Against an eight-division MLB after 32-team expansion
Rumors burst forth again, as they tend to do when fans despair of not seeing baseball for six months, that the league will expand soon. It’s actually a challenge for baseball to move toward 32 teams, in a way that it isn’t for the NHL or NBA. The major issue isn’t necessarily finding a market, but the playoff balance.
Baseball has managed to preserve the quality of its postseason by limiting who can participate. The NBA perpetually sends losing teams to the playoffs. The NHL does also, though it likes to pretend that overtime losses are akin to the old league’s ties. MLB only reluctantly added 9th and 10th teams to the mix for the exciting but totally unfair wildcard round. But in effect, it’s an eight-team playoff where the likelihood of a losing participant is next to nill.
Realigning the league into eight divisions of four would create havoc on this setup. I’m probably harping on some of the same tones that detractors had in the early 90s when leagues were split from two divisions to three. Or in the late 60s when they were split from no divisions to two. But those writers had points then as well.
Past absurdities in MLB alignment
The two division setup was bizarre. Late in that era, there were no unbalanced schedules, as in playing teams within your own division more often than other league opponents. Still, division teams were arbitrarily paired against each other. The results were situations where the best two teams in the league might be in the same division but one of them missed the playoffs entirely.
This happened in 1993 when Western Division’s Atlanta Braves won 104 games and San Francisco Giants 103. The Phillies, with a strong but inferior 97 wins, won the Eastern Division and bested the Braves in the NLCS. Division rivals played each other 13 times; interdivision teams 12. The use of divisions was arbitrary, and the incongruent geography of those divisions resulted in two east coast teams playing each other anyway.
The 90s realignment was less problematic though, because it corrected a major injustice that we might see replay with four-division leagues. By adding the wildcard, these quirks of divisional play gave a 2nd-place team superior to division champions a chance to play in October. The continued use of balanced schedules though, where the number of games played against each divisional rival matched the number played against other teams in their league, made the setup ridiculous.
While the top four teams usually ended up on top with the wildcard sometimes eclipsing a division champion, that wasn’t always the case. The 2000 Yankees demonstrated the absurdity of this system with their near apocalyptic collapse in September.
The team famously refused to cork open champagne when they clinched the division, ashamed they relied on the Red Sox’ losses to grab the title. They finished 87–75 behind the Cleveland Indians (90–72), 2nd place in the Central Division but who themselves finished behind the wildcard-winning Seattle Mariners (91–71). The Yankees went on to win the World Series, but in reality only made the playoffs by the graces of MLB’s obsession over arbitrary regional divisions that in effect meant nothing.
NFL-style alignment would invite losers to the playoffs
Come 2021, should Portland and Montreal (or Mexico City) be added to the mix, we might see the AL and NL break into four divisions each. This greatly increases the chances a losing team will make the playoffs, even with limited slots.
The NFL has done this several times since they added their 32nd team. Of course, NFL teams who finish 7–9 and make it to January are only two wins off of a positive record.
MLB teams though might fall deeper behind. The weakness of the 2017 NL East demonstrates this well. Only the Nationals finished with a winning record. The AL West went through a decade and a half of similar mediocrity. Should four teams be grouped together, it’s inevitable one of them won’t win more than 80 games. It’s also inevitable one of these teams will get hot and overcome a superior opponent in the playoffs.
This can be avoided rather easily, by going back to a two-division setup in each league. Division rivals would play each other more often, making the separation relevant. The two division winners and top three teams after would make the playoffs, with teams 4 and 5 playing each other in the wildcard game. There is also the possibility simply to preserve the three-division setup. The six-team NL Central persisted for nearly 20 years.
Of course, I hate the wildcard game. I loathe the idea of adding a sixth team that could screw over the 3rd place finisher and sneak into the Division Series. I loathe the idea that each league might send eight teams to the playoffs. I don’t want a parade of losers using baseball’s randomness to grab unearned berths in the League Championship Series.
As long as we don’t adapt the monstrosity that is the NFL’s alignment and keep wildcard qualification to a minimum, MLB’s postseason can maintain its integrity.
