Your Ideas for a 32 team league alignment

[Moneybrawler]

If anyone have a 32 or greater team league how does your alignment work in terms of divisions and playoffs?

[T-Bone]

I expanded MLB and did 4 divisions with 4 teams in each league. Only division winners make playoffs and are seeded by record.

[itsmb8]

I'll probably just go to the standard 32 with 2 leagues, 2 divisions, 8 teams in each division. But at the same time, just having one 16 team division in each league sounds a bit intriguing too.

Regardless, I'm deciding on Montreal (Expos), Charlotte (Carolina Pilots), Nashville (stays the Sounds), and Portland (Beavers)..

[mitchkenn]

i have a fictional set-up of 48 teams, 4 divisions per league (2 leagues), 6 teams per division.

playoffs - 4 division winners and 4 wild cards per league.

no inter-league.

[Padreman]

I had 4 divisions 4 teams per only division winners make playoffs.
East, West, Central, Midwest

[The Game]

Heres my divisions for 36 teams, 2 wildcards from each league.

here are the final standings from 2024 when i had 32 teams. 4 WC's.

[BBGiovanni]

4 8-team leagues. It's the perfect size for seeing just enough teams just often enough. Playoffs depend but lately I like to give byes to the pennant winners then have the 2-3 teams play in whatever combination makes sense for the world.

IMO real baseball shows that 5 team divisions result in weak playoff teams; 4 team divisions would make that eve n worse, especially with unbalanced schedules.

[Leo_The_Lip]

My most played league for many versions starts in 1946 with 8 teams in four divisions.

[Curve Ball Dave]

36 teams, 6 teams in 6 divisions, 1 wild card.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by Curve Ball Dave

36 teams, 6 teams in 6 divisions, 1 wild card.

An advantage of that layout is that it is easier to schedule for: 90 games in the division (18x5), and then 72 games against clubs outside the division, which can be apportioned relatively simply. No interleague yields 6 games against each team outside the division (6x12); one can have 18 interleague games (3x6) by reducing some clubs outside the division to 3 games instead of 6 (specifically, 6x6 plus 3x6 = 54). The fact that the game totals and number of teams in the division are a multiple of three makes it straightforward.

Two 8-team divisions is nowhere near as schedule-friendly. One might think that 14x7 inside the division (98 total) plus 8x8 against the other division (64 total) fits easily enough. But that's only true in raw numerical terms. When trying to create actual series out of 14 and 8 games, it falls apart, at least in terms of creating a schedule with something like the normal distribution of series lengths MLB has been using for a long time.

It gets even more tricky if one opts for interleague play in the four 8-team division setup.

[bwburke94]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

And of course, it only gets more tricky if one opts for interleague play in the four 8-team division setup.

This is a problem I'm dealing with myself right now, because of the occasional need for 2-game series in such a structure.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by bwburke94

This is a problem I'm dealing with myself right now, because of the occasional need for 2-game series in such a structure.

Any league structure and schedule format which is divisible by three in some manner makes things the simplest, at least for the major leagues. (The minors are an entirely different matter.)

The format I had thought about for two 8-team divisions used a 90-72 split of division and interdivision games (the same split used by the NL from 1969-92 and the AL from 1969-78). The 90 division games were 6x13 plus 1x12; the 72 interdivision games were 9x8 (with half using a 6-3 home-away split and the other half 3-6, alternated annually). The division games were not quite perfectly balanced but a one game differential against one opponent was deemed a trade-off worth making given how it worked out for interdivision play as well as for series breakdowns.

If you reduce the interdivision games to 6x8 (48 total), that frees up 24 games which can be used for interleague. Which, as it happens, works nicely as 3x8. Thus an entire division is played in interleague play during the season, and you can alternate the division played the next season.

ETA: No 2-game series are needed at all in this interleague arrangement, provided you use MLB's 26½ week long schedule debuting this year. The format I described above breaks down in 52 series, which is two series per week (2x26=52), plus the ½ week used for the All-Star break. If you want to use the previous 26-week format, then you need to have one week in which three series are played, which necessitates two 2-game series. With interleague play, you'd have to convert the 12 games played against one division opponent into a 42-42 series breakdown, rather than 33-33, and have the two 2-game series played as a home-and-home. (If there's no interleague play, then a few interdivision series can be adjusted from 33-3 into 42-3 to get the needed 2-game series, which eliminates any home-and-home situations, which MLB generally doesn't like.)

[bwburke94]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

The format I had thought about for two 8-team divisions used a 90-72 split of division and interdivision games (the same split used by the NL from 1969-92 and the AL from 1969-78). The 90 division games were 6x13 plus 1x12; the 72 interdivision games were 9x8 (with half using a 6-3 home-away split and the other half 3-6, alternated annually). The division games were not quite perfectly balanced but a one game differential against one opponent was deemed a trade-off worth making given how it worked out for interdivision play as well as for series breakdowns.

If you reduce the interdivision games to 6x8 (48 total), that frees up 24 games which can be used for interleague. Which, as it happens, works nicely as 3x8. Thus an entire division is played in interleague play during the season, and you can alternate the division played the next season.

I ended up going with pretty much this, though with the four-game series laid out differently.

[ti6er]

Will be my first OOTP (19) and have prepared this structure for a fictional league.

40 teams, 2 conferences and 4 divisions in each conference (North, East, South, West).

[Cryomaniac]

Originally Posted by mitchkenn

i have a fictional set-up of 48 teams, 4 divisions per league (2 leagues), 6 teams per division.

playoffs - 4 division winners and 4 wild cards per league.

no inter-league.

I would go with first and second in each division in that set up, rather than wild cards. Maybe that's because I'm British and wildcards always seem a dangerously American practice

[ti6er]

Originally Posted by Cryomaniac

I would go with first and second in each division in that set up, rather than wild cards. Maybe that's because I'm British and wildcards always seem a dangerously American practice

I'm from the UK as well and was thinking about this same thing, but actually found myself liking the idea of having 4 division winners and 4 wildcards per league.

Gives great motivation to teams to be the best in their respective division while ensuring top performers who aren't able to secure the division get just rewards.

[pitch62]

I play two leagues, 3 divisions, 8 teams each and a wildcard. Thinking about two leagues, two divisions, 8 teams each, division winners only. Then every ten years will expand two teams til I reach 48. 3 divisions, 8 teams each with wildcards. My league starts in 1871.

[Xogo]

Im actually wanting to just go back to 2 16 team leagues. With balanced schedules and winner of each league goes to WS.

I just do know how to do that if I want to start over in 1974 and play forward.

[Mancandy]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

An advantage of that layout is that it is easier to schedule for: 90 games in the division (18x5), and then 72 games against clubs outside the division, which can be apportioned relatively simply. No interleague yields 6 games against each team outside the division (6x12); one can have 18 interleague games (3x6) by reducing some clubs outside the division to 3 games instead of 6 (specifically, 6x6 plus 3x6 = 54). The fact that the game totals and number of teams in the division are a multiple of three makes it straightforward.

Two 8-team divisions is nowhere near as schedule-friendly. One might think that 14x7 inside the division (98 total) plus 8x8 against the other division (64 total) fits easily enough. But that's only true in raw numerical terms. When trying to create actual series out of 14 and 8 games, it falls apart, at least in terms of creating a schedule with something like the normal distribution of series lengths MLB has been using for a long time.

It gets even more tricky if one opts for interleague play in the four 8-team division setup.

It could be done with an exceptionally high number of interleague games, for example 84 divisional games(7x12), 48 against the other division(8x6), and 30 interleague games.

MLB is clearly aware of this, as they had a reporter float a radical change towards the end of last season - get rid of the leagues, go to four eight team divisions, and play a 156 game schedule. Its simplicity is beautiful, 84 games in the division(7x12) and 72 games outside the division(24x3). A shortened schedule could also potentially for a three game wildcard series.

Originally Posted by Cryomaniac

I would go with first and second in each division in that set up, rather than wild cards. Maybe that's because I'm British and wildcards always seem a dangerously American practice

The only problem with that is there will be playoff teams with 10+ fewer wins than teams that miss the playoffs. In the most extreme case, the third best team in all of MLB could miss a 16 team playoff. Just two years ago the three best MLB teams were all in the same division, it can and will happen, and what would happen even more frequently is sub-.500 teams making the playoffs. It's bound to happen even if you have wildcards, the division winner will be under .500 occasionally, but the second best team will be under .500 relatively regularly.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by ti6er

I'm from the UK as well and was thinking about this same thing, but actually found myself liking the idea of having 4 division winners and 4 wildcards per league.

Gives great motivation to teams to be the best in their respective division while ensuring top performers who aren't able to secure the division get just rewards.

There's one important proviso that tends to get overlooked: if you're using a divisionally-weighted schedule, you cannot truly compare club records between divisions as those clubs would have played a very different set of opponents in terms of strength. The cure for that is to use a balanced schedule. But if you use a balanced schedule, it makes the division structure arbitrary.

It would be interesting to ponder a wild card system which somehow factored in the strength of each club's schedule when comparing overall records between divisions.