Excuse Me While I Rock Your Baseball World

Turn and face the strange ch-ch-changes, so sayeth the David Bowie.  Like the stardust time traveling space oddity that he is, he traveled to the future to speak with me.  I just finished telling him my earth shattering idea when he said, “Thats almost as deep as my eye shadow,” then he said he would dedicate a song to convincing people to embrace it, no matter how strange it may be.  Then he vanished in a flash of pixie glitter.  *poof*

My proposition is nothing sort than a total revamping of the regular season and playoff system. Why do we need change?

1.) The smaller market teams have a tough time competing.  They can’t compete because they don’t have enough money, they don’t have enough money because they don’t have enough fans, they don’t have enough fans because they can’t compete, they can’t compete because they don’t have enough money, they don’t have enough money because they don’t have enough fans, they don’t have enough fans because they…

2.) The current playoff system doesn’t necessarily include the top teams.  With the winner of a division getting an automatic bid and with a skewed schedule towards your division it is tough to tell who really are the top teams and who should really make the playoffs.

Therefore, to solve this issue I propose a 3 stage process.

Stage 1: Split up all the divisions so there are 5 in each league and make sure that each division has 3 teams. Currently 1 team from the NL would have to switch to the AL to make the leagues and all divisions even in number.  However, I broke it down even further and split the teams into division by location and if multiple teams had to switch leagues then so be it.  The exact composition of the divisions isn’t the important part but this is how I suggest since I believe rivalries are one of the best parts of baseball. Taking advantage of location and the small number of teams in the divisions would only serve to provide extremely heated rivals.  Awesome!

The first stage of the season will last for 108 games (2/3 of the season).  The schedule will be set up so each team plays everyone in their league an equal amount of times to be as fair as possible (none of that gimmicky interleague shaz). The remaining 54 games will be stage 2.

Stage 2: After the first 108 games, division play is over. Enter stage left, the group stage.  Each league will then split into 3 groups.  Group 1 will be all the winners of each division.  If we assume that the table above is also the rankings of each division then group 1 will consist of the Phillies, Marlins, Dodgers, Cardinals and the Reds. Group 2 will consist of the 2nd place teams and group 3 will be made up of the last place teams.  Here is what the groups would look like for each league…

Group Hug!

Now here is where it gets interesting, the playoff race.  All records are wiped clean.  They are gone, gone like Michael Jackson.  For the final 54 games (mandatory that the final count down play after each game whilst in this stage), group 1 will only play groups 2 and 3.  Group 2 will only play groups 3 and 1.  Group 3 will only play groups 1 and 2.

The word group starts to look weird after typing it so many times, group group grop, grope.  Grope, err group!

Anyway, this means that the Phillies will not play the Marlins for the rest of the season because they are both in group 1.  The schedules are reset accordingly and the 4 teams at the end of Stage 2 with the best record (stage 2 record only) will make the playoffs.

The group stage rewards the better teams by giving them the gift of not playing other better teams while at the same time giving a team that would normally have nothing to play for a real chance to start their season anew and give their fans a chance to care.

Stage 3: Playoffs as usual.  The top two teams (determined by Stage 2 record) will have home field advantage for the first round and so on until the World Series.

This system that I am now dubbing….. grouphug (1 word) will solve both issues with the current system. Issue 1, it will allow for a greater chance that the better team will indeed make the playoffs instead of a winner of a weak division that will easily get eliminated from the first round.  It is fair in that it rewards the teams that play better for the majority of the season but it is also fair that if a team from group 3 plays well enough then they prove that they are infact the better team and they will make the playoffs instead of another team.

It also solves issue 2.  When the phillies played the pirates, there were more phillies fans than pirate fans.  When I went to an Orioles-Blue Jays game it was the lowest attended game in Orioles history.  Why because niether team had any chance of making the playoffs.  It will give the fans a reason to care and go to the games because their team will actually have a chance rather than already being eliminated.

Finally….tada!

Now, discuss.