Anthony Hill’s Mariners Rant of the Week: Why Divisions Aren’t Helpful

Have you ever sat there and thought, “Why do we have divisions like the AL West?” Well, if you haven’t, I took the liberty of doing so. Here are my reasons why divisions should no longer exist.

The Mariners could benefit from an idea that I have that would reshape the league and put all the teams on a levl playing field.Every sport has a different way of organizing teams. In the NBA, they have an Eastern and Western conference in which eight teams from each advance to the playoffs. In the NFL, they have four divisions in the NFC and the AFC, and the winner of each advances plus one wild card.

Every sport has a different way of organizing teams. In the NBA, they have an Eastern and Western conference in which eight teams from each advance to the playoffs. In the NFL, they have four divisions in the NFC and the AFC, and the winner of each advances plus one wild card.

There is no right way to do conferences or the playoffs, but in my opinion, there could be a better way of doing things, particularly in the MLB. You may think I am crazy but hear me out.

In my humble opinion, I think we should get rid of divisions altogether and just have two 15 team leagues: the American and National Leagues. Furthermore, I believe that every team should play each team an even amount of times.

How it Would Work

Firstly, let’s tackle the issue of getting rid of divisions. As every Seattle Mariners fan knows, we get to play the likes of Jose Altuve, Mike Trout, Carlos Correa, etc. more than 15 times a year. Although fun to watch, it’s not fair that we don’t play everyone evenly.

In baseball, there are 162 games, and you would have to play 14 other teams in your league equally. I am not a math major, but that is about 11.5 games per team you’d play. For logistical reasons, let’s round to 12 games per team.

The reason I promote this is simply because everyone can beat the bad teams. But to prove your worth, shouldn’t you have to beat the good teams as well?

As Mariners fans, we have one of the toughest divisions in baseball. Having to play the Astros and Rangers, and even the offensively talented Angels isn’t fair compared to teams who get the Rays and struggling Yankees 18 times a year.

This system promotes fairness and the playoff teams that would come from it would truly be the best. Each league would send the five best record teams to the playoffs, and the format of the playoffs would be the same.

This system is basically saying that if you want to make the playoffs, you have to beat all teams and prove that you are truly better than most teams during the regular season.

Interleague

If you read closely, you saw that I haven’t mentioned anything about interleague play. This is simply because I think we should get rid of it. Although it can be fun at times, I think it would be much more of an honor to only get to play the other league in the All-Star game and in the World Series.

Furthermore, Interleague play does count towards your overall record.

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In 2016, the Mariners had to play the NL central, a very formidable division with the eventual World  Series champs. While other divisions had easier interleague opponents, they counted all the same.

College Basketball has a natural way to deal with this problem. They have a committee to review non-conference opponents and rate teams based on that.

If an SEC team destroys a mid-major conference team, it doesn’t count as much as them beating a non-conference opponent from a Power-six conference.

Basically, playing different opponents shouldn’t all count the same. So instead of trying to mix leagues playing each other, we should just keep the leagues separate. They would only play on special occasions, like the World Series.

Next: Mariners In-Game Twitter Poll

If you agree or disagree, we still want to hear what you think about my proposal. Should the MLB consider it or should it be thrown out immediately? Let me know on Twitter @SodoMojoFS.