At the break I thought it would be fun to show which teams might benefit from realignment & which would benefit from adding an extra wild card team.
Under the current system, playoff teams would be:
AL - Red Sox, Tigers, Rangers & Yankees as wild card
NL - Phillies, Brewers/ Cards tied, Giants & Braves as wild card
Under realignment, which takes the teams with the 4 best records in each league, playoff teams would be:
AL - Boston, New York, Texas & Tampa Bay
NL - Philadelphia, Atlanta, San Francisco, & 3 teams tied for last spot in Milwaukee, St. Louis & Arizona
Under the current system with the addition of an extra wild card team, playoff teams would be:
AL - Red Sox, Tigers, Rangers with 1-game playoff by Yankees & Rays
NL - Phillies, Brewers/Cards, Giants & 1-game playoff by Braves & either Brewers/Cards/Diamondbacks who are all tied
Bud Selig has said that realignment is premature, but the idea is certainly interesting & is creating a lot of buzz. You can see why it would with teams like the Tampa Bay Rays who outplay most of their competitors in the AL Central & AL West.
I like the idea of realignment or an extra wild card. Either change will make every team fight to the end of the season instead of being able to line-up their pitching for the playoffs 2 or 3 weeks ahead of time. There are so few good new ideas in baseball we should keep this one in the conversation.
1 comment:
Both ideas are amenable to me as well, as long as they make the number of games played between all teams more equitable.
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