With 1 fewer team in each league following contraction, we have to adjust the schedule of how many games are played against each team.
I've spent a while thinking about it, and here is my proposal. If anyone has any other ideas, please let me know asap.
For teams in a 4-team division:
6 Home and 6 Away games vs each team not in their division
9 Home and 9 Away games vs each team in their division
For teams in a 5-team division:
6 Home and 6 Away games vs each team not in their division
8 Home and 8 Away games vs 3 of the 4 other teams in their division
9 Home and 9 Away games vs the 4th other team in their division
Determination of which teams in the 5-team division get 9/9 instead of 8/8 will be random, but cycling through (ie HAR could get 9/9 vs SCG this year, then MAN next year, BAL the following year, and SPR the year after that, then restarting with SCG).
Let me know if anyone has any comments or questions or alternative proposals.
Okay, so, pretty much as soon as I posted the above I realized the fatal flaw - you can't pair off every team in a 5-team division for an extra home-and-away game. So doing it the above way, one team in the 5-team division would only have 160 games.
I've been puzzling away at this, and here is the best I can come up with. If anyone has any ideas or suggestions, they would be most welcome.
(1) Each team in the 4-team divisions would play each other team in their division 8 home and 8 away games
(2) Each team in the 4-team divisions would play each team in the other divisions for either 6 or 7 home and away games (same number of home and away games).
(3) Each team in the 5-team division would play each other team in their divisions between 7 and 9 home and away games (same number of home and away games).
(4) Each team in the 5-team division would play each team in the other divisions for either 6 or 7 home and away games (same number of home and away games).
Thus, each team would play its in-division foes more often than out-of-division ones. There is an unfortunate amount of mismatched amount of games versus different opponents, but I just can't figure out how to avoid that.
Eric points out via email that if someone (particularly someone in one of the remaining 5-team divisions) wanted to switch leagues and we approved that realignment via the realignment voting process, it would make things much easier schedule-wise.
It would mean a 12/14 split between the leagues, but of course MLB has a 14/16 split.
If anyone is interested or willing to change leagues, let me know.
Eric's right that either a 12-team league and a 14-team league, by itself, is easier to schedule than a 13-team league.
However, I don't care for a situation where one league has 13 series and the other has 11... So basically one league is done playing a month before the other (unless the 12-team league breaks two series up into really short series which isn't great either.)
I think Tom's proposal, even with the small imbalances in schedule, is the best we're going to do.
Just to update everyone, I have had one manager volunteer to change leagues if that is needed for the good of the league, but after thinking about it further I think that Kevin has persuaded me that a slightly confused schedule is better than half the league taking a month off.
Thus, my plan is to go with the schedule per my second message in this thread. If anyone has any better ideas, please let me know asap.
I vote for what ever makes it easier for the Y.O.C. The way I play I do take offabout a mouth b/c I fisish the last series asap. the way I see it is that each team will play 162 games. how we get to that is ok with me. Its not like I have to make sure my players are still hot from the last series to play the next series.
