MLB is having a 'dream postseason' amid harsh climate reality; time for a weird flex

Baseball needs some formatting that (i) reduces how many games teams fly to outside their time zone (ii) addresses the competitive imbalance between the Coastals and the Flyover Country teams.

Oct 17, 2024

(Note: for the full post, click the headline.)

Whelp, then. All the Aaron Judge and Juan Soto; Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts; Francisco Lindor and Pete Alonso dynamic duologies, and all the October baseball men, cannot keep climate reality from affecting Major League Baseball again.

On one strata, MLB’s upper crust looks appetizing. Casual-fan interest is rising amid a three-way tag team of coastal elites making a World Series run. All have sluggers who have a flair for the dramatic. Cleveland is also extant, nominally, in the next-to-last stage of Octoberball.

One can easily fill their boots with the numbers for the potential Yankees-Dodgers or Mets-Yankees affrays that appear to be the most likely matchups for the World Series. Some of the potential players from the New York-other New York-formerly New York triad bear bullet-pointing:

Yankees centrefielder Judge had one of the greatest batting seasons in modern times, with MLB mosts of 58 home runs, .458 on-base and .701 slugging percentages; he has previously had seasons with 62 and 52 home runs;
Dodgers leadoff-batter DH Ohtani, who had MLB’s first 50-50 season with 54 home runs and 59 stolen bases, is due to join Barry Bonds as the only player to be a three-time MVP by age 30, which means automatic induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame — right?
Soto, who signed a one-year Yankees residency before going free agent, leads active major leaguers with a career .421 on-base percentage,1 the same rate as Mickey Mantle (!);
The Mets offer five-tool shortstop Lindor and mid-order slugger Alonso, who is a two-time Home Run Derby champion who has averaged more than 40 home runs per season;
Dodgers 2-hitter rightfielder Betts is one of the great run scorers in the game’s history, averaging about 125 per season; he picked up playing shortstop in mid-career just for the challenge;
Yankee DH Giancarlo Stanton, MLB’s active leader in home runs, also once parked 59 in a season before being pulled in by the Yankees’ tractor-beam;
The third-billed Dodgers batter, Freddie Freeman, is a former league MVP too.

What do these teams have for pitching? Who cares! Hunter S. Thompson might have had that one right.

Small wonder then, that the business-of-baseball trackers say “interest (is) skyrocketing.”

Over time, though, optimization has forced MLB to try to take a Jeff Bagwell-evoking straddle across a diamond dichotomy.

The batting stance of baseball hall of famer Jeff Bagwell.

Baseball is a localized game with localized followings for the 162-game ‘regseason.’ The 12-team October tournament is meant for national audiences. It works best when the Fates and the (Super) Stars align.

For fandom purposes, it is fine to ‘Catch The Taste’ with the New York or ex-New York teams going October baseball deep. A Yankees-Dodgers matchup has not happened since the 1981 strike-split season. The only Yankees-Mets Subway Series was in 2000. That was so long ago that two major broadcast networks shared playoff telecasts.2

Good plotting needs villains. A World Series matchup such as the Arizona Diamondbacks-Texas Rangers in ’23 does not push the bile, even if you tossed both states’ politicians into the pyre, figuratively.

For the last little while, everyone has welcomed feeling like we are all the way back from the health protections that altered it during the first year-and-change of the COVID-19 pandemic. That is MLB’s point of view, surely, after losing revenues in 2020 and ’21.

However, what if that period, when the major sports adapted on the fly to not lose entire seasons and still have a legitimate-esque champion, showed MLB, et al., how it will have to adapt as climate change’s effects on human health increases?

And, if that was too subtle of a hint, well, a team that played in the 2020 “COVID Series” just had the roof ripped off their stadium by a climate change-upgraded cat-3 Hurricane Milton. The Tampa Bay Rays are slated to get US$730 million in stadium subsidies from local governments, but that new ballpark will not be ready until 2028 even at the most delulu projection.3

There is probably no point in repairing the roof of their antiquated stadium. Their dome is 78 years younger than Fenway Park in Boston, 30 younger than Dodger Stadium, and a year younger than Toronto’s Dome. So what’s next?4

Then there are the Las Vegas-bound or vagabond Athletics, who are out of Oakland. Their stadium problem, at least per Commissioner Rob Manfred, has held up expansion. The Location TB-A’s aim to play three seasons in a heatsink at a minor-league stadium in Sacramento.

The short-term win is nice, but in the long term, the sport must regionalize, since climate conscientiousness serves public health and player health. And that probably means being honest that the best players inevitably end up on East and West teams. It is about the money.

ii. No way to pitch around ‘heat is big bad’

As a THIC type — treaty-honoring inhabitant of Canada — who is thick through the torso, air and water quality and their essentiality for outdoor sports are very front of mind. Gee, you mean people need to be able to breathe to do sports, and be healthy? Yeah.

Clean air, potable water, breaks from humidity, and a moderate dewpoint are needed. That goes for baseball, the ball-in/across-goal lines team sport, or just trynna be the best at exercisin’, as Kenny Powers describes endurance sports in Eastbound and Down.

That is just a mansplain of what Toronto-based sport ecologist Dr. Madeleine (Maddy) Orr discusses in her début book, Warming Up: How Climate Change Is Changing Sport.

Orr was a must-get guest for the podcast this athletics supporter cohosts.

Orr’s four-word by-phrase is ‘Heat Is Big Bad. ‘Orr details that all major sports promotions know climate change is A Problem.5

Cribbing and drafting off her work is a disservice to it. Please think of reading it along with whatever Katherine Hayhoe has said lately about climate adaptation. Or John Vaillant’s Fire Weather.

Baseball is best played and watched under open, clear skies and a moderate dewpoint. Soupy and/or smokey air, respectively, reduces visibility and ups the drag coefficient on flyballs.

Another Orr-ism is that natural grass should be used for all outdoor games. Another is that cross-continent travel for regular-season play (‘regseason’) should be reduced as much as possible. That point goes to the athletes needing more recovery and rest time, and better sleep hygiene — all of which are strained to the point of just being a rumor during humidity waves and extreme heat events.

Oh, but reduced ‘opposite coast matchups’ also give each team more consistent time slots. That might come in handy as MLB and teams are on their own to telecast their games, since regional sports networks (RSNs) are dying off.

iii. Heat and static events

One bit of perhaps good news, if you like home runs and extra-base hits, and I mean really like, heatsinks lead to more homer-socking.

The Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, the aptly acronym’d BAMS, found that climate change has contributed to an uptick in home runs.6 It is a small piece of the responsibility pie. The BAMS study suggested, that since 2010, climate change was responsible for one more home run every 60 to 64 games, roughly the number played on weekdays.

When a Canadian user googles “MLB + climate change,” links to articles about BAMS’ findings are about 90 percent of the matches. That might seem odd, but Google would never juke their search engines, right? Their maxim is, don’t be evil… right?

Home runs are great, but they are static. They do not involve as many moving parts as a ball in play, like an extra-base hit that gets down in the gaps between outfielders and the foul lines. A home run does not necessarily kill a rally. It does, however, break the chain of pitchers having to be more careful since they are working with one or more runners on base.

Does MLB track what gets fans revved up? The pitch clock has pared about 30 minutes off the average game time. However, they still have a game with more strikeouts than in-play base hits (singles, doubles, and triples) and record numbers of hit-by-pitches (HBP).

You might have read that the MLB-wide batting average and on-base percentage (OPS), with the universal designated hitter, barely outpace 1972. That was the last season when the pitcher was in both leagues’ batting order.

For grins, I tallied comparisons between 1972, 1997, and 2024. Below, the run average per team; the percentage of every 100 plate appearances that ended with a batted ball in play; and, the whole-of-MLB OBP and slugging percentage (SLG). The table also includes, on a per-100 turns at bat basis, in-play extra-base hits (double and triples); all home runs; bases on balls; hit-by-pitches; and, strikeouts, which add up to a rate of the Four Truthy Outcomes (4TO).

Choosing 1997 is roughly halfway between the two seasons. That was the last season of the brief 28-team era, but the first with interleague play.

Some American League pitchers had to bat. Some National League teams got to play big-boy baseball with nine legit-ish batters. It was around the time when people started to wonder about a suspicious number of home runs being hit.

It should also conjure up that Larry Walker, the greatest Canadian batter, had an MVP season for the ages. And he lost Canada’s Athlete of the Year award to a Formula One race car.7

1997 vs. 2024: same but different

Imagine that Jordan Q. Fan had a… Hot Tub Time Machine … to let them watch the 1997 iteration through their 2024 eyes so they could track slight-but-telling differences.

Each ’97 team scores about 1 more run every 3 games. That is while pitchers post a whopping .175 / .176 on-base/slugging slash.8 Like Moe Szyslak at the bachelor auction, they might be wondering, how long do we have to stand in the batter’s box, this is so humiliatin’.
More doubles and triples ‘touch green’ out of outfielders’ reach. It adds up to one extra multi-bagger about every 2½ games. There are still about eight concrete-donut stadiums and domes with artificial turf.
The player stats printed every Sunday or Monday in tiny type in a ‘newspaper’ show almost thrice as many individuals with a 40-double season (19-7). That great pollinator play, the triple, occurs more frequently. In 2024, six batters had 8 or more triples, but 13 did in 1997.
The No. 1 triplist in ’97 and the co-leaders in ’24 tallied 14. The outright ’97 leader is Delino DeShields, a lefty-swinging middle infielder. His listed weight is five pounds more than ’24 co-champion triplist Corbin Carroll, but the other three 2024 batters with double-digit triples are all listed at least 6-1 and 200 pounds.
Jordan Q. Fan sees home runs less frequently in their ’97 wayback-ing. They might have a greater sense of an-tic-i-pation of who might hit one.

That iteration has more individual 40-homer dudes (12 to 4) and more batters crossing the 30-tater threshold (31-23). And that’s with two fewer teams and only 46.667 percent as many ‘DH Days’ available to whoever makes up a lineup card.
For every 100 plate appearances, about 5 more end with a batted ball in play. That accretion would build up with the more baseball that JQF watches. The difference is almost entirely accounted for by the different strikeout rates (22.58 per 100 PAs vs. 17.054).

The point is, while many extra batted balls result in predictable outs, those still involve more action and teamwork than strikeouts. Any dearth of physical action can be death for engagement.

Gameplay issues are also magnified when fans are dubious that a sports organization is pulling out every stop to produce a winning effort. That is also baked in the game, and a glamorous World Series matchup cannot gloss over it.

iv. Meet The Howevers

In any show, there are rarely-seen characters — The Howevers.

From an outsider’s point of view, MLB is tacks closer to forms of the New Denialism regarding climate. It comes out in bad-faith false rationalizations. There have always been (insert weather event here). Good-faith counter-programming is catching up. A progressive strategy usually wins out, eventually, against negatory actions.

So here it is: rainfall from Hurricane Milton, which tore the roof off the Rays’ stadium, was intensified 20-30 percent due to human-caused climate change.9

Baseball followers are inundated — soaked — with incrementalism. They can take a mental picture when it is reported that baseballs fly 5 percent farther, or less far. This is baked into the game, and the game on top of it — okay, thanks Tips, we all saw Moneyball. Without even getting into causes and effects, since smarter people are trying to figure out those, some symptoms that show up in the stats.

One illustration from three years ago drove it home personally.

v. Funny game, sunny game… sweaty game

On the U.S. Fourth of July weekend in 2021, the L.A. Dodgers visited the Washington Nationals. It was one of those incredibly unnecessary regular-season series between opposite-coast teams.

Across three games, Dodgers batters absorbed five HBP, or plunkings.10 Two were to the head area.

One of the plunked was Justin Turner, a righty batter in the top-5 of active players at takin’ one for his team.11 A cut fastball that got away from Nationals’ Wander Suero ricocheted off Turner’s shoulder to his head. The images of Turner shaking it off connected with an understanding that Washington, D.C., a metropolis built on a swamp, gets soupy-humid in July.

Suero had to keep his pitching hand dry while perspiring in 29C heat, plus the humidity. It raised questions about how the sport is going to be played well as extreme weather events increase in force and frequency. Baseball is a hand-eye coordination game. Both batters’ timing and pitchers’ durability are affected when rainy days cancel or interrupt playing dates. It puts the absurdity to MLB’s demand all 30 teams have to play everyone each season, even if it is for just a single one-off three-game series.

Sweat is also a problem. If you read David Foster Wallace’s essay “String Theory,” he pointed out how television conceals that tennis is incredibly sweaty. Tennis pros get to ventilate: bare arms and dresses for female-identified players. The fellows get loose shirts and shorts.

Baseball uniforms are form-fitting. They are increasingly likely to be a darker color, due to DLI — the Different Laundry Imperative. Pitchers perspire a lot as they crank up max-velo efforts. The catcher has to sink into a squat for about 130 or 140 pitches under a mask.

The three pitches that hit Dodgers batters are all above 90 mph. And every time one had to wonder about the challenges pitchers face keeping their hands dry. They have the rosin bag for that.

vi. This year in baseball, climate change, low-effort teams, and you

Does anyone track climate change-affected events in MLB over a year?

This season has been noteworthy for two force multipliers MLB will have to address. One is climate change. The other, and more ongoing, is a de facto re-alignment between most of the coastal teams grouped in either of the four East and West divisions, and the two Mediocrity Central divisions. All without the release valve of soccer-style Promotion / Relegation.

Please consider:

The World Series will not include AL Central or NL Central teams for the eighth season in a row since the Chicago Cubs-Cleveland classic in 2016.12
The Cubs and Cardinals are the only Central teams in the top half of team payroll.13 The Mets (No. 1 payroll), Yankees (No. 2), and Dodgers (No. 5) all made it to the pennant playoffs, the penultimate stage of the World Series playdowns. It turns out that investing in player talent actually pays off!

It is as if this has been true for a while. Like, since Connie Mack assembled his “$100,000 Infield” that led the Philly A’s to World Series titles just before the First World War.
Central teams accounted for eight of the 13 lowest payrolls. They included the division-winning Milwaukee Brewers (No. 21) and Cleveland Guardians (No. 23).

Is either going to win a league pennant or World Series this season? No.

Did either rate in the top half in MLB attendance? No. The Brewers were 16th and the Guardians were 20th. Better give them more stadium subsidies. That will win back their public who supports teams and athletes — D1 women’s basketball, college football, MLS, whatever — who can win a championship of consequence.14
The Chicago White Sox (AL Central) tallied a modern-record 121 losses, and a top front-office exec admitted they expected to lose between 105 and 110 games.15 The good news? Octogenarian principal partner, or OPP, Jerry Reinsdorf is in “active discussion” to sell the White Sox to a group led by Dave Stewart, the former MLB Players’ Association official, and World Series MVP-winning pitcher.16
The Angels (63 wins, 99 losses), Marlins (62-100), and Rockies (61-101) also played sub-.400 ball. Only the Dodgers notched wins at a north-of-.600 clip, which, while unprovable, suggests the big teams know pushing for a 100-win season ain’t worth it.
The Tigers and Royals built their playoff records mostly on the margin of having 13 games apiece against the White Sox. They were a combined 20-4 vs. Chicago. The first team out, the Seattle Mariners, was 6-1 vs. Chicago. Their right to a complaint loses some juice since they were 1-5 against the Tigers. But why do teams with such variance in strength-of-schedule compete for the same playoff slots?

Those Tigers and Royals tied for the final two wild-card slots with 86-76 records. Both advanced to the ‘eighth-finals’ in the playoffs. It was fun, but at the same time, the Tigers and Royals’ winning percentages were .510 and .493 once their head-to-heads and games vs. the White Sox are cancelled out. There is a certain bent appeal when this happens — the 1973 Mets — but it’s more fun when it’s a total anomaly as opposed to something programmed to happen.
Heat is big bad… oh hi there, John Fisher. The Athletics franchise pressed on to move from temperate Oakland to a provisional home in significantly more arid Sacramento. Astoundingly, the ironically named Sutter Health Park is being converted to turf, to spare the grass the beating from an MLB and AAA-level MiLB team sharing it.

What about the health of the sports humans who play on it? Super-agent Scott Boras recently said, “(The turf) just releases heat, and you get up into 120-130 degrees in your shoes because you’re absorbing that heat.”17 He also pointed out ballplayers need to “get work in” during the hottest parts of the days to keep muscles loose and timing sharp. What happens to that?

More like Shudder Health Park, amirite?
The start time of the do-or-done Tigers-Guardians playoff game on Oct. 12 was moved up seven hours due to the threat of inclement weather. That was a 10:08 a.m. first pitch for the West Coast audience who were either watching College Gameday and the English Premier League.
The Marlins, Pirates, and Rockies completed 30 seasons of playing in five-team subdivisions without a single first-place finish.18 The Marlins (NL East) and Pirates (NL Central) each had bottom-5 payrolls. The Rockies (NL West) were in the middle of the payroll table.19

Twenty-two teams played in the same city during the old first-past-the-post four-division era from 1969 till ’93. Every one of captured a mini-pennant, or division flag, at least once.
Oh, and a hurricane shredded the roof of the Rays park.

The upshot is this space thrives on ideas to renovate a restaurant it does not own, and spend hundreds of millions of dollars it does not have. Major League Baseball will have to adapt. It has shown it can.

The collective agreement with the MLBPA expires Dec. 1, 2026, for the record. Any re-alignment must be bargained. Of course, whether it is a pandemic or extreme weather, sometimes MLB, the players’ association, and the teams act fast.

In 2020, due to COVID-19, MLB regionalized into Central, East, and West groupings to have a facsimile regular season. It re-grouped into the AL and NL for a temporarily enlarged World Series tournament.

vii. A three-division pitch

Initially, the curiosity was trying to imagine this season’s standings without the all-time-bad White Sox and two 100-loss expansion cousins. Like a classic Dave Tesh poem, it become something else. Basically, while the New York, New York, El Lay playoffs are great… there is a real pickle with the unroofed Rays, unrooted Athletics, and ideally de-Reinsdorfed White Sox.

The elevator pitch is straightforward. Few people under the age of 50 are latched to the AL/NL league lines. A casual, newcomer fan might even wonder why the Mets and Yankees are not playing in the penultimate stage of October baseball. There also may be too many MLB teams.

However, under cover of COVID-19, MLB hostilely acquired MiLB in 2020-21. If North American team sports ever was to convert to Promotion and Relegation, baseball is the best poised to do so. Sure, the NBA has its G League, but AAA baseball teams win on time in the market. The International League is 17 years older than the American League, which in turn is only a couple years older than the Pacific Coast League.

So, the idea is to have 28 teams in three larger divisions.

Nine apiece in the East and West, and 10 in the Central. There can still be division titles and wild cards, and pennants for being at least the second-best playoff team.

Teams who win a sub-Series championship can still hang a banner, of some kind. Either way, it doesn’t matter, and as noted sitcom dad Steven Keaton once said, it will confuse the Russians.

For grins, 27 teams and a ghost 28th team called Züm are included in the table, listed by win totals (regseason and playoffs) through Oct. 15.

Who is the Züm team? It is Züm kind of thrown-together roster drawn from the White Sox, Marlins, and Rockies. There is Züm hope they exceed the Züm of their parts. They could be Züm team from Züm place anywhere in the United States. Call them the Denver Zümpers.

Let’s open this to questions. You, and maybe a few more.

What is the point of this blue-sky thinking?

This reduces cross-continent travel and means every team plays in their time zone more frequently. Ballplayers’ sleep hygiene and rest-recovery time could improve, offsetting their heat-’n’-humidity exposure in the dog days of July and August. This is not even a particularly new idea.

Bill Lee talked about this in The Wrong Stuff, although saying, “Cocaine sprinkled over Wheaties is becoming the new breakfast of champions” is a wordy way to say sleep hygiene matters.20

Having more games at fixed times will also be part of managing the transition from RSNs to self-produced telecasts. Jordan Q. Fan does not have to explain to their baseball-curious daughter, son, nephew, or niece why the ballgame will not start until long after they have to go to bed.

Sarcastically, the TV pitch probably will do better than the pro-player, pro-planet pitch. Whatever, it has a Catch Da Taste rhythm.

How division-heavy is the schedule for East and West teams?

Each East and West team would play a minimum of 100 divisional games. Each has 36 against Central teams — six-games season series against six opponents. That allows for some opposite-coast matchups. It has enough elasticity for a 150-game to 162-game format. East opponents would have no more than three West opponents, and vice-versa, in a season.

Follow-up: but how would those six opponents be decided?

The answer to this should be an email or a conference call between the teams. I am just a Bad Idea Jeans Man.

How are 100 divisional games spread across eight opponents?

Twelve-game season series against a half-dozen counterparts. Plus two more games apiece, against two ‘protected rivals.’ Off the top of my head, there would be some natural troikas.

East: Rays-Red Sox-Yankees; Blue Jays-Phillies-Mets; Atlanta-Nationals-Orioles;
West: Dodgers-Giants-Padres; Astros-Diamondbacks-Rangers; Angels-Athletics-Mariners.

Talk about the potential for college football-style three-way rivalry trophies.

How divisional-heavy is the schedule for Central teams?

Eight of the 10 Central teams would play 66 inter-divisional games. Two would only play 60, which can be made up with extra head-to-head games. The rest of the schedule is filled out with divisional games. An even number of teams allows each team to play a natural rival, i.e., Cubs-Cardinals, slightly more often than their other Central counterparts. This prioritizes geographical rivalries.

Suppose that a fan of an AL Central or NL Central team doesn’t mind that the World Series is unattainable as long as they get some 90-win seasons once in a while, and some good seasons from a star before he is traded to one of the coasts?

That Lowered Expectations sport model has already been around baseball for generations. It often ends with a lowered guard against a new chairman who comes in promising this, that, and the other. The other tends to be moving the team to another town.

Tro mig, trust me, I am a Xennial from southeastern Ontario, 2½ hours from Toronto, and 3½ from Montréal. That meant being around a lot of Expos fans and a surprising amount of Athletics fans, since they were a smart pickup for antagonizing Jays fans from 1989 to ’92.21

The unwritten part is that most fans can only bear so much knowing how it works. It is wrong to have to know their beloveds will only going to wear the 1990s Montreal Expos tricolore or Moneyball-era and post-Moneyball Athletics green and gold. Thankfully, MLB teams are signing cornerstone talents to longer deals, but it is worrisome.

An intentionally low-payroll team creates Cope in all the wrong places. It means accepting lefthanded compliments about how the team is “Expos U” since it can achieve a modicum of success with heavier player turnover than a college football team was saving them. No! The proper question is to bake a ‘responsibility pie’ for the heavy turnover. Likewise, why were the Moneyball-era Athletics a poor team when the economics of MLB are scaled up to the level of a billionaires-only club?

Outside of the 140-some-years-old Cardinals and Cubs, the AL Central and NL Central teams have trace elements of Exposdom. The one difference is location, language and actually having a ballpark built some time in the 1990s.

What about intercoastal rivalries?

Well, nine teams in the East, and nine in the West, creates possibility.

Taking a note from the Canada and U.S. women’s hockey national teams, now every team can market their coast-hopping Rivalry Series. Notionally, there would be protected rivals playing a ‘best of seven’ season series every year. Something to look forward, and all sorts of dumb politician side bets. You could probably pair off the teams, but arguably, trophies can be created!

Jackie Robinson Cup: Dodgers-Yankees
Willie Mays Trophy: Giants-Mets
Ted Williams Trophy: Padres-Red Sox
Connie Mack Cup: Athletics-Phillies
Cascadia Cup: Mariners-Blue Jays
’98 Classic: Diamondbacks-Rays
Henry Aaron Sledgehammer: Astros-Atlanta
Frank Robinson Giant Gavel: Angels-Orioles
The Bush Boot: Rangers-Nationals

Just throwing ideas out there, eh? If a team gets relegated, the trophy is kept or defaulted.

How often would West teams come East, and vice-versa?

Probably no more than 20 games per season. That means a max of 10 games played three time zones from home. The Blue Jays had 18 games in the Pacific time zone this season.

The rule of thirds points that an East team would have their Rivalry Series opponent. In the NFL, teams have two conference opponents based on divisional finish during the season prior. This is known as a ‘first-place schedule,’ or ‘second-place schedule.’ That idea could be used to determine other opponents, but there are still four Central opponents who aren’t booked, and burn less jet fuel.

How is this remarkable system fan-friendly?

It means fewer opponents. Eight or nine division counterparts; 8 or 9 inter-division opponents, keep MLB teams under 20. This is key for a mentally healthy, mindful fandom.

A bit of untested folk theory is that fans can only get amped about so many opponents. The optimal number is around 18 to the low-ish 20s.

The NBA and NHL lost sight of this in the late 1980s and ’90s. And they are the two sports where the regular season does not matter. Baseball’s history and character mean the regular season has to keep some shape and integrity.

Starting in 2023, MLB in its infinite wisdom decided everyone should play everyone. It reeks of, in TV-making parlance, stunt casting. The novelty of a Reds-Blue Jays or Rockies-Orioles series will wear thin, especially if climate change-goosed storms interrupt play and — especially this! — pitcher usage.

Twenty-nine opponents in a 162-game season is too much. What does almost every hockey fan say? I want to see my (Team Name Here) play their rivals more often. They are aware of the opportunity cost buried in the one annual visit from a team with a price-of-admission performer.

The 18-to-20 theory is backed up with examples:

An NFL team, which plays once per week, can face a highly unlikely max of 18 opponents in a season. The 17-game sked includes 14 teams — three division counterparts, and 11 other teams. Conceivably, a team could play the wild-card weekend and go to the Super Bowl without meeting someone it already played.
Major domestic footy leagues in Europe — the English Premier League, Bundesliga, Ligue 1, La Liga, and Serie A — all have 18 to 20 teams, with a Pro/Rel release valve.

A soccer team will play other teams in, say, the Champions League, or a Cup competition, but those games get a unique emphasis. Fans are given something to distinguish it.
Other Pretty Good Footy leagues — the Netherlands’ Eredivisie, Turkey’s Süper Lig, the Danish Superliga, and Sweden’s Allsvenskan, contain between 14 and 20 teams in their top flights. There is no false hope for those sports’ equivalent of the Ottawa Senators.
Junior hockey in North America! The top five leagues all range in size from 16 to 22 teams.22
No U.S. college football conference has grown past 18 teams. That will happen sooner than you think.

More compact competition helps in an attention economy.

So 28 teams in 3 divisions? Why not 4, which divides equally into 28?

The rubdown with that is this is what the best framework for where the MLB/MiLB working agreement evolves into a Pro / Rel system. Three divisions, that stands the gap from the areas that have fewer people.

There is no breath-holding that MLB would figgur it out and go in this direction. However, the current teams are pretty much arranged into three geographic regions: the west coast/Southwest, the Midwest and Texas, and the east coast with a charter flight over to Toronto.

Getting to true Central-East-West geographical balance requires some fluidity and plasticity of which teams are in the ‘top flight’ each season. Economic balance is not happening, since salary caps are bad and terrible.

Each current MLB city north of the 27th Parallel should keep its team. It would be unfair to start moving those clustered MLB logos in a way that suggests a city should lose their team. They must have their team. They must also know there are truth and consequences for a principal partner such as Reinsdorf with the White Sox, and Pirates chairman Bob Nutting, who clearly are not trying.

So if there is promotion and relegation between MLB and AAA-level MiLB teams, how does the farm system and 40-man rosters still work?

Please do not threaten us woke ball fans with a good time.

Why not just stay the course?

Basics of game theory — eventually everyone finds the cheat code — suggests MLB is due for a reformat. This year marked 30 complete seasons with a two-league, six-division, wild card format. It has outlasted the 25-season run of the four-division era.

And, remember, the human brain’s neuro-plasticity is evolving. It will probably make less and less sense for leagues to ‘run it back’ with same format. Changing it up for the sake of change will be needed.

All in all, though, this was just about getting out in front of the sure path to the dumbest timeline. That is where MLB just copies the NFL. Expansion to 32 and eight divisions of four. Playing .475 ball, or a 77-85 record across a 162-game season, earns a division championship. As Shorsey would say, sooooo dumb.

While this was wordy, it is one idea for an alternative that vies to be reflective of player health, climate change, and attention spans. If it was a swing for the downs instead of solid contact, that is on me, but hopefully this was fun.

Enfin! (Conclusion.)

One should be actively against the subdividing of pro sports, and the acceptance that some teams are actively disinterested in trying to be as competitive as possible every year. There also needs to be an openness that (i) climate change is here for us and (ii) doing sports will be even more important as its effects become more noticeable. So, clean air, blue skies, full water bottles, and down with teams that lose on purpose to get half-good!

This was a joy to write; hopefully that came through.

Please remember to be kind — especially to yourself.

neatefreaksports

Discussion about this post