Realigment Is Here

Get ready for realignment! The General Managers’ Meetings in Milwaukee this week were the stage where Commissioner Bud Selig announced that the Houston Astros would move to the American League West in 2013 creating two fifteen-team leagues. We will now have Interleague Play all the time; not everyone is happy about that, but it’s an unavoidable by-product. If you read my series a few months ago detailing an alternate plan for realignment into five six-team divisions, it gives additional force to my argument that the “National League” and “American League” distinctions are obsolete and should be discarded.

What wasn’t announced this week was the fate of the Designated Hitter. As you know, it creates a discontinuity in MLB that would never be tolerated in any of the other major sports. Can you imagine an NFL where the AFC had the two-point conversion and the NFC did not? Ridiculous! It is time for MLB to man up and either dispose of the DH for good (unlikely though highly desirable) or make everyone use it (which seems inevitable).

The realignment announcement was coupled with the announcement of the sale of the Astros to Jim Crane, and he got a discount in his purchase price from $680 million dollars to $615 million for his trouble. On the plus side, the Astros will gain a viable rival in the Texas Rangers, on the downside they will have a minimum of 27 late starts versus AL West members Oakland, Los Angeles and Seattle. That will almost certainly impact their television ratings and their TV-generated revenue. It’s worth noting that in their 50-year tenure in the National League, the Astros really never established any kind of long-term rivalry in the nature of Cubs-Cardinals, Yankees-Red Sox or Dodgers-Giants.

While the NFL had protracted labor unrest throughout the summer that definitely affected play, and the NBA is currently having a near-death experience with the complete breakdown of negotiations and de-certifying of its Players Association, MLB is continuing down a path of labor peace and prosperity. The final agreement has not been announced just yet, but they have until December 11th and the two sides will get it done far in advance of that date. There will be some changes in free agent draft pick compensation, and there will be a more definite framework in how teams go about signing draft talent with a hard cap on expenditures; not all teams like that, but it should lead some equitable results. Also there will be developments in the areas of revenue sharing and the so-called “Luxury Tax”.

Congratulations to AL Cy Young Award winner Justin Verlander of the Detroit Tigers and NL Cy Young Award winner Clayton Kershaw of the Los Angeles Dodgers, both were also “Triple Crown” winners (wins, strikeouts, earned run average). Some advanced metrics adherents were still unconvinced by Kershaw but that was a minority point of view. Worth noting as well were the Managers of the Year, Kirk Gibson of the Arizona Diamondbacks in the NL and Joe Maddon of the Tampa Bay Rays in the AL, both called here last week.

I will predict Verlander will cop the AL Most Valuable Player award and Matt Kemp of the Los Angeles Dodgers will be the NL MVP. That will be the first time a team that didn’t make the playoffs will sport both MVP and Cy Young Award winners.