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I'm back on the East Coast, having missed a week of sweltering weather and landing in front of a stretch of days with temperatures in the 70s. And backed by what must have been a fierce tailwind, my flight from San Diego to Washington Dulles landed 25 minutes ahead of schedule today. That's a pretty good run.
Anyway, like I mentioned yesterday morning, I was chatting with several players yesterday about the possibility of division realignment, which has been a hot topic in baseball circles the last few days. The plan being discussed the most is moving a team from the National League to the American League, to create two 15-team leagues, and getting rid of divisions. Each team would play a balanced schedule (I think - the details aren't settled yet), and the top five teams would make the playoffs. It'd be a little like how baseball looked before the introduction of divisions in 1969 (which was coincidentally the year the Expos joined the National League), except there'd be more playoff teams.
The players I talked to seemed fairly open to the idea; Ian Desmond was concerned about the prospect of longer road trips and a need for more travel days, since the unbalanced schedule would be going away and short intra-division trips would be reduced, but he welcomed the concept overall. My question for you is, what do you think of the possibility? And how would you realign - two leagues, new divisions, something different altogether?
Let me know. This is something of a radical idea for baseball, which is typically slow to change, and I'm curious to hear what you all think of it.
