If You're Having a Good Day, Don't Read This Because You Will Get Pissed.

We're talking radical re-alignment in baseball.

According to Tom Verducci of SI.com, Bud Selig is planning on bringing more of his genius to the game we love, and he's desperately trying to crap on.  According to Verducci, Selig formed "a 14-person 'special committee for on-field matters' four months ago, he promised that all topics would be in play and 'there are no sacred cows.'"

One such "sacred cow" is divisional alignment.  Verducci says, "The committee already has made good on Selig's promise by discussing a radical form of "floating" realignment in which teams would not be fixed to a division, but free to change divisions from year-to-year based on geography, payroll and their plans to contend or not."

Verducci uses an insider to detail what is meant by this.  Verducci says, "One example of floating realignment, according to one insider, would work this way: Cleveland, which is rebuilding with a reduced payroll, could opt to leave the AL Central to play in the AL East. The Indians would benefit from an unbalanced schedule that would give them a total of 18 lucrative home dates against the Yankees and Red Sox instead of their current eight. A small or mid-market contender, such as Tampa Bay or Baltimore, could move to the AL Central to get a better crack at postseason play instead of continually fighting against the mega-payrolls of New York and Boston."  Verducci also mentions that teams could potentially switch divisions during the season, and thus changing the number of teams in a division.


MY REACTION:

This may very well be the dumbest idea I have ever heard in my life.  I was pissed when they changed the all-star game, to "mean something".  I am so happy that the world series home field advantage is now determined by mandated all-stars on teams who won't even sniff the world series.  But to me, this re-alignment idea is beyond idiotic...

There are things here I find ludicrous.  First, the fact that teams can determine which division they play in, if you can even call them divisions, based on whether or not they want to compete with the Yankees or Red Sox.  This is baseball's answers to giant payrolls?  I have an idea, how ABOUT A SALARY CAP.

In the article Verducci mentions how the NFL schedule is made based on final standings from the previous year. If Bud Selig is looking for NFL-like parity, then he needs to remember what the NFL has: non-guaranteed contracts for players, and a salary cap.  Yes, schedules change in the NFL based off how good teams were the year before, and if MLB wanted to do that, I'd be ok with it.  But that's not what we're talking about here.  We're talking about teams being able to move divisions to avoid competing against "richer" teams.  This is absurdity...

This is a reformation of baseball into a boxing title belt system.  Would leagues based on payroll the way boxing is based on weight classes?  What would happen the Pirates would win the under $50 million payroll division?  Would they then play the world series against the winner of the over $90 million payroll division?  If that wouldn't create the worst world series I don't know what would.

Or even better would everyone be in their own league, and get ranked like college football.  Given bowl games?  I mean seriously, how much hash was passed around that room for people to actually think that made some sense.  COME ON.

This may be the dumbest idea I've ever heard and to be honest, I'm so annoyed I can't even finish this post.  As a friend of mine from Boston put it.  "This idea is retahded"...