Why "Floating Realignment" May Be The Worst Idea Ever

I like the geographic division idea.  It’s really thinking out of the box.  But the best way to do it would be FIVE divisions of six teams.  Teams play 18 games vs. their five division (regional) opponents and three games against all of the other 24 teams.  That’s 90+72=162.  Three wild-card teams.

EAST
Boston, NY Yankees, NY Mets, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington
MIDWEST
Chi Cubs, Chi White Sox, Minnesota, St. Louis, Kansas City, Milwaukee

WEST
LA Angels, LA Dodgers, Oakland, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle
SOUTH
Arizona, Colorado, Houston, Texas, Tampa Bay, Florida
MIDEAST
Cleveland, Detroit, Toronto, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Atlanta

The geographic idea is an excellent idea but why not use NFL rivalies to help keep the intrest up…I know all baseball cares about is the large market teams but for smaller market teams even a chance to make the wild card every year would help sell tickets. For example I would like to see a divison that had Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Baltimore, and either Detroit or Washington.  I know everyone would say that is a horrible division but the fans would be packing the stadiums if the Pirates and the Baltimore had meaningful games in late sept.

Worst idea ever, yet is has been done before. Tigers before 1998 were in the AL East while the Brewers were in the AL Central. Yes Tampa Bay came in and changed things but a team moved Leagues and Tampa wasn’t placed in to a Division without changing things. Yes it would be very hard to do but to say it is the stupidest idea ever holds no merit as it has been done before.

I may never see the Pirates have a winning season the way the divisions are set up now, but if they were in with the Yankees, Red Sox, Mets, and Phillies I will never see them compete again!

I would rather have all the players shooting up roids at home plate if that means they would agree to a salary cap and a floor.

Baseball for us Pirates fans starts in April but ends at the end of April and then it is onto football season.

   I agree with any thing that gets the Texas Rangers out of California and the the North pacific. 

i don’t care what they do.  i am so sick of these billionaire owners fighting their multi-millionaire players – all while holding cities (and the fans) hostage for new stadiums, ‘luxury boxes’ under the threat of moving, then bending us over the bleachers while we take it up the @$$ without grease with warm $12 beers, cold $8 hot-dogs, $25 to park a car – sorry.  baseball can cease to exist in my eyes.  Don’t get me wrong, i love my cubs, and will watch them, but i don’t follow them near as much as i used to.  baseball has lost all respect with me.  If crud selig wanted to do something to protect the integrity of the game, he’d simply come out and say "If you have been found guilty of using performance enhancing drugs, either by jury, your peers, random testing, or by your own admission – all of your records and statistics will be stripped from baseball.  Mark McGuire?  Sorry, it will be as if you never played the game.  There will be no asterisks in baseball".  who we kidding? 

Why don’t you setup two divisions based on Payroll?  Top half of the majors go in one division while the lower payroll teams go in the other division.  Realign every 5 years.  At least competiveness amongst similar salary arrangements would be prevalent.

"how can Cleveland sell to their fans that they don’t expect to be
competitive some years, then expect the fans to come out to watch them
play?"

NEWSFLASH:  The Indians already suck and have a crappy owner who won’t spend a dime, trades away ALL their good players who make any money – yet still raises ticket, beer, and food prices anyway.  Hell, fans are so fed up, that they can’t even sell out opening day.  Even in the 70’s and 80’s when they lost 120 games a year – they still drew 75,000 fans for opening day in a bad stadium!

All that said – I do agree that it’s a terrible idea.

Any idea by Selig is a bad one . . . remember, this is the guy who wanted to get rid of the Twins so Minnesota fans would have to follow the Brewers, which he coincedentally owned at the time. Willy, I wish I could give you a "thumbs up", but they don’t allow it on the Blog.

this is a GREAT idea! .How can you not like this idea??  You have the teams with the most money battling out with each other and not beatin up on all the other teams in the division.

I am with Old Chuckeye…any idea by Selig can be presumed to suck.

Everybody:  this isn’t Selig’s idea.  It came from a committee of executives and managers that was formed a few months ago to examine ways to possibly improve the game. 

If MLB wanted to level the playing field, a salary floor is a good place to start (technically, there’s already a cap in place, though it could be strengthened).  But what they really need to do is add a third team to the New York metropolitan area to curb some of the advantage that the Yankees and Mets currently have. 

I say expand by two teams:  one in either Brooklyn or Northern New Jersey, and the other either in Portland, Salt Lake, Sacremento, or Las Vegas.  Put them both in the AL and go to a four-division format with no wild cards.  This way, Boston and New York cannot monopolize two spots in the AL, and every team has the same number of teams competing for a playoff spot.

Just remember that SH*T floats too when thinking about re-alignment.  Floating realignment will not work, as you alter the landscape each year, which reduces natural rivalries.  Geographic expansion would work by adding extra teams, but we have already weakened the talent pool enough with the last expansion.  Larger Market teams will always have an advantage over smaller market teams unless all the revenue is shared equally, and that will never happen in any ML sport.  Splitting up the Yanks and the Sox is asinine, as it is one of the best rivalries going. 

I concur with salary caps, but free agency will also need to be addressed (both eligibility and rankings) if you are acurately going to control a players salary.  do you use his career average to rank him, or last seasons?  simple questions, but very difficult when you get to contractual language. 

I think we should finish rebounding from the "Steroid Era" as there are still over 100 names that haven’t been leaked yet, and there are still way too many outraged fans that fly off the handle when another name comes out.  Once we get past that, (time or all the names are leaked) then I think you can look at a long last labor agreement….just in time for genetically enhanced players to hit the field….

FWIW I would love to see the league use player names as divisions- one last SCREW YOU GARY BETTMAN in my eyes for gutting the history out of hockey long ago.

I’m a bitter old man….

Thank-you Mr. Selig for singlehandedly ruining America’s Passtime. The end of the 2012 season can’t get here quick enough. He will be remembered as the worst commish in the history of American sports.

The ONLY PERSON that will miss Selig is his good pal Steinbrenner!!!!!

Bad doesn’t even begin to describe this hair-brained idea, apparently hatched at a bar during happy hour.

Worse, not just one, but 12 baseball committee executives thought that this was a great and revolutionary idea.

As Dan pointed out in his article, geographical alignment and a salary cap is what is really needed, and makes so much sense, that it could never be taken seriously by baseball. How sad.

This is pure idiocy, and would drive the final nail into the coffin of baseball’s timelessness. NL and AL must remain separate. Interleague play has got to go. If anything, make intradivision games even more numerous than they are now and bring back real baseball… remember, the kind where you know your opponent inside-out and real effort and strategy is required?

 don’t see why they don’t go with a hard cap, that increases( or declines)  on a yearly basis, depending in how much cash the league makes. But this is also tough because " how much the league makes" will change from opinion to opinion depending on how many suits are in on the skim.
But no tax for going over cap…..NO GOING OVER CAP