I read an article on ESPN about how the schedule needs to be redone, and how the league needs to be realigned. Ive always wondered why MLB's schedule seems to be a mess, and its always been because "thats the way its always been.*" I put an * there because its old fashioned but every now and then it gives way to something that changes it. Right now its a mess, its 2 leagues, 6 divisions. One league though has 14 the other 16, and one division has 4 and another 6 while the rest have 5, its ugly. Throw in the added interleague play and its not even close to balanced anymore.

The reason for the 14 and 16 is that before interleague play(which isnt year round anyways) is that each league needed an even number so every team has a team to play. They finally allowed the leagues to play each other, but limited to only a few times a year, and you only play a couple of teams. Id explain more at this point as far as how many games per type of team you play, but its not that easy. This will explain it.

Now as far as this article goes, they completely want to redo it all, drop 2 teams, go to 4 divisions, no leagues, even games against everyone. That idea might actually be worse than the current schedule to me. Why even have divisions if you play an equal number of games against everyone? This idea just ruins about everything in the game to me. Looking at the NFL and NBA, the NFL doesnt compare because it doesnt play enough games, the NBA though plays about half, and has the same number of teams. So to me this is what Id do, and you can all throw your ideas out there, but I think anything is better than this article...

Leave the divisions and leagues alone except for the following. Move Houston to the NL West, and move Colorado to the AL West. Id do this because Houston would move to a west division just like Texas, and then the only team that has to switch leagues is a newer team, Colorado, that doesnt have as much history. The yearly schedule for everyone would be 10 games(3, 2, 3, 2 games per series) against each division opponent, 6 (3, 3) against each other team in the league, and 4 (2, 2)against each team in the other league. This comes out to 160 games, 2 less than what they do now. It could use to have even less games, but I dont think the league would want to shave too many off, mostly for the money. You still play more in division and league, which to me is the way it should be, but in the end the overall schedules are fairer for the end of year standings. Oh, and DH/no DH can stay or go with this, wouldnt matter.

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We have had this discussion before.

If you have 15 teams in each league then you are forced to have interleague games all year for all teams to be able to play.

The #1 reason why the schedule suggestion that the article makes won't work is this:
"remove two teams"

That won't happen. Remember about five years ago they were arguing that Montreal (now Washington) and Tampa Bay should be removed? Montreal folded as a private team and MLB took over operations then moved to DC. They are still pathetic and sad, but in operations. Didn't Tampa just play in the WS?

Yeah I was one of the people who didn't understand why there wasn't 15 teams in each league and I am pretty sure it was Kirby who easily explained why- if you have 15 teams in the league/division/etc, then 14 will play against each other (7 series) and the last team will then have to play an interleague. Which, if you don't want interleague, then it makes it basically impossible to do.

Unless you decide to shorten the season, the amount of games played, and give two teams off every weekend and every Mon-Wed or something to that effect. Of course reducing games means less money for MLB so that obviously won't happen.

To me, the best thing would be to add two teams to make it an even 32. 16 in each League, 4 divisions with 4 teams in each. Get rid of the wild card (although I must say the wild card does add some small amount of intrigue towards the end of the season after most pennant races are already decided) and then go that way. But with the talent pool already stretched thin with weak teams like Pittsburgh and Washington, to add two more teams would deteriorate the competition.

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