The 104 Game Baseball Season

In an effort to make baseball an event, something special, a league on par with the NFL in buzzworthyness and gambling possibilities. I’ve completely destroyed most baseball traditions to present to you:

THE 104 GAME BASEBALL SEASON:

In order to create the proper 104 game season, we have to do a little realignment:

Contract the Kansas City Royals
Combine the Florida Marlins and Tampa Bay Devil Rays
Move the Florida Franchise to the AL
Move the Brewers back to the AL
Create two divisions in each league of 7 teams each

The 104 game season consists of 26 weeks of baseball. Just like in the NFL, weeks are solidly defined. They begin on Friday and end on Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday.

Individual Ws and Ls don't matter anymore, instead, what matters are points, just as in Hockey. Points will be awarded for winning a series.

Both division winners, and two wild card teams make the playoffs from each league. Wild Card teams will be the two teams with the highest points after the two division winners.

There would be 3 types of "series" during the season. "Standard," "Interleague," and "Divisional."

"Standard" series consist of 4 game intra-league series, played on Thu-Fri-Sat-Sun with 1 NL and one AL series being Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon.

The two Monday games, will consist of an evening and a night game, with scheduling designed around making the wrap-around Monday series the two best of the weekend

Scoring for Standard series:

Lose the series = 0 points
Win the series = 2 points
Sweep the series = 4 points
Split = 1 per team

"Interleague" will be three game series played on Fri-Sat-Sun with two prime time series, one AL and one NL, one being played Fri-Sun-Mon, the other Fri-Sat-Mon.

These series will consist of two home series and two road. They would be schueled by random draw before the season, with the exception of one series devoted to a regional matchup - sox/cubs, mets/yankees, reds/indians, etc.

Scoring for Interleague series:

Lose = 0
Win = 2
Sweep = 3

"Division" series are five game series Thu-Fri-Sat-Sun-Tuesday (to avoid Monday night football.) All the Sunday games will be afternoon games. These are always divisional matchups and they're not scheduled until the week before. Two home series, two road series, based on points standings heading into the final month. The top 5 teams in each division play each other one time each, the bottom two teams in the division will play each other twice, and the bottom two teams in the opposite division in the same league one series each.

So a regular season would look like this

Week 1-12 Standard
Week 13-16 Interleague
Week 17-22 Standard
Week 23-26 Division

The all star game is abolished since it no longer matters, however, during the interleague stretch, players will convene on the four Tuesdays at neutral sites for the BALCO home run derby, the Adidas running bases tournament, the Rollings 500 tournament, and the Tom Emanski throw-a-ball-from-center field-into-a-garbage-can-tipped-over-at-home tournament. Each of the 28 teams will submit a player to each of the four tournaments, the players will compete on both an overall scale, and against their division, The four division winners will take home 3 points for their teams, the 2^nd place 2, and the 3^rd and 4^th place 1 point each, the overall top highest scorer in each league will earn their team an extra 1 point.