Realignment and More Interleague Play in Future for MLB?


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Lets begin with the nay sayers – Bud Selig, the commish, says “massive realignment isn’t on the horizon”. Massive, key word.

Union chief, Michael Weiner, told reporters that a realignment, heading towards a two league, 15 teams each structure (14 in the AL, 16 in the NL right now), with massive rescheduling of the regular season and the playoffs has a lot of appeal to the players.

The subjects on the table – Making it a 15-15 Majors, with 5 teams in each of the six divisions. Most likely to move? Houston Astros from the NL Central, the only division with six teams. Be it a one team change or some major re-shuffling, that remains to be seen.

With a 15-15 structure, comes the idea of more interleague games, throughout the entire season and not a concentrated period like we have now – making a fair schedule to all teams and a fair fight, between the same number of teams in each division. More interleague play means less DH games for AL teams, and there’s an idea to abolish the “position” entirely.

Weiner – If we were to reach agreement on an interleague schedule, would not greatly change the number of interleague-play games. So there haven’t been serious talks about modification to the DH rule.

Another subject on the table – expanding the playoffs, adding two Wild Cards in each league. The players, according to Weiner, see all those matters as one intertwined big objective. Bud Selig, right now, doesn’t look too impressed on making those changes. Any changes at all for that matter. I like it the way it is, he said. But he’s willing to keen an open mind if he could achieve larger objectives, whatever they may be. According to a lot of people, his goals and what’s best for Baseball are completely different.

According to the Union chief, even if those changes happen, whether be it all of them or just one of them (mostly suggesting that the playoff expansion might be the first and easiest to achieve), they won’t happen before the 2013 season.


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