(11-21-2019 04:00 PM)Brookes Owl Wrote:  

(11-21-2019 01:47 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(11-21-2019 12:19 PM)Brookes Owl Wrote:  Who the **** is Bruce Schein and why should I listen to him?

He produces a talk show that airs on MLB Network.

Yeah, I know who he is (cuz Google) but what I was getting at is what has this guy done/said to make any of us take his proposal seriously. This feels like silly reddit-level bs.

Quote:I mentioned on this board previously that the reason plans like this can never fly -- and these are all variations on a "geographic realignment" trial balloon that Bud Selig floated about 10 years ago -- is that MLB has a rule that no club can be moved to the other league unless it consents. In other words, if you're an MLB owner, even if the other 29 clubs all vote to move your club to the other league, you can prevent the switch by saying no.

Assuming that a goal of geographic realignment is to get rid of the AL West mess that has 2 central time zone clubs playing in the same division with 3 pacific time zone clubs, then the absolute minimum number of clubs switching leagues is 5 if MLB expands to 32 teams, and 6 if they don't expand. Which means it's not going to happen.

This gets to my core question: What problem is being solved? Because I'm not sure team travel is in the top 5 or even 10. If the biggest challenge MLB faces is fan support, what does this do to significantly increase it?

It is a big issue for teams in the west. But, that's 8 out of 30 teams.

Selig's argument was: Organize divisions by time zone, put all the pacific/mountain teams in one division (8 teams), all the central teams in one division (8 teams), and the eastern teams into eastern divisions (7 teams each), and by playing more games in the division, local TV rights would be more valuable, in that every team would have more games televised in its own prime time, rather than west coast teams having so many road games starting at 4:30 or 5:30 local time and east coast teams having road games starting at 10:30 local time.

It's a moot point because any club can veto a league switch. It would be easy to get the A's, Angels, and Mariners to move to the NL with the other western teams, but it's difficult to even imagine three NL teams agreeing to move to the AL. IMO the Marlins would do it for the games against the Yankees and Red Sox, but I can't think of any other NL club that would agree to switch leagues.

OTOH, if the goal is to increase fan support, then finding a way to cut half an hour out of the average game time would do far more for fan interest than any shuffling of divisions and leagues. As would pouring more MLB money into youth baseball and softball, because adults are more likely to follow a sport they played as kids.