“According to Olney, two highly-ranked executives think the Astros could receive the call in order to tap into a rivalry with the Texas Rangers. Picking the Astros would also allow baseball to remove one team from the NL Central and slot Houston into the AL West, which would address the issue of playoff percentages.”
That is a horrendous idea.
Makes my stomach turn.
I like it.
6 divisions of 5 teams each.
Let’s see...
6 series against your own division.
2 series against teams in your league not in your division.
During intradivisional play, the odd team out would be playing the opposite league.
Say Mets vs. Phils, Nats vs. Braves, Yanks vs. Bosox, O’s vs. Jays, then Marlins would play Rays.
The next series might be Mets vs. Nats, Phils vs. Marlins,
Yanks vs. O’s, and Bosox vs. Rays. Jays would play Braves.
If you wanted to minimize travel, there would be one team in the opposite league a team would play twice (Yanks-Mets; Cubs-Chisox, etc.)
But then there would be one series left — I figure this one would rotate around the rest of the opposite league. So it would take 10 years to play every team in the opposite league.
The other option would be to not play that one team in the opposite league twice; then it would take 5 years to play every team.