On the surface, the shift of the Houston Astros from the National League to the American League, announced Thursday but on hold until at least 2013, is not so monumental. It serves to balance the leagues, with 15 in each one, split into three divisions apiece.
What is significant, however, is the fact that the odd number of teams in each league means interleague play — Selig’s own creation — must occur on every day of the regular season schedule.
“It’s a historical day,” Selig told reporters Thursday in announcing the Astros’ move.
Further down the road, the move could spark a reassessment of the designated hitter rule, which currently divides the AL, which has one, and the NL, which doesn’t, and which makes for some unwieldy competitive issues during interleague play and the World Series.
The league switch was negotiated into Jim Crane’s purchase of the Astros from longtime owner Drayton McLane, with MLB reducing the purchase price by a reported $70 million to allay Crane’s concerns about lost revenue.
Selig also announced plans for a new playoff format featuring two wild cards per league, with those wild cards staging a one-game playoff for the right to advance to the division series. Selig, however, said he was unsure whether the change could be made in time for 2012.
Had such a format been in place in 2011, it would have rendered meaningless the dramatic, four-city, last-day-of-the-season finish that some have called the greatest day of regular season baseball in history. But the new format undoubtedly will provide a greater incentive for teams to win their division and avoid the somewhat arbitrary one-game “play-in.”
“The one criticism we’ve had is that we didn’t put enough [incentive] on winning the division,” Selig said. “Now we have. Now we have in a big way.”
When Selig took over as acting commissioner in 1992, baseball had 26 teams and four playoff teams; once the new changes kick in, those numbers will be 30 and 10. The expanded playoffs will be a large part of Selig’s legacy as commissioner, in addition to the instituting of steroids testing (though critics will note baseball needed prodding from Congress and a steroids scandal to begin testing) and instant replay.
“Like many changes that have gone on in this sport, I’m proud of the changes,” Selig said. “. . . It won’t be perfect; I don’t think any schedule is ever perfect. But this will be very good.”
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