The recent annoucnement of the Houston Astros moving to the AL West brought about mixed emotions for me.

I have long been calling for MLB to put 15 teams in each league and just have an Interleague matchup each week. I presented such a scenario in the past on the blog. Not only would all teams then be on even playing fields, but you could actually come up with a more balanced schedule.

A BALANCED SOLUTION
MLB should go the route the NFL goes and rotate matchups annually.

For example, in 2012 the NL Central could start by being matched up against the AL West, with every team inside each division playing each other in one three-game series for a total of 15 games.

The next season, the NL Central could play the AL East, and then in 2014, square off against the AL Central.

In addition to playing the 15 set interleague games, natural rivals would meet in a three-game series, rotating homefield advantage. In years where they already played each other in the regular rotation, the teams would meet twice, once at each team’s location.

Teams that lack a natural rival would be placed into a pool of teams and have a random matchup selected based off how long it has been since teams have met. It’s not perfect, but it a compromise.

This could also give MLB a chance to play some games internationally by taking teams without a natural rival in other league and create a series out of it.

With 18 games of the 162-game schedule figured out and interleague play resolved, let’s examine how the rest of the schedule will work.

Each team will play 12 games against the other four teams in their division (six at home; six on the road). That translates into 48 division games, or roughly 30 percent of the team’s schedule.

The key here is that every team plays every other team in the division the same amount of times at home and away.

That leaves 96 games to play against the teams within the league from the other divisions. There are 10 total teams outside of the division in each league. By rotating the home field advantage annually, these teams would square off a total of nine times. Six games at home and three on the road this year means three games at home and six on the road next year.

The other six games would be based off of order of finish the previous season. For example, the team that finished last in the NL Central (usually the Pirates), would get three extra games against the last place finishers from the NL West and NL East respectively.

AS A RED FAN
Being a hardcore Cincinnati Reds' fan I hate to see the Astros leave the divison. That is the only problem I have with the change.

Lance McAlister pointed out some great numbers on his blog:

From 2009-2011
--The Reds overall record is 248-238 (.510)
--The Reds are 31-15 vs Houston (.674)
--Minus Houston the Reds overall record is 217-223 (.493)
--The Reds have outscored opponents 2,198-2,128 last three years...+70
--The Reds have outscored the Astros 235-147....+88
--Minus the Astros and the Reds have been outscored 1,880-1,890...-10

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