Realigning Baseball's leagues

Word is being passed along from Buster Olney that part of the discussions between MLB and the Player’s Association over the CBA involves realigning the current six division format. This is not a new topic and has actually been talked about by bloggers and columnists for quite a while now. Big reasons for shuffling up the teams are creating more balanced schedules, eliminating the 6-team NL Central and short-stack, 4-team AL West, and generally making it more fair for teams to make the playoffs. I am all for that, but lets take a look at some possibilities.

Olney suggests that the primary team that would move would be the Houston Astros going from the NL Central to the AL West. This would create a rivalry with the other Texas team, the Rangers (Isn’t there already a rivalry? I mean I know the Silver Boot has been held by Texas the last few years, but it’s stilled called a “rivalry”), and would make two 15-team leagues. The problem with this would be there would always have to be an interleague set going on but this wouldn’t be the worse thing in the world. My bigger issue is it would set the Astros back in development quite a bit. The Astros are in the basement of the National League with a terrible farm system. Moving them to the AL, the current tougher league, would make it even worse. So let’s look elsewhere.

Instead of limiting ourselves to moving NL Central teams, let’s scrap the divisions. Now we have a 16-team league and a 14-team league and any NL team can be moved over. A few teams have a lot of history in the National League so we won’t move them: Cubs, Phillies, Braves, Cardinals, Reds, Dodgers, Pirates, Mets (bad history, but still history), and Giants. That leaves the Marlins, Nationals, Brewers, Astros, Rockies, Padres, and Diamondbacks. The Marlins and Nationals have regional rivalries but I like having those separated by league. The Astros have already been dismissed. That leaves the Brew Crew, Rockies, Pads, and DBacks. Any of those teams would work but I think the Diamondbacks fit the AL mold pretty well, so lets add them.

Scheduling becomes challenging with no divisions, but it does become more balanced. 14 in-league opponents equally scheduled could be set up as 4 home, 4 away. That’s 112 games. Ideally the interleague matchups will be balanced as well, but the easiest way to do that is 2 home, 2 away, equaling 60 games. 112 + 60 is 172, and that’s way more than we need in a season. If anything we should be reducing games so the playoffs stop going into November. Reducing intra-league games to 3 home, 3 away give us 84 games, plus the 60 interleague games, for 144 total. I’m a little disheartened by the split between inter- and intra-league games being so close, but if you want 15/15 leagues and balanced schedules there’s seemingly little else to do.

Personally I’m in favor of making a balanced schedule and league. While I’m happy the Rangers have the easier path to the playoffs every year I can understand how fans of the NL Central would be rightfully frustrated. Not playing intra-division opponents 19 times would also be a welcome change.

How those new 15 team leagues would format for the playoffs? I suppose I’ll have to write about that sometime.
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h/t to Buster Olney’s reporting for ESPN and Hardball Talk who passed it along.

A name for the upcoming Windows 8

I've looked all over the web to see if anyone else has beat me to it, but I haven't found anything yet. I'm not sure how it's been missed (or maybe it has been, by me).

This is what the demoed Windows 8 looks like (h/t to Engadget's recap of the event for the image):

Segmented areas. Multiple colors. This is Microsoft Windows. That's right, it's Windows 8: Stained Glass.

You're welcome, Microsoft.

The Wii U: Another push for Nintendo away from Sony, Microsoft

The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) is in full swing right now in sunny, Southern California and today was the Nintendo’s big press conference. There had been rumors floating of a new console to be revealed and everyone who was curious was not disappointed. At least not by the reveal itself. The Wii U was indeed announced and shown off to the credentialed press and they’ve given us a broad range of reactions and info to make our own conclusions. After going through a lot of the material, I have to ask what the point of the console is?

I’ll be honest that my first reaction to the photos from the conference was confusion. Trying to piece together what Nintendo was trying to show based off still photos was challenging. Seeing some video and commentary helped solidify the concept being shown. Being able to switch the game from TV to controller screen looks like a solid feature (definitely better than my college setup of having 2 TVs next to each other, one for sports, one for gaming). The controller itself looks like a well-designed and gracefully-engineered piece of equipment. Thumbs-up on the video calling on that screen. The console is apparently able to produce HD output of games and had a strong list of backers in the publishing department. Maybe I'm shortchanging the innovations the touchscreen adds. But why release this now?

Nintendo said that the Wii U will be hitting our living rooms sometime in 2012. That gives them 7 months on the low end (unlikely, to say the least), to 19 months at the most. I would bet a Holiday 2012 release. While that does put it at 6 years post-Wii, a long generation for the underpowered initial hardware, I feel like jumping the gun on Microsoft and Sony again isn’t going to win them more buyers from their competitors. It is exciting that the Wii U will apparently have 1080p output; but the PS3 and 360 have HD right now. All those games by the strong publishers will most likely be simultaneously released for the other consoles and the only difference will be a lack of touchscreen controller and whatever add-ons it provides. Will it be worth it for consumers to purchase a console just for that, especially if that console is not that cheap? I’d wager no. Instead, Nintendo seems to be aiming to hold on to it’s current crowd and hopefully catch the next wave of casual gamers.

Maybe that’s where all the analysis coming out of E3 is wrong. It’s been said several times that Nintendo is no longer fighting Sony and Microsoft for the “old guard” of gamer, but is instead fighting Apple for the casual gamer. The Wii U seems like a step in that direction. The hardcore gamers, the people who love shooters, sports, and huge RPGs, aren’t going to migrate to the Wii U and Nintendo knows that. There are still a few nostalgics out there who love every Zelda or Metroid release (myself included), but it’s becoming tougher to justify each purchase when there’s not much else with it. I don’t get the point of the Wii U, but that’s most likely because I’m outside of it’s target audience. I’ve become older to the point where not everything Nintendo puts out interests me. Kid-me would’ve been absolutely floored by today’s announcement, but kid-me didn’t enjoy science fiction space operas nearly as much as I do now. And there’s the rub: I’ve become older with different interests, whereas Nintendo marvelously stays the same and caters to the kid in all of us. It means the gaming console war is now happening on two fronts: Sony versus Microsoft for the technically-inclined; and Nintendo versus Apple for the more relaxed interests.I think it means this will be the first major Nintendo console I won’t be getting.
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Thanks to all the coverage of E3 being put out there, especially by Kotaku, Ars Technica, Engadget, and Joystiq.

Shall we get started?

I just want to go ahead and get some stuff out of the way: I'm writing this mostly for creative purposes, as kind of an outlet for things that bounce around in my head. That could be sports, politics, gaming, industry, science, or whatever. No promises on the consistency of the topics or the overall writing ability.

As for who I am, I'm a graduate student in science with an engineering background. I love baseball, have a newfound love of soccer (sorry, I'm American), and enjoy football and hockey. I can watch basketball but it's pretty low on my list. I enjoy nerd humor. That's all I can think of for now.

Oh, the title of the blog is Latin for "Except in the presence of God". It's actually the second half of the phrase "accusare nemo se debet nisi coram Deo", meaning "no one ought to accuse himself except in the Presence of God" or you have a right against self-incrimination. There's no higher meaning for choosing that, I just like the phrase.

Thanks!