This quarter's baseball meetings will be memorable for Bud Selig upsetting the natural order of things as he caught the realignment bug from the NCAA. In order to create more inventory for baseball's television partners, Selig forced the Houston Astros to move to the American League West, more on that in a moment, added a new wild card team and fundamentally altered inter-league play. What additional inventory did the TV networks gain? One playoff game in each league between the two wild card teams.The Houston Astros were the designated franchise for realignment because Selig had the power to force the Astros to move. The sale of the Astros has been pending since early Spring and has been held up until the additional playoff game could be worked out with the players' union. Once the owners got the green light, the sale was ready to be approved but only on the condition that the franchise move to the American League, a prospect which doesn't particularly thrill the fans. That move cost Drayton McClane, the selling owner $70 million, as the price was reduced to entice Jim Crane to go through with the sale and the league switch. I don't know if that is a reflection on the American League or, more likely, the long history of the Astros in the National League.
Interleague play will now take place every day during the season. Since each league will now have 15 teams, in order for all teams to be playing everyday, one interleague game must be played. So, rather than the three or four windows that fans could anticipate and teams could design marketing plans around, interleague games are likely to become just another game. That's a prospect that I don't think is particularly beneficial to baseball, especially when it's done in return for a single playoff game in both leagues.
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