Introduction
American sports leagues are built upon several assumptions which many fans take for granted, and in many cases regard as sacred. Some of these assumptions are: The leagues have to be fair and balanced. The leagues have to be of similar size, if not identical size. Leagues must follow the same rules. Teams must play a large number of games against other teams within their league, if not all of their games. All games played should have equal value.
These assumptions, among others, have created the landscape of American sports. But you can violate many if not all of these assumptions while maintaining a compelling league. One which may, in fact, be more fair and lead to a superior product with more exciting outcomes. Here, I will try to dismantle the current structure of major league baseball and create a new system whereby both fans and teams may have a more equitable, exciting, and compelling end product. Some of the rule changes I will propose are wordy, but I would argue none of them are very complicated. I believe any fan would be able to easily follow and understand the end product just as well as they follow and understand the current major league product.
I want to stress that none of the rules I will be proposing will change the game of baseball. None of these rules will impact balls and strikes, base hits, defense, or anything else. The DH is irrelevant, as are shifting, robo umps, drafting, and instant replay. The rules I am proposing are entirely limited to the overall STRUCTURE of the league. Who plays who, who makes the postseason, and things of that nature.
Creating a new type of league.
In order to form a new structure, we must demolish the existing structure. The American League and its three corresponding divisions will no longer exist. Neither will the National League and its three corresponding divisions. We are now left with 30 independent teams.
American sports leagues, up to this point, have had two pretty significant assumptions. First, every team must be in a league. Which is an assumption that I will maintain. Second, every team can only be in one league. Well, my rules will most certainly cast aside that second point.
Rather than an American League and a National League, there will be a Standard League and a Champions League. No, I am not married to these names. You can refer to them however you’d like. The name is largely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.
The Standard League will contain all 30 teams. The Champions League will be a little more complicated. Before I get into the details, I want to briefly cover what the Champions League will mean:
Teams in the Champions League will have an easier path to the postseason.
The Champions League will have preferential placement in the postseason.
Champions League games will have more valuable TV time slots and dates during the season.
Now, to get into the specifics.
Why a Champions League?
Professional athletes get paid very large sums of money, and they represent a large fraction of the expenses of a professional sports franchise. As such, when a team is not expected to perform well in a given season, the team faces a strong and persistent incentive to cut their losses via freezing spending and/or trading away existing contracts. Then, when the team is expected to perform well again, spending may increase to support the expected change in performance. This is a logical and rational response to the game environment, especially in a league like Major League Baseball which, in addition to this monetary incentive, also ties draft picks to the win/loss record. So, not only can a team save money by creating an inferior product, but they can be rewarded with increasing numbers of superior and low cost player talent.
The Champions League format aims to deter this behavior by punishing teams who underperform for a long period of time. In other words, the Champions League represents all of the teams that have, at least in terms of game results, tried to win over the prior five seasons.
Teams that consistently win are rewarded.
A team will be in the Champions League if it has
Won at least 84 games in two of the past three seasons.
Won at least 84 games in three of the past five seasons.
That is it. If you win 84 games, you have a qualifying season. If you win 84 games in two out of three or three out of five seasons, you’re in.
So, for example, from 2011 to 2014 the Astros won 56, 55, 51, and 70 games respectively. In 2015, the Astros won 86 games, which was sufficient to win a slot in the AL Wild Card, where they defeated the Yankees. The Yankees had won 97, 95, 85, 84, and 87 wins in each of those five seasons, respectively.
The Astros tanking during the 2011 through 2014 seasons would have eliminated them from the Champions League for this 2015 season. Meanwhile, the Yankees were definite members of the Champions league. I have not yet explained the exact benefit of the Champions League, but suffice it to say, the goal is to stop teams like the 2015 Astros from having an easy ride into the postseason. Furthermore, the 2016 Astros would have not been in the Champions League, either, as a result of their ongoing punishment for tanking. However, because the Astros won 84 games in 2016 giving them two qualified seasons in a row, the 2017 Astros would have indeed been members of the Champions League. As would each Astros team in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023.
As you see, even if the Astros began tanking today, the fact that they had tried to win between 2015 and 2021 would carry a benefit for several seasons into the future. Long enough for a team to retool, for example. Or to wait out unlucky or unfortunate seasons. But once that carry over effect has expired, a losing team will be punished, and the longer they lose, the more the punishment will carry over. To a maximum of two seasons.
The goal is to incentivize teams who are on the cusp of 84 wins to spend more money and resources winning games so they stay in the Champions League and keep the benefits thereof. The increased incentive will hopefully create a more competitive league, which will in turn be more fun for the fans of the sport.
How many teams are in the Champions League?
It might not be immediately obvious how many teams will be in the Champions League merely by looking at these rules. From 2010 through 2022 you have 16, 17, 11, 14, 15, 17, 15, 18, 16, 12, 16, 13, and 14 teams in the Champions League, respectively. So, in eight of the seasons you have at least half of the teams in the Champions League, an average of 14.9 teams per season.
The Dual League Season.
Every team is in the Standard League. Only qualified teams are in the Champions League. You may be thinking how this could work. Here is how.
Any series that begins on a Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday is a Standard League series. Any Series that ends on a Friday, Saturday, or Sunday is a Champion’s League series. This means that Thursday games are a wild card, where sometimes it is a weekday game and sometimes it is a weekend game. Judging by past seasons, teams average 97.07 weekend games versus 64.92 weekday games. If these rules were implemented, you could set a firm 97 Champion League games versus 65 Standard games.
All teams will play all games in both the Standard League and the Champions League, so all teams will still play 162 games. However, members of the Champions League get to benefit from their status, while non-members merely gain the wins and losses in their combined league standings at the end of the year.
This means that every week every team will play multiple games in each league. Sometimes 2, sometimes 4, per league. Since they are different leagues, they each have different standings. This is where things can get very fun for both the team and the fans.
First, I will state the obvious. Under this format, weekend games are simply more valuable than weekday games. They also fall into their own schedule, with their own standings. Teams can aim to pack the stadiums full on the weekend, with both the players and fans knowing the games are worth more. This could increase fan engagement, and make rooting for teams more fun.
Also, since weekend games are worth more, you can try to stack your lineup such that your best pitchers pitch on the weekend, your best hitters hit on the weekend, etc. On the flip side, since there are in effect two simultaneous, much shorter seasons going on, if a team gets off to a rough start in one league, they can shift their focus to the other.
For example, say a team wins 8 of their first 10 weekday games but loses 7 of their first 10 weekend games. Perhaps they could shift their focus to weekday games, where they could stack their starting pitchers to pitch during the week instead of on the weekend, doubling down on their Standard League strength and powering their way to a postseason berth in that manner.
When you give teams more ways to make the postseason, you add layers of intrigue that fans can follow throughout the course of the season, keeping more people engaged, more people watching and attending games, and overall fan excitement high.
Postseason Selection.
You may be wondering how you select postseason teams from two leagues. This is, again, relatively simple, although perhaps the most involved aspect of the dual league season.
Of course, there are many ways you can go about doing this, and you may have your own opinion on the matter. But, assuming we keep with MLB’s current 10 postseason team format, I propose the following:
You have three standings. First, the Champion’s League, second the Standard League, and third is the combined win total between both Champions League and the Standard league.
The two teams with the highest combined win total enter the postseason with the top two seeds. If you win the most games, you make the postseason.
Next, you take the remaining top 6 qualified teams in the Champions League. The bottom 2 teams of these six must play a wild card game to advance.
Finally, you take the remaining top 2 teams from the Standard League. These two teams must compete with the two lowest members of the Champions League in wild card games.
Comparing the Dual League Season to the Standard Season
I have taken data from 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2021. The past five years, excluding the shortened 2020 season. Of these seasons, 59 teams have qualified for the Champions League while 61 have not. Of the 59 teams that have qualified for the Champions League, in real life 26 of the teams have made the postseason. In the selection process I have outlined above, this jumps to 33. Nearly 56% of the Champions League teams would have made the postseason.
Now looking at the 61 teams that were not in the Champions League, in real life 14 of these teams made the postseason, whereas under the rules I have outlined above this number drops to 7.
| The Impact of a Champions League on the teams Selected for the Postseason | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Champions League (59 teams) | Not In Champions League (61 teams) | |||
| In Postseason | Fraction of League | In Postseason | Fraction of League | |
| Standard Season (aka real life) | ||||
| Dual League Season | ||||
So, with these rules, on average, 1.75 teams are penalized per season, and their penalty is losing their position in the postseason. Furthermore, teams that are not in the Champions League only have access to four slots in the 10 team postseason, and while two of those slots are top seeds in the postseason, the other two are guaranteed wild card slots.
Meanwhile, teams in the Champions League have access to all 10 postseason slots.
In Summary.
I propose a radical change to the structure of Major League Baseball: getting rid of the National and American league and replacing them with the Champions League and the Standard League. This would be a dual league structure, where every team plays games in both leagues, but only qualified members of the Champions League get to gain the benefits of that league. The primary benefit being a dramatically increased chance to make the postseason, along with significantly better odds to avoid the wildcard play in game.
This dual league structure gives teams more ways to make the postseason, and a strong incentive to maintain their status within the Champions League by ensuring a minimum of 84 wins every season. As a result, teams that are stuck in the dreaded “good enough to have a winning record, but not good enough to make the postseason” are regularly rewarded for their attempts to make a winning team, while at the same time providing a disincentive to push teams away teams from tanking for prolonged periods of time. One or two seasons to refresh might be deemed acceptable, but 3+ seasons would reset their Champions League status and create an uphill battle to make the postseason on the other end of their rebuild.
This is part I of a series of articles and essays on this topic. How many parts there may end up being is unknown, and subject to temperament. I will cross link each new part, however this will remain the primary source.