It’s always neat when a European sporting event takes place that features games to watch during the day here in North America. Right now it’s the Euro 2020 football tournament delayed by the pandemic, and although the teams involved are national teams, part of the nature of football is that there is a lot of time between goals. to get lost in his thoughts.
The biggest footballing nations in Europe are England, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain – six places with a combined population of 331 million, or a few million more than the United States.
The top leagues in high performance sport in these countries have 116 teams combined, and that’s before you even consider the strong promotion and relegation system, which in England includes three other 24-team leagues, as well as a mixed professional and semi-pro teams. in the fifth tier National League, with even more lower tiers than ever smaller clubs.
The idea of making America’s sports leagues more European isn’t new, but the standard proposition looks like a promotion / relegation system with Triple-A baseball as the second tier. The obvious problem is that major league teams would never do this. The Pittsburgh Pirates, right now, have a good deal: No matter how much they stink, they’re safely an MLB team, cashing MLB TV checks, billing MLB ticket prices, earning MLB licensing money. Why even consider the possibility of giving it up?
What if, instead, we take a different European approach and divide our continent into regional leagues? It would require a total restructuring of what minor league baseball means, but it’s something that also needs to be addressed anyway, and can be discussed another time. For now, here’s what such a structure might look like, starting with existing major league markets and then joined by current minor leagues and expansion cities that would join them.
With 12 teams in each division, you could play a schedule in which each team faced each of their division rivals a dozen times, for 132 games, with reduced travel and generally less stressful competition due to the expansion of the talent pool. Obviously, teams in the big markets are going to have an advantage, but it’s still baseball, so it’s not unthinkable that Albuquerque’s Isotopes could make a run every now and then.
Of course, 132 games isn’t a full baseball season, but this purely regional competition brings us to the end of August, and another key part of that plan. First off, August becomes more exciting than its traditional heatwave drudgery, as teams vie for a position within their division. But then the stretch race goes crazy as the level of competition increases.
For the final month and 30 games of the regular season, the divisions have split into upper and lower halves, playing five home games each against the parallel half of a homeroom and five road games each against another. This requires on-the-fly planning, but with the divisional structure in place, it is possible to plan each team’s home games well in advance, with opponents to be determined, allowing for ticket sales to be made. advanced.
Four teams from each division make the playoffs, and it’s off to October, where things could either be lined up for the division’s playoffs or ranked in transcontinental clashes based on the overall record. While 16 seems like a ton of playoff teams, we’ve seen 12 already last year, and with the league dropping to 40 teams, that would be the same proportion of playoff-linked clubs.
But what about those teams down there? Are they not playing the rope in front of smaller and smaller crowds? Well, it’s already happening anyway, but now you won’t get a scenario where the Dodgers and Giants are chasing for a playoff berth, but as San Francisco faces a tough team from San Diego, Los Angeles must beat Arizona. Instead, down teams would have their own incentive: the first pick in the following year’s draft, or in the event the draft is legitimately abolished, the biggest financial pool to sign prospects.
Instead of a system where there is an advantage to tanking, it would be worth having a team go head to head on the stretch, as the best of the teams in the round robin semi-final in September would get the reward. . That, or you could go ahead and set up a relegation system where one team from each region is let loose in a lower league. And honestly, if the Arizona Diamondbacks can’t find a way to finish ahead of the Fresno Grizzlies, maybe they shouldn’t be in a 40-team MLB, and it’s time to give Reno the chance to. to be the largest small city of the majors.
