The odd thing about the divisonal problems are that the Rangers are the only team in baseball that plays in a division that has all of its other members of the division two time zones away. Talk about a killer on flights, TV revenue, and other time related problems.

So as far as the Astros are concerned that would put them in the same sad spot playing in SD,SF, and LA more with the unbalanced schedual.

Thier really is no good way to fix the problem without moving 2 teams and switching league affilitations

We are told that the reason for this state of affairs is that both leagues must have an even number of teams for scheduling purposes. That would make sense if it were not for interleague play. The 162 interleague games that you would need if both leagues had an odd number of teams is less than the total overall, so this does not have to be an issue.

As to assigning the wild card, what would you think of this—only teams that meet the salary cap are eligible for the wild card. Overspend and you’d better win your division.

Everyone who votes to move Milwaukee to the AL West raise his hand!

teams in each division there has to be year round interleague or 2 teams off every series to make the schedualing work.

there are two very workable solutions:

1) Split into 3 separate leagues with 10 teams each. Each team would then play 9 home and 9 away games against each other team. First 2 teams in each league would advance to playoffs, plus two other wild card teams. This has the advantage that 3 game series could be used exclusively.

2) Add 2 teams, split into 4 separate leagues with 8 teams each, with each team playing 12 home and 12 away games against each other. Top 2 teams in each league advance to playoffs. Again, 3 game series could be used exclusively. This would be a bit tougher to do. Not only would two expansions be required, but the schedule would need to increase to 168 games from the current 162. The expansion issue would be the tougher to solve, but it’s certainly do-able.