Major League Baseball: Major Changes Coming

There has been a moderate buzz floating around Major League Baseball that there is discussion -how serious we don't know yet- of moving a team from the National League to the American League to even up the conferences at 15 teams a piece. To this point, the Houston Astros are that team. I'm not so sure I like it.

When you look at the would-be layout, Interleague play (love it or hate it) would be more inter weaved throughout out the year, as opposed to one chunk in May/June. There would now be an odd number of teams in each conference thus making one team have to be playing cross-conference all the time.

Jon Paul Morosi of Fox Sports wrote on the subject (found here). He states that people's concerns over interleague games being played in September are misplaced, comparing it to the Chicago Bears(an NFC team) and New York Jets(an AFC team) playing for the playoffs in Week 16 of last NFL season. He also states that people that complain that interleague games shouldn't be determining division races need to remember that they already do as a victory in June counts the same as one in September.

While I agree with him on principle, there are two points on my part that I'd like to mention. First, I don't really like interleague play to begin with. That fact leads to my second point and one that Morosi doesn't mention. What's different in the comparison to the NFL method is that the NFC and the AFC play by the same rules. The National and American Leagues don't. I'll leave my opinion of the difference out of this piece, but it is fact that the DH rule is a significant change. The arguments for and against have been repeated time and time again and don't need to be renewed here, but to acknowledge their presence is important.

So from my view, in contrast to Morosi - who I mean absolutely no disrespect to, just a difference of opinion- is that I don't like the fact that interleague helps determine the playoffs in May/June, much less in September.

The other major change proposed - that I love- is the addition of a second wildcard team from each conference. The two wildcard teams would them play a one game playoff to move on. While I would prefer a three game series, this is a step in the right direction. It will keep more teams in contention longer, and gives teams a distinct advantage in winning the division versus winning the wildcard. In the current format, there is hardly any incentive for winning the division over the wildcard.

These changes are still developing, and while I don't necessary like everything being proposed, they're a long way from becoming reality right now. There is still a great deal of time to tweak and talk out potential paths for change.

Sources

Morosi's Article

Personal Experience