My Realignment Plan

This ridiculous talk of baseball realignment just won't die.  In fact, new details of the stupid plan are coming out everyday.  The latest was today's announcement of how they would set up the schedule.  84 games against your league, 78 against the other league.  Only 84 games against your own league?!  Seriously?  That's six per opponent.  Or, one series at home and one series on the road.  That's simply unacceptable.

Anyway, even after writing last night's post, I got to thinking about a way to do this where it actually made some semblance of sense.  And I kept coming back to expansion rather than simply realignment.  Add two teams to the American League.  That gives you 16 in each.  Then you can go to four divisions of four, just like football.  And you get your unnecessary fifth playoff team by keeping the wild card.  The top three division winners are the top three seeds in the playoffs, while the fourth division winner plays the wild card.  It doesn't matter if they're in the same division or not.

The two teams that I'm adding are in Montreal and Indianapolis.  I know what you're thinking.  "Why Montreal?"  Well, ever since the Mets were created to replace the Giants and Dodgers in New York, every city that's lost its team eventually got a new one.  Since this is my hypothetical expansion, I'm following that same principle and putting a team back in Montreal.  Indy gets the other team because it's the largest market in the country that doesn't have a Major League team (Orlando doesn't count, since it technically has the Rays).  Indianapolis would also have a nice little built-in natural rivalry with the White Sox.

The division breakdown would look something like this:

AMERICAN LEAGUE
East-Baltimore Orioles, Boston Red Sux, New York Yankees, Tampa Bay Rays
North-Cleveland Indians, Detroit Tigers, Montreal Saints, Toronto Blue Jays
Central-Chicago White Sox, Indianapolis Racers, Kansas City Royals, Minnesota Twins
West-Los Angeles Angels, Oakland Athletics, Seattle Mariners, Texas Rangers

NATIONAL LEAGUE
East-New York Mets, Philadelphia Phillies, Pittsburgh Pirates, Washington Nationals
Central-Chicago Cubs, Colorado Rockies, Milwaukee Brewers, St. Louis Cardinals
South-Atlanta Braves, Cincinnati Reds, Florida Marlins, Houston Astros
West-Arizona Diamondbacks, Los Angeles Dodgers, San Diego Padres, San Francisco Giants

My schedule even makes a lot more sense than the one they're proposing.  Instead of 18, now you play 19 games against everybody else in your division (57 games).  Interleague play is still 18 games.  Like now, you play six against your natural rival (Mets-Yankees, Cubs-White Sox, Dodgers-Angels, etc.).  If you don't have a natural rival, you're assigned one for the purpose of scheduling.  The other 12 interleague games are one series against each of the four teams in a predetermined division (if it's your rival's division, you play one team from a different division).  The other 90 games are against the other 12 teams in your league.  You play four of them (one division) nine times and the other eight teams either six (five teams) or seven times (three teams).  Those matchups obviously rotate every year.

Now, doesn't my system make a whole lot more sense than everything Bud and Co. are proposing?  I'm just saying.