By God, MLB, you came so close to getting it right. So I'm trying to shove content out, I swear, but it's hard to do. I found a cool concept for divisional realignment that I tried to do a preview of sorts for, but all my drafts came out flat. Then like three more divisional realignment proposals came out, including one that is so close to getting it right. It just falls short. You might know what I'm talking about. You see it? Do you see it right there? No, it's not that the Marlins logo is out of date on this image. Pittsburgh...and Atlanta. Pittsburgh and Atlanta. What...are they doing there? They were sooooo clooooooose!!! Now let me take some time to actually explain my indignation, and why I think this alignment is almost perfect. Before we begin though, I do not care that Atlanta is further west than Pittsburgh. I know that. This still doesn't excuse it to me. And here's why.
Something you'll notice about the western division is that it packs every team from the AL West and NL West into one division. While it's very chaotic--as any division with both Houston and the Dodgers would be--it achieves something important: it keeps the regular divisional layouts together. It is possible to form NL West and AL West standings organically, with every division rival playing each other. What does this mean exactly? It means deciding a playoff format is a no-brainer. When investigating different division realignments like the one I tried previewing a few weeks back, I was always held back by the burning question of "what will the playoffs look like?" The realignment I looked at then had no good answer to this, as it had multiple teams from different divisions and different leagues mingling frequently. AL Central mixed with NL East, NL Central with AL West. It was kind of a mess, and it left me with no clue on how a postseason format would be pulled off. But if the league simply consolidated the "East", "West", and "Central" divisions of both leagues into three ten-team divisions, the answer to the playoff question is obvious. You have two sets of standings -- one is three divisions, and the other is the conventional six-division system we know and love, divided between the AL and NL. This means we don't actually have to modify or improvise the postseason (unless we wish to expand the number of teams who make the playoffs, which was rumored). We also get plenty of play outside our normal divisions as well, in the form of the teams from the other league. While there are problems to this format--some teams are inherently advantaged and disadvantaged, and the Central and West will be quite chaotic--it has the fewest problems of any alignment I can think of, and guarantees a good level of competition with a much lower level of randomness, while providing the best answer to the postseason quandary, which is what these guys are all playing for anyway. So why the hell would you swap the Braves and the Pirates? I mean, do we know which teams we're talking about here? The Atlanta Braves won 97 games in 2019 en route to their second consecutive NL East divisional crown. Meanwhile the Pirates languished in last place in the NL Central, finishing a paltry 69-93. By swapping the two, you replace one of only two division winners from last year in the East, and replace it with a last place team, meanwhile giving the Central three different first place teams. This throws the whole format into chaos, because not only does it mean the rest of the NL East's biggest potential rival in this alignment is taken away from them, but instead they get to feast on another bottom feeder. If this alignment goes through untouched, the East will have four teams who finished with over 90 losses. In addition, the East division is probably the weakest division all-around anyway. The Marlins, Blue Jays, and Orioles are all rebuilding. The Red Sox just traded away their best player and lost their second best player to a season ending injury. They have no starting pitching to speak of and figure to be mediocre at best. The Mets and Phillies have been difficult to project for years, and have finished with underwhelming results in recent seasons. And the Nationals, despite being defending World Series champions, lost Anthony Rendon to free agency. Rendon contributed 7 WAR according to Fangraphs last year. Losing seven wins with one player is a huge blow to a Wild Card team, even as they add it back incrementally with players such as Starlin Castro, Eric Thames, and Carter Kieboom. This leaves us with the Rays, a very good team, and the Yankees, a juggernaut. Without the Braves, another very good team, to keep them in check, the Yankees look to run rampant over most of this division. Not only will it be not fun for the teams they maim, it would probably get dull for Yankees fans, too, who want more real competition. However, the most insidious thing this flip-flopping does is it throws the playoff picture, particularly in the NL East, into chaos. How are the Braves supposed to compete in a division where they never play their rivals? If they "win" the NL East despite never playing the Nats, Mets, or Phillies, how will those three teams react? If one or more of those three teams farms enough victories off the Marlins, Orioles, Pirates, and Blue Jays to finish with a better record than the Braves, who must play two other division winners and only have two "bad" teams to whale on, how is that fair to Atlanta? It would be so much simpler if the Braves rejoined their division rivals, and the Pirates crawled back to the Central. Now I understand that the league wants to minimize travel as much as possible, and an Atlanta team traveling to Texas is probably shorter than a Pittsburgh team traveling to Texas. I'm fully expecting this complaint to fall on deaf ears, but at a time like this, nothing is final, and if the teams and players see this the way I do and make enough noise, who knows? Maybe normalcy will be restored and the logical divisional alignment with be instated. That's all I can hope. Whenever the MLB decides on an official alignment, I'll probably try doing a preview for it, in a similar vein as the one I tried but gave up on earlier. We'll see. For now, can we please just get our divisions down right?
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About MeI'm Jeremy, and I like baseball. Watching it and writing about it mainly. This is where the latter goes. My other hobbies include video games, singing, biking, and slacking off. I live in New Jersey and go to school at Goucher College in Baltimore. That's me on TV! If you want a better look, check out this video. Watch the stands on Kyle Lewis' home run very closely. Look for the skinny guy with the Yankees hat.
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