Baseball With Promotion and Relegation

North American sports and European sports are very different.  This isn't news to anybody, but there are several areas where those differences are very apparent.  Mainly, they're all about the regular season and don't really have playoffs.  In the North American sports, the playoffs are the most important part of the season.  Our playoffs determine the league champion.  In Europe, the most important games are the ones in your continental championships, your Champions League and Eurobasket.

But perhaps the biggest difference between European and American sports is that in Europe they have promotion and relegation.  The bottom teams in the top division drop into the second division, while the best teams in the second division replace them in the highest league.  This is one of FIFA's biggest frustrations with MLS. 

Of course, the way North American sports leagues are set up doesn't really allow for promotion and relegation.  That's something that foreigners, I think, don't really understand.  All of those different soccer teams in Europe are independent entities.  There's also very little difference in quality of play and skill level of the players between the top level and the next tier.  That's not true on this side of the pond.  In the North American leagues, the lower levels are true "minor" leagues.  Every team is affiliated with one of the major league teams, which pays the players' salaries, and that's how they fill out their roster.  It truly is a developmental system.  (And I'm not even gonna get into all the details about the billions of dollars involved in the distinction between "major" and "minor" league.  Or the draft, which is designed to help the bad teams by letting them pick first.)

Sometimes it's fun to think of what North American sports would be like if there was promotion and relegation.  It would've meant that the Pirates wouldn't have had 20 straight losing seasons.  Because they would've been relegated at least once before last season's playoff appearance.  It would also make going to games of losing teams worthwhile at the end of the season.  Because you'd be watching them fight to avoid relegation instead of playing out the string with a bunch of September call-ups.

The easiest sport to play out a promotion/relegation scenario is Baseball, which has the minor league structure in place.  Imagine if every year, the worst team in both the American and National Leagues was dropped down to Triple-A, while the winners of the International and Pacific Coast Leagues are moved up to the Majors the following year.  Same thing with Triple-A to Double-A and Double-A to High-A (those are the only three levels where Major League teams are required to have an affiliate). 

If this system were in place, the teams making the move in 2014 (it's impossible to project any other years since this is simply a hypothetical exercise) would be:

Promoted: Durham Bulls (International League), Omaha Storm Chasers (Pacific Coast League)
Relegated: Houston Astros (American League), Miami Marlins (National League)

The divisions for the promoted teams wouldn't be determined until the Major League season is over and the teams being relegated were known.  It could also be necessary to move teams between divisions if that's the best way to even things out geographically.  Fortunately, there wouldn't be a need for realignment this season.  Omaha would replace Houston in the AL West and Durham would replace Miami in the NL East.

Obviously something like this would never happen.  It would never even be considered.  The way North American pro sports are structured doesn't allow for it.  But you've gotta admit, sometimes it's fun to pretend that it could be.