The difficult issue of MLB realignment

Baseball has been considering the issue of realignment, chiefly because there are 6 teams in the National League Central and 4 teams in the American League West. All the other divisions have 5 teams. So if you go strictly by odds, a team in the AL West has a 1 in 4 shot to make the playoffs, while a team in the NL Central has a 1 in 6 shot to make the playoffs. I get that it doesn't seem fair. However, there is a lot more to it than just moving a team from the NL Central to the AL West.

First, the team that would make the most sense is the Houston Astros (28-48). If they moved to the AL West, no other teams would have to move around. Plus, it would still make some geographic sense, since they would then be in the same division as the Texas Rangers (40-36). Plus, it would clean up a lot of scheduling in interleague play, since divisions could simply be pitted against each other (although there are other issues realignment in general would bring up). Any other scenario, such as the Arizona Diamondbacks (42-34) moving to the American League, would likely require multiple teams switching divisions as a team from the NL Central would have to be shifted to the NL West to get all the divisions to 5 teams each.

However, the biggest issue with this sort of proposed realignment is that it would push both the American and National Leagues to 15 teams each. Since the start of interleague play in the late 1990s, it has been done only for a few weeks of the year. Since baseball is an everyday game, it follows that there would have to be interleague play throughout the season in this format.

There are multiple issues with this. First and foremost to me is the tradition of the game. I don't want my team, the World Champion San Francisco Giants (41-34), playing American League teams in the final week of the season while in the chase for a National League West Division title. It just doesn't seem right. Baseball has always been primarily about league play. When the games are magnified at the end of the regular season they should be at least be played within the same league, preferably within the same division (although this clearly isn't possible for every team in every game with most divisions having 5 teams).

And then there is the issue of the designated hitter. First off, I think the DH is a bad rule. It takes out a lot of strategy from baseball that I feel was meant to be in the game. Everyone in the field should have to hit (or be pinch-hit for) when his spot in the batting order comes up and everyone that hits should have to play the field (or be taken out of the game for a defensive replacement). Baseball should require an all around game, not just a one-dimensional game. Furthermore, it creates more strategic questions for managers, particularly late in close games, which benefits the integrity of the game.

Former Oakland Athletics (34-42) manager Bob Geren, who was recently fired, looked like he had never managed a National League style game before when the A's visited the Giants earlier this season, and yet this rarely would come up in a typical American League game. Like I said, this all should be part of the game, managers should be forced to make big decisions on a nightly basis. Former Chicago Cubs (30-44) and Diamondbacks first baseman and current D-Backs broadcaster Mark Grace put it well when he said the National League is where they play real baseball. I realize the DH may be hard to get rid of since there is a lot of money in that position and a lot of productive players, but it's something that should be done.

But I digress, although it was a fun digression. Not only is the tradition of playing within your league when the games take on more importance a huge deal, there is also the issue of having games being played under different rules down the stretch. What if an AL team had a division title on the line and had to clinch it in an NL park with no DH or vice versa? It just wouldn't seem right to not be playing under ordinary rules. There would likely have to be some uniformity with the rules if interleague play was to be spread out like this or it could cause some chaos. I'd just prefer it if the teams kept to their own leagues late in the season (as well as around the time of Opening Day) as I feel it would benefit the integrity of the game.

As you can see, it's not as simple as some would have you believe it would be to realign. I realize that mathematically, the current system isn't exactly fair to teams in the NL Central. But to fix it would require a major overhaul. I don't know how exactly that would be done or if it should even be attempted.