There will be a lot to digest regarding MLB’s new labor agreement which sounds like it will be finalized and announced sometime in the next week.  For starters, it seems prudent to thank our lucky stars that major league baseball won’t be sending us on the emotional rollercoaster that the NFL labor negotiations did early this year, not to mention the absolute horror story that is the NBA lockout.  To the casual fan all that matters is that we will have uninterrupted baseball for many more years to come, and for the detail-compulsive analyst, there will be enough to write a small novel on.  I’d like to focus on a few of the issues that will have a more clear and visible impact on the state of the game.

Realignment:  It would appear that the Houston Astros are moving to the American League in a move that I would say makes a considerable amount of sense.  You can’t have a 4 team division in baseball and then a 6 team division at the same time.  Its asinine.  The AL West teams have (or had) a 25% chance of winning their division and its corresponding playoff berth while contenders in the AL Central entered the season with a 16.6% chance.  That’s just inherently unfair and stupid.   Of course, the realignment will now necessitate year-round interleague player, but I’ll discuss that a bit further down.   The Astros were a natural choice for moving to the AL West as Houston was the most westward city of the NL Central and is far from the georgraphical epicenter of that division as the other 5 teams reside a great deal further north.   Houston also isn’t a particularly storied franchise with any lasting ties to the National League, and also never developed significant rivalries within its division.  Now joining the Texas Rangers in the AL West, that has the potential to change.   There are some people who suggest that it should’ve been the Diamondbacks or the Rockies, but that’s just pointless nitpicking.  The Astros made plenty of sense, and most importantly, 6  5-team divisions makes even more sense.

Two Wild Cards:  I don’t understand the commotion about this.  What is wrong with it exactly?  It’s going to cheapen division races?  Who really cares.  Football uses two wild cards and you don’t see anyone complaining over there about cheapened division races, do you?  I’d be significantly more intrigued with this devevelopment if the #1 and possibly #2 seeds in each league could be awarded a bye, but it’s nearly impossible to figure out a way to make that logistically sound without a 6th playoff team in each league.  There’s also the notion that you can’t have all the excitement that game 162 offered us this year if you add a 5th playoff team, but that line of thinking is completely and utterly flawed.  This past season saw the #4 and #5 teams (as determined by record) in each league vying for a playoff berth on the final day of the season.  Obviously, if both of them were to be gauranteed a spot in the dance, the drama that game 162 afforded us would’ve been impossible.  But, why would it no longer be possible with the same exact scenario except instead of #4 and #5 you have #5 and #6?  What makes that any different?   I don’t understand.

Ultimately I’d like to see a system identical to the NFL’s where you have 8 4-team divisions with 6 playoff berths in each league.  While the new second wild card will do a great deal to ensure that a superior team isn’t missing the playoffs (a possibility the AL East seems to produce annually) the new system will not be without its flaws.  This year for instance, the Blue Jays have a surprisingly compelling argument to join the regular mainstays (Tampa Bay, New York, Boston) in the AL East fracas but at most 3 of those teams are going to make the playoffs.  While four superior teams in one division is certainly going to be a very unlikely scenario, consider the fairness (or lack thereof) of Tampa Bay, Toronto, and Baltimore being required to compete with Boston and New York every single year.  Going to an NFL system and perhaps splitting up the Red Sox and Yankees (ya, I said it) would go a long way in ensuring competitive balance in the sport’s divisions and scheduling.   The problem there is adding two new teams to MLB – where would they come from?   There already appears to be a franchise in a city that just doesn’t seem able to support a major league team (Tampa Bay) potentially requiring us to find not just two more cities, but three.  I’ll leave the Rays alone for now, but even still, this isn’t an easy task.  San Jose is one tantalizing possibility, but the San Francisco Giants have rights to the territory and if any team is going there it will be an existing one, (Oakland) not a new one.  Canada’s second biggest city already flopped, and oft-mentioned Las Vegas currently supports no major sports teams – making it a risky propostion for baseball to offer it it’s first franchise.  My suggestions are radical, but I believe them to be rather practical:  Brooklyn and San Juan.

Year-Round Interleague Play:  I didn’t even want to mention this because I couldn’t figure out why it’s such a big deal, but considering the kind of outcry it looks like it’s provoking I figured I’d at least address it.  Why does it matter of interleague play is for two months or if it’s year round?  I am sympathetic to a point to those who despise interleague player altogether – but it’s here to stay.  What difference does it make if your teams interleague matchups are spread out throughout the course of a 6 month season or if they are compressed into a few weeks?  I understand the argument against interleague play, but I have yet to see one compelling argument as to why it needs to take place only on select weeks.

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