It's high time baseball did something to fix one of its biggest problems. No, I'm not talking about steroids, scuffing baseballs, or the Chicago Cubs. It's the huge competitive advantage some teams have gained merely by belonging to the right division.
Back in 1994, Major League Baseball suffered a lost season, which ended in August with no playoffs or World Series. That was also the first season that the American and National Leagues were restructured into three-division leagues instead of two. At that point there were 28 teams in the major leagues. With the addition of Tampa Bay and Arizona in 1998, that brought the number of teams to 30. Although there has been a realignment of teams since then, the basic structure of the league has not changed since 1998.
With 30 teams and six divisions, there should be an equal number of teams (five) in each league. This is true of all but two divisions: The National League's Central Division has six teams, while the American League's Western Division has four. This may not seem like a big deal until one looks at the percentage chance that each team has of making the playoffs.
Major League Baseball currently allows eight teams into the post-season each year. The six division winners get in, plus two Wild-Card teams (one from each league). That means that (all things being equal) each team should have a 26.67% (8 divided by 30) chance of making the playoffs.
However, in the American League (AL) West there are only four teams. Each team has an opportunity to get into the playoffs by winning its division or claiming the Wild-Card spot for the AL. Each AL West team thus has a 25% chance (1 in 4) of winning its division, plus a 9.1% chance (1 in 11 non-division winners) of claiming the Wild Card spot. This adds up to a 34.1% chance that each AL West team has of making the playoffs. By comparison, each team in the AL East or AL Central has only a 29.1% chance of making the playoffs (20% to win their division, plus 9.1% chance at the Wild Card). That's a full 5% competitive advantage that the AL West teams have over the other two American League divisions.
In the National League, there is a somewhat similar scenario, except the National League (NL) Central has six teams while the other two divisions have five. This means that each NL Central team only has a 24.4% chance to make the playoffs (16.7% chance to win their division, plus 7.7% chance to claim the Wild Card spot). The teams in the NL East and NL West have a 27.7% chance of making the playoffs, so the disparity in the National league is only 3.3% instead of five percent.
If one looks at all six divisions, one can see the wide gap between the teams in the NL Central and the AL West:
National League
East ----- 27.7%
Central -- 24.4%
West ----- 27.7%
American League
East ----- 29.1%
Central -- 29.1%
West ----- 34.1%
As anyone can see, the teams in the AL West have a 9.7% higher chance of making the playoffs than the teams in the NL Central. Compound this advantage with the fact that two AL West teams (the A's and Angels) have repeatedly dominated the other two division rivals (the Mariners and Rangers), and the disparity between the divisions grows even further. This large disparity sways the competitive balance to the point where Major League Baseball needs to address the issue.
The solution is relatively simple: Move one NL Central team to the AL West. Then, (all things being equal) every team has the same chance to make the playoffs each year. Keeping location and competitive balance in mind, logical choices to move to the AL West are Houston or Chicago. The Cardinals (St. Louis) are typically the best team in the NL Central, while Pittsburgh, Milwaukee and Cincinnati are farther east than the Cubs or Astros.
Until the problem is fixed, I'll relish being an Oakland A's fan even more.
See you in the playoffs (again)!
2 comments:
I posted this article on Athletics Nation, the Oakland A's blog. Here is a good response from one of the posters there...
"There are a couple solutions to this,
and all are unlikely. But here they are.
The first, which has been covered, is to move 1 team to the AL West and have 15 in each league, and have interleague games all year long. This has the potential to be a logistical nightmare, but it also has the potential to be a very good promotion. MLB could have "The Interleague Series of the Week" and so on.
But one problem it would have is at the end of the year, when you want to face your own division, you'd have two teams facing each other in the other division.
The other option is expansion, which seems unlikely. Two teams could be added, in two of Portland, Las Vegas, Oaklahoma City or Memphis. This is unlikely because we don't know if MLB can support two more teams, after all, there's been thought of contracting!
Which brings us to the next option, contracting. Remove two of the struggling teams that seem to have no future and/or get no revenue, and even up the leagues again. The problem is that the owners probably won't like it, the players association will hate it, the fans will hate it, and it will end up making the league 5-5-4 in both, and we'd still have 4 team divisions, but now 2 of them.
The last option is perhaps most likely. Move a team. If one team moves to Las Vegas or Portland, and the AL East was made into a 4 team division (I think you can guess the odd team out), it would solve the AL problem. Everyone knows that the Yankees and RedSox will dominate the AL East, Toronto is making a go for it, and Baltimore has the history. Tampa Bay could, if they are the team, move to Las Vegas or Portland, and go to the AL West. If not, then the Florida Marlins could be that team, and either the Devil Rays moving to the NL East, and one of the Rockies or Diamondbacks moving to the AL West, if the Marlins don't. This is growing more and more unlikely though, as the Marlins look like they might just get that stadium after all.
Personally, I think the Devil Rays moving seems most likely."
I was just Googling trying to find out WHY this weird disparity of divisions happened in the first place, and hit this post.
Weird. I still don't understand how it happened.
I think moving Houston to the West would be most logical.
I wasn't going to post a comment, but reading the last comment above made me smile: right now the Rays are actually playing like a team!
You never know.
I still think the Devil Rays of Sin City has a certain ring to it.
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