Manfred’s expansion floating last week, and lots of pundits out there are doing the same thought exercises related to where two new teams might pop up (Salt Lake City and Nashville … or maybe Portland and Charlotte), and then how we’d realign to go to an NFL-style 8 division format.
However, I got fed a little interview with John Smoltz, hall of fame Braves pitcher and now excellent broadcaster, and he had some awesome ideas.
Here’s his proposal:
Fewer Divisions, not More.
Don’t go 8 divisions of 4 teams each … go 4 divisions of 8 teams each. Then, keep the divisional focus in scheduling and make the adjustments so you’re more geographically sound. So, borrowing from my previous post, we could combine some of my proposed divisions to look something like this
- AL East/Southeast: Boston, Toronto, New York, Baltimore plus Kansas City, Colorado, Houston, Texas
- AL Central/West: Minnesota, Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago and Seattle, Salt Lake City, LA, Oakland/Las Vegas
- NL East/Southeast: Philly, Pittsburgh, New York, Washington and Miami, Tampa, Nashville, Atlanta
- NL Central/West: Milwaukee, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis and LA, Arizona, San Diego, San Francisco
Honestly, i’d just abandon the geographical terms and go with some NHL-style division names. I’d probably pick four historical names for the divisions with ties to one of the teams in that division.
- the AL Ruth Division for the AL East
- the AL Cobb Division for the Central/West
- the NL Aaron Division for the NL East division
- the NL Mays Division for the NL Central/West
Each team in these divisions play each other in 3 home/away series (that makes for 18 games * 7 opponents = 126 games), then you get one 3-game set against each team in opposite AL division alternating home/away year by year (8*3 = 24 games), then that leaves 12 games/4 series that can either go against your designated NL rival or maybe like the NFL you rotate around chunks of the opposite league and play exactly 4 of them each year on a rotating basis. Something like this.
However, this isn’t the awesome part.
Declare First Half and Second half winners!
Brilliant. Winners of both halves get byes in the October playoffs, then are joined with Wild Cards determined somehow (that’s the hard part).
The real brilliance is this: by having a first half and a second half, you get stuff we don’t have now:
- A playoff race from Mid June to Mid July that we don’t have now with real implications.
- Another playoff race at the end of the year which we have now. We have a playoff race now of course in September, but this one won’t have the same feel since the first half winners won’t be part of it necessarily.
- Teams that finished dead last in the first half don’t have to “give up” at the trade deadline and can regroup. This is his big reason: he’s tired of seeing teams give up in July.
- If a team wins both halves, they get a playoff bye or some other incentive.
- Wild Cards can be given based on several factors; 2nd place teams in the races, or if a team manages to have the best overall record but doesn’t win either half they are guaranteed a playoff spot as well.
Let’s assume that we want the same number of playoff teams that the 32-team expansion/NFL style schedule dictates; that being 6 teams. Here’s how this could look:
- AL East 1st Half Winner
- AL East 2nd Half Winner
- AL West 1st Half Winner
- AL West 2nd Half Winner
- Two AL Wild Cards: the two teams with the best full season records, or perhaps the two teams with the best individual half records.
Playoffs could go like this
- Two best half records get byes. If they’re the same team, go to next best team.
- If same team wins both halves, you’d go with 2nd best team.
- Wild cards play into the two lowest ranked half winning teams.
It would take some noodling to figure out the wildcards honestly. Maybe you just go 1st half winner versus 2nd half winner and eliminate wildcards … though this is a revenue non-starter since playoffs generate so much cash for the owners.
Some thoughts.
what do you th ink? Do you like half winners?