Fairness in scheduling.

The Astros are moving to the American League next year.

All six divisions will have 5 teams.

While a number of people have called this change stupid and unnecessary, I have applauded the change.

For the first time in 15 years, Major League Baseball will have the opportunity to fix the horrendous misbalance that the current schedule has.  

When inter-league play was introduced, it basically ruined any possibility of symmetry in the schedule for teams within the same division because of two things, rivalry games and a misbalance in the number of teams in each division.  This was a fair compromise, though, as baseball wast trying to figure out some way to recover revenues lost after fan interest plummeted after the 1994 strike.  

The revenue situation in baseball has greatly improved, now, and a number of reports have come out over the last few days indicating that Major League Baseball is indeed looking to fix the unbalanced schedule by doing away with the guarantee of rivalry games and ensuring that every team in a division plays the same teams the same number of times over the course of the season.  

A while back I had outlined how this should look (here and here)...

• 6 games against each team from one division in the other league, 3 home and 3 away (30 games), with the division that you play being rotated each year.  
• 6 games against each team from in your league, but outside your division, 3 home and 3 away (totaling 60 games)
• 18 games against each team in your division, 9 home and 9 away (totaling 72 games)

It's beautifully rounds out to 162 games.  

What does this mean?  

Well first off, it means that the Cubs will not be guaranteed to play the White Sox every year.  It also means the Cardinals won't be able to beat up on the Royals every year and the Mets won't be forced to get clobbered by the Yankees and so on.  Besides, from what I've seen, the rivalry thing has started to lose its luster anyway, especially here in Chicago.  

That doesn't mean that baseball won't take a small attendance and revenue hit by eliminating these games every year...they will, but this hit isn't as large as it would have been just 5 years ago.  

If losing the rivalry games every year is still a concern, I did outline, in this post, a way to have rivalry games 2 out of 3 years (3 games against teams in two of the three divisions of the other league).  This isn't quite as fair, but might be a decent compromise.   

Personally, I have no problem with the BP Cup going away.  (stupid!  ugh!)

The biggest argument against this, and against the Astros moving the the AL in the first place, is the fact that inter-league games will need to be played throughout the season, not just a for a couple weeks in May and June.  What this would mean is that on the last week of the season, there will be at least one inter-league series going on which would potentially dampen a major pennant race.  Who would want to see the Yankees playing the Padres on the last week of the season?  

I think there is actually a pretty easy solution to this problem.  Take all the teams that finished in last place in their division the previous year, and make them play against their appropriate inter-league counterpart during the last week of the season.  I think it's a pretty good punishment for a last place team, and on top of that, it is rather unlikely that these teams will be a part of any major playoff race during the last week of the season.  

This does not appear to be a done deal at this point, and I have a small fear baseball will find a way to screw this whole thing up, but I am going to remain optimistic that we will finally have a fair schedule again in baseball.  

Re-alignment...a good idea that MLB is going to screw up.

15 teams in each league? Good.
No divisions? Bad.

Last week it leaked that Major League Baseball was considering proposing re-alignment during the upcoming collective bargaining talks. The plan is to take a team from the National League (likely the D-Backs or Astros) and move that team to the American League.

But on top of that, the proposal is to eliminate divisions and to have the top 4 or 5 teams in each league go into the playoffs.

MLB fixes one problem and creates an even worse one. Having equal number of teams in each league (and each division) would potentially fix the unfair scheduling that has plagued MLB since interleague play was introduced. Finally it would be possible to set up a schedule that would be fair and equal between each team inside of a division.

But then if you remove the divisions, you create the same problem all over again, except worse. There aren't enough games in the season to accommodate creating and equal and fair schedule for every team in your league unless you increase to a 174 game schedule (6 games verses every team in baseball). Even if the schedule was expanded, it destroys the logic in having the two leagues. The reason divisions were created was to ensure that rivalries were preserved as the league expanded and that true, tighter pennant races were created by teams that were known well by each other.

In the end, I don't want to possibly see the Cubs going down to the final series of the season possibly having to play the Royals to win the division because they already played their 6 games against the Cardinals in April and May.

The only way to make this work is to do some sort of NFL type of scheduling when dealing with interleague play that pits the better teams from previous season against each other. Don't ask me to explain that to you...it would take too long, but, this would allow for more games to be played against teams in your own league.

But for a more sane approach, once you have balanced divisions and balanced leagues, you can create a fair schedule for every team in each division. Quite simply it looks like this:

-18 games against each team in your division (72 games)
-6 games against each team in the other two divisions in your league (60 games)
-6 games against each team in one of the divisions in the other league (30 games)

162 games…simple!

Each year a division in one league plays the division in the other league, so the NL East would play the AL West and the NL Central would play the AL East and the NL West would play the AL Central…and this would be rotated through every 3 years.

This isn’t rocket science. Yes, you have to eliminate the rule that interleague play can only happen for a few weeks during the season and you would eliminate the requirement for interleague rivalry games (like the Cubs having to play the White Sox every year). But we would finally have a schedule that was fair. No more of this bullshit where ever single year the Cardinals get to beat up on the Royals while the Cubs have to play the White Sox. No more situations where the Cubs have a series against the Yankees while the Cardinals get to play the Orioles instead.

So kudos to Major League Baseball for finally floating the idea of balancing out the leagues, but shame on them for screwing it up by eliminating the divisions floating the idea of eliminating divisions.

Major League Baseball just doesn't get it.

Tenetive 2011 schedule released

MLB has released the 2011 schedule.

Many aspects of it appear to be pretty good this time around. At first glance, it appears that games against the Cubs biggest rivals, the Brewers, Cardinals and Reds, are fairly well spread throughout the season. But, as usual, I have to sit and scratch my head about the logic of the interleague play schedule.

The Cubs go to Boston this year. People are making a big deal about it because it is the first time this has happened in like a bajillion years. The other high profile interleague series will be a home set against the Yankees in the middle of June. The last time the Yankees came to town was in 2003, and I have to say, the atmosphere at those games was awesome. I look forward to that again!

Then, of course, there are the stupid 6 games against the White Sox.

And, finally, the head scratcher…3 games in Kansas City. Huh? Where the hell did that come from? Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad the Cubs get to play 3 games against a traditionally awful team, but I’m not sure how this is supposed to fit in to anything.

It’s crap like this that really pisses me off about the MLB scheduling process. With the Red Sox and Yankees on the schedule, you are to assume, then, that the NL Central is supposed to be matched up against the AL East this year for interleague play. Obviously this becomes problematic because of the fact that there are 6 teams in the NL Central and only 5 teams in the AL East. And then there are the “rivalry” games which hurt things too.

Well, I’ve written to posts about this already, and have been prepping the third one for some time now. I understand the difficulties in trying to set up a fair and balanced schedule for each team in baseball, but it seems that, now, as far as interleague play is concerned, that the MLB office is more concerned about creating interesting matchups then creating a fair schedule. It looks to me like they set some objectives out there (“well, the Cubs should play the Red Sox and Yankees this year because that would be a great draw”), and then just try to jumble the rest of the schedule together around that. Result? An inexplicable series against the Royals in the middle of June.

So I guess I better finish up that last post about the MLB schedule.

I’m sure all of you will want to get plane tickets for that series in KC. It should be

What to do about MLB Scheduling: Part 2...some simple steps

On Friday I started complaining about the pathetic state of the MLB schedule. I know that they have hired people to create the MLB schedule for a number of years now. It isn't an easy job with the constraints that baseball has put on these people creating this schedule. As I outlined last week, Bud Selig and the owners have absolutely destroyed the nice symmetry that the schedule once had by things like unequal division sizes, expansion, and interleague play...all along with keeping to the rigidity of 162 games.

Well, here are some simple solutions to try to fix the symmetry of the schedule.

1. Fix the divisions.
30 teams, 6 divisions…PUT 5 TEAMS IN EACH DAMN DIVISION!!! The easiest thing to do would be to take a team from the NL Central (6 teams) and move them to the AL West (4 teams)…but the only team that would fit in this scenario would be Houston, and I don’t think Major League Baseball wants both Texas teams in the American League West. So, what I would do is move the Astros to the NL West and put the Rockies in the AL West.

Ok, we now have equal sized divisions…yea!

Oh no! How do we deal with the fact that we have an odd number of teams in each league? That puts interleague play into issue. NEXT!

2. Spread out Interleague play
Now, let me just say that I flat out HATE interleague play. But, it has become a fact of life now…so let’s use it to our advantage.

Someone needs to explain to me why interleague play only can happen during a few weeks in May and June. If we take interleague play and spread it throughout the whole season, we solve the problem of having an odd number of teams in each league. At any one point, there will be at least 1 interleague series going on.

Ok…and while we are on interleague play…

3. DUMP THE RIVALY SERIES.
No more of the Cardinals beating up on the Royals every year. If the Cardinals get to play the Royals…then the Cubs should get to beat up on them as well. Get rid of these games, unless every team in the division gets to play the same team.

******************
Ok, so I’m now claiming that these 3 steps would fix the fairness of the MLB schedule

So we now get into the nuts and bolts of how this would work.

With a 162 game schedule…we basically have 54 three game series throughout the course of the season. Now some of the series are 4 games, some are 2 games…but it all evens out to 54 series. Let’s look at how we could spread this out.

Let’s start with intra-league, out of division play. The best and simplest way to do this is to have a home and an away series against each team in the other two divisions of your league. That is 20 series (5 teams, 2 divisions, 2 series).
Ok, so we have 20 series (60 games) from that, leaving us with 34 series (and 102 games).

Then, you have interleague play…you can go a few ways on this…
1. 1 series vs. each team in one division from the other league
2. 1 series vs. each team in 2 divisions from the other league
3. 2 series vs. each team in one division from the other league
My proposal is to expand interleague play to 10 series, and do option #2…which will ensure a series against a rivalry team 2 out of every 3 years.

So we now have used up 30 series (90 games) leaving us with 24 series and 72 games.

Intra-division play…becomes fairly simple. A team will play the other team in its own division (4 teams), in six series, 3 home, 3 away. Six times 4 is 24…add that to the 30 out of division games…that’s 54.

54 series!

162 games!

Hallelujah!

Problem solved!!!!

Can this work? I don’t know, but this becomes a fair schedule. There are the small oddities here that would have to be worked out…basically the fact the in this scenario, only intra-division series could be 2 or 4 games. That might not work. To make the schedule a little more flexible, we might have to look at having some unevenness in the home/away teams…the Cubs might play the Dodgers only 2 games at home and 4 games on the road while playing the Giants 4 games at home and 2 games on the road, or something like that. That would hurt the “fairness” that I’m trying to fix, but only a little bit.

Would this ever be done? It would be a seriously hard sell. Having a team switch leagues would be very difficult, and I believe as part of the agreement when Denver was granted a franchise was that the team would not be forced to change leagues (for some period of time). But I think a realignment could happen if enough people screamed about it.

The other obstacle…removal of the mandatory rivalry games. Teams like the Cubs and White Sox would scream bloody murder if they didn’t get a chance to compete for the BP Cup every year. The added revenue from these rivalry games, for some of the smaller market clubs, is important too. Cincinnati, Cleveland, Kansas City and the like are much more likely to sell out when they play their geological rival from the other league. That’s some big money. But it doesn’t help with the integrity of the schedule.

So, there you have it.

Part three will be later this week…throwing some other variables into the system.

After 115 games, finally Cubs @ Cards. What to do about MLB scheduling: Part 1…The problem

Abnormalities like the fact that the Cubs are over 2/3 of the way through the season and haven’t played a single game in St. Louis yet should be immediate red flags for some action to be taken.

I know this isn’t entirely the schedule maker’s fault here. Over the last 12 years, Bud Selig has done his best to absolutely destroy what was once (at least in the National League) a nice, beautiful symmetry to the schedule.

The chaos that the schedule is now is comes from 5 things…

1. Interleague play. Interleague play, by far, has disrupted the schedule more than any other single thing.
2. Expansion: The teams added in 1998 disrupted any number of thing associated with the schedule.
3. The rigidity of sticking to a 162 schedule. When initial expansion happened in 1961, baseball decided to change the schedule from 154 games to 162 to keep the schedule sane…so it can be done.
4. Unequal division size. 30 teams…6 divisions…the solution seems simple enough.
5. Rivalry games. This, more than anything, makes the schedule absolutely unfair.

What has this resulted in?

1. Long distance road trips with teams going from New York to San Francisco on the same trip.
2. Uneven schedules, not only for interleague play, but in intra-league play.
3. Uneven distribution of intra-divisional games (like the fact the Cubs only play the Pirates in one series in the last 1/3 of the season...and no trip to St. Louis until now).
4. The posibility of a team not playing on a traditional "baseball" holiday like Memorial Day, Independence Day or Labor Day.

I don't believe there is a single person who seriously follows the game who likes the results of the MLB schedule over the last decade.

So, how do you fix this problem?

I am going to do a series of posts on how to fix the MLB schedule, so keep an eye out for them over the next week.

Is a 100 loss season possible?

The Cubs are currently on a horrible trend (interrupted last night by their inexplicable pummeling of Tim Lincecum).

Their record, 48-65, is quite bad, but it is far from being the worst record in baseball which is currently owned by the Pirates at 39-73.

The real depressing thing is that in 2½ weeks’ time, the Cubs have gone from 8 games under .500 to 18 games under .500 (well, now 17 after last night)…

So what record are the Cubs likely to finish the season with?

Taking the season as a whole, spreading their current winning percentage out over 162 games, the Cubs would end up with a 69-93 record. Not good…but not the worst.

Unfortunately, the current trend is that the Cubs aren’t playing as well as they did earlier in the season. Should we expect them to play as bad as they have in the last 2 weeks? No…but if we push out this a couple more week (to the All-Star break) we see that their record is 8-15. We might be able to figure out, possibly a little more accurately, how they might finish. If the 8-15 record trend continues for the remaining 49 games, that would be 32 more losses.

Now you are looking at a 65-97 record. That begins to approach the icky 100 loss barrier.

For 100 loses, the Cubs would need 35 losses in 49 games…14-35? That’s really bad but doesn’t appear to be much worse than 17-32.

The Cubs have only achieved (if you can call it and achievement) 100 loses in a season on two occasions, 1962 and 1966. The ’62 season was in the middle of the infamous “College of Coaches” experiment that failed miserably. And 1966 was the first year after that experiment ended (technically a rebuilding year). But 100 losses is an arbitrary number. If the trend continues and the Cubs reach 97 losses, that would mark the worst record the Cubs have had since 1980. In fact, ’62, ’66 and ’80 are the only seasons where the Cubs have had more than 97 losses in their entire history.

With that said, I'll put this into historical perspective a bit. With all the suffering and poor teams the Cubs have had over their long history, the Cubs haven't had a large number of "horrible" seasons. Look at the Orioles…in their history they have had 10 seasons with 100 losses. The Royals have topped the 100 loss mark 4 times, and they’ve only been around since 1969.

Now, I'm saying that 97 wins is very possible…but what factors might alter the current trend? Well, first off, the players who have played a majority of the time so far this season will not necessarily be playing for the rest of the season. We know that the rotation is now minus Ted Lilly and Carlos Silva. The outfield now has Tyler Colvin permanently fixed in right field. It is possible that Xavier Nady receives much more playing time over at first base. Blake DeWitt has replaced Theriot. And the bullpen is a continuous revolving door right now except for the M&M brothers (Marmol and Marshall). When you have that many changes, a team could easily veer off its current trend line. And in fact, with a roster in this sort of state of flux with this amount of unproven talent, you often see a team become very streaky.

Another factor? The veterans that have been playing far below their career averages may actually start playing well again. Ramirez, Lee, Zambrano…they all will likely start moving their stats closer to their career averages (which I have been saying all season, but has yet to happen).

In the end, 100 losses isn’t likely to happen this year, and it is unlikely that the Cubs will be able to catch the Pirates and the Orioles for the worst record in baseball, but it isn’t out of the realm of possibility for them to achieve this sad milestone. The point of this exercise is to demonstrate that the Cubs are teetering on the edge of a historically bad season.

Yearly scheduling stupidity...Interleague Play

I hate interleague play.

Hate it with a passion.

I can't explain to you how much I hate it.

But I have learned to reluctantly accept it.

So people ask me, "Hey Doc, why do you hate interleague play so much?"

For a couple reasons.

First off, it takes away some of the prestige and rarity of the All-Star and World Series.  Those match-ups that we would only see once in a life-time happen much more frequently now.  Boo!

And second (and most importantly), I hate it because the Cardinals play the Royals at least 3 times every single year.  In more general terms, the schedule for interleague play is unfair.  Because of interleague play, not only do teams within the same division have unequal schedules against interleague teams, but because those interleague games have been added to the schedule, they no longer have equal schedules against teams from within their own league.

Huh?

Ok...the Cubs and the Brewers are in the same division.  In theory, they should play the same teams the same number of times throughout the year.  Not the case.

Here is the Brewers interleague schedule this year:
Minnesota
Texas
Angels
Minnesota
Seattle

The Cubs:
Texas
White Sox
Oakland
Angels
Seattle
White Sox (again)

What?

First off, the Cubs play 6 interleague series.  The Brewers only play 5 (as do the Cardinals and a number of other teams.)

As a result, the Brewers play 18 games against the Pirates this year.  The Cubs only play 15 games against the Pirates.  The Cubs play 5 games against the Rockies this year.  The Brewers play 9 games.

The 162 game schedule had a beautiful symmetry to it back when there were only 12 teams in the National League.  There were two divisions, each team played 18 games against each team in their own division and 12 games against the other division.   It was simple.  That equals 162 games. 

Then expansion happened and things got a little goofy....but it still wasn't that bad....13 games against teams in your own division and 12 against teams in the other division.

But then the D-Back and Devil Rays entered in and mass chaos ensued.

First, baseball decided that 4 divisions wasn't good enough.  So they made 6 divisions.  Then they realized that there was an un-even number of teams in each league (15)...which meant that one team didn't have an opponent at any one time in each league.  So...a team had to switch leagues (the Brewers).  16 and 14. If they had kept 2 divisions, the American League was set to continue to do the 13/12 format it had since the 70's.  But alas...3 divisions...how do you create equal sized divisions now?  14 into 3...um...care the 4, add 2...um.  That's 4 2/3 teams per division.  Um...that doesn't work.  :(

The National League was worse with 16 teams now.

You just can't figure out a schedule in a 162 game format that is equal or fair

But then Bud Selig had this brilliant idea.  Let's allow teams to play games against the other league as well.  On a rotating basis, each team with in a division would play each of the teams from one of the other divisions in the other league.

Um...one problem...the divisions were of different sizes.  Um...how can this work out...especially when the NL Central (6 teams) plays the AL East (4 teams)? 

It doesn't.

Now add this stupid...stupid...stupid aspect to interleague play...each team gets to play at least one rivalry series (and in many cases, 2) against a team from the other league.  For the Cubs, that is the White Sox.  For the Mets...the Yankees...and so on.

Kabaaammm!!!!!

I give up trying to figure this out. 

As best that I can tell, the schedule makers take a dart board and assemble the schedule by blindly throwing darts at it.  And the truth is, that is about as good as you can do with things set up the way they are and the restrictions placed on them in a 162 game format.

So how do you solve this?  Well, I have some ideas...but that is for another post...and there are about 100 other proposals out there to solve this problem too...if MLB would just have the guts to listen to some of them, the world would be a better place.

But for now...as you can plainly see from my activity here, interleague play is a drag.  I have little interest in it.  I have a hard time watching it.  I look at it like spring training games.  Once the 4th week of June passes, all will be right again...until then we do have a few intra-league games interspersed in...particularly this week when we play the Dodgers and Cardinals...but really, people talk about the dog days of summer (in August)...but to me, this is the part of the schedule that really drags.

So what happens when we play someone good?

The Cubs schedule, to this point, has been pathetically easy.

In fact, as of right now the Cubs have only played 2 teams who currently have records over .500...and one of those two teams, the Nationals, is not going to remain over .500.

So what happens when the Cubs play someone good...like...say...the Cardinals or Phillies?

So far this season, it has really been hard to predict from one day to the next how this team will play.  The Cubs won't play a team that is currently over .500 until two weeks from now when they go to Philadelphia.  From that point, they will play almost 2 straight weeks against teams that are superior to just about everyone else the Cubs have played so far this this year, Philadelphia, Texas, LA and St. Louis.

One of two things can happen...the Cubs play up to their competition and are competitive, winning about 1/2 of those games...or the Cubs get the asses handed to them.

I really hope they are playing down to their competition right now...otherwise we are in for a really really long season.