How Would You Reconstruct MLB From Scratch?
February 17, 2012 by Arne Christensen · 3 Comments
Here’s a hypothetical question: If you could restart MLB from scratch, how many teams would you have, and where would you put them? I mean, would you maintain all 30 teams, in each of the 30 places they currently call home, or would you construct a 28-team league, a 26-team league, a 32-team league? Would you put more teams in Texas and the Southeast, and take them out of the Northeast and Great Lakes regions? Comments welcome.
To start, there’s this response from Bill Miller, blogging at the On Deck Circle : I would reduce the number of teams from 30 down to 24 (two leagues, two divisions each with six teams in each division.)
I would move some of the franchises from the smaller markets (who are always crying about being poor) to larger markets that could actually support a team, but don’t already have one. The Braves, for example are the only regional team (outside of Florida) in the southeast, which makes no sense to me considering the huge population growth in this area over the past couple of decades.
Okay, but as far as small markets go, what improvements would you make in the south? What would be better than Cincinnati or Milwaukee, which are two of the smallest markets? It’s not like there are a whole lot of southern metropolises bigger than those begging for baseball. I’m just curious if you had markets in mind.
I just recently wrote an article talking about how I would reconstruct the playoff system, and I think it ties in nicely with this question. My proposal is to essentially split the league into a Division 1 which can compete for the World Series, and a Division 2, which only competes for the right to move up to Div 1 the following season. This would allow more teams to be competitive and play for something, possibly driving up attendance in some of the markets of the weaker teams. My proposal, which can be seen in its entirety here, http://rsnalberta.blogspot.com/2012/01/radical-baseball-changes.html , also addresses how expansion could be accomplished 1 or more teams at a time, without affecting the scheduling or having to worry about an odd number of teams in a given league or division.
Eliminate minor league ownership by major league franchises, and turn MLB into a English Premier league relegation/promotion system.