As Dave Allen noted this afternoon, Buster Olney reported over the weekend that Major League Baseball is considering a realignment proposal that would equalize the number of teams in each league at 15 and potentially eliminate the current divisional format completely. While I’ve been trained to believe that nearly every “improvement” MLB suggests is probably a bad idea, this actually seems like a pretty fantastic idea to me, in large part due to my desire to see increased fairness in the sport.

Right now, all four AL West teams have an inherent advantage in the chase for a playoff spot due to the size of their division, while all the NL Central teams have an inherent disadvantage. While it hasn’t manifest as a significant problem in most years (mainly thanks to the ineptitude of the Pittsburgh Pirates), there’s just no way around the fact that the NL Central teams have to beat out five opponents to win the division while the AL West teams only have to beat out three. A smaller pool of competitors simply makes it easier to make the playoffs, and it’s hard for me to come up with a good reason why some teams should have an easier path (structurally, if not always in practicality) to a division title than another.

Getting rid of the divisions entirely eliminates that problem, and while it may not have been the intention, it also creates the other massive inequity in baseball right now – the fact that the Blue Jays, Rays, and Orioles have to overcome baseball’s two behemoths to make the playoffs. While baseball is cyclical and I’d generally suggest against creating rules that react to current organizational strengths and weaknesses, it is a reality that the Yankees and Red Sox have long term, sustainable advantages over the rest of baseball. Their markets and their history have given them the ability to generate large amounts of revenue, and they use that revenue to build rosters that other organizations simply could not afford.

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Over the weekend Buster Olney reported that Major League Baseball and the players’ union discussed a possible plan for realignment. The plan would move the Houston Astros, or possibly the Florida Marlins, to the AL so that both leagues would have 15 teams; eliminate the three divisions within each league; have the top-five teams from each league go to the playoffs; and require an inter-league game every day (because of the odd number of teams in each league). There is lots to consider with such a realignment — fairness, logistics, etc. — but I wanted to look at a single aspect: how will this plan would affect the number of competitive playoff races at the end of the season?

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Baltimore Orioles shortstop J.J. Hardy got his season off to a somewhat predictable start with an oblique injury that kept him out for most of April. However, since coming back, he’s not only played typically good defense, but is having the best offensive season of his career. The contact rate and strike zone judgment have always been there, but his power surge so far this season (.186 ISO from a shortstop) hearken back to his 2007-2008 heyday in Milwaukee. In a tough 2011 run environment, a .287/.383/.473 (129 wRC+) from a good defensive shortstop is quite valuable. While Hardy is likely due for some regression, it’s not hard to imagine that his former employers who traded him away — the Brewers and Twins — looking back with some regrets.

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Now that most of the dust from the 2011 draft has begun to settle, one of the more interesting story lines to follow this summer will be how many early picks the Blue Jays will be able to sign. As has been well documented, the Blue Jays came into the 2011 draft with 8 of the first 60 picks, giving them a total of 20 selections in the first 15 rounds. But what is particularly interesting is that of those 20 picks, the Blue Jays used 17 on high school players. That’s a lot of high school players. In fact, since 2000, teams have, on average, selected fewer than 6 high school players in the first fifteen rounds.

Here’s a look at the number of high school players each team drafted in the first fifteen rounds this year.

* I looked at only the first fifteen rounds to limit the sample to draftees teams were likely intent on signing.

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Answer: Denard Span.

By one definition, at least.

If FanGraphs has one overriding purpose, it’s not, as some readers might think, to render everyone dateless. Rather, it’s to constantly ask — and attempt to answer — questions about baseball. And one of the most basic questions we ask is, “How much is [insert player’s name] worth?”

The answers are often surprising. Like, for example, two years ago, when Wins Above Replacement suggested that Ben Zobrist was the second-most valuable position player in baseball. Or how, by that same metric, we learn who’s been the real MVP in Philadelphia for the better part of the last decade.

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Last week, ESPN invited a group of 30 contributors – including myself and Jonah Keri – to take place in what they called the Franchise Player Draft. The directions were straight forward – throw out real life contracts and situations specific to Major League Baseball and simply evaluate the players for their abilities, deciding which one you would most want to build a franchise around if you were starting from scratch. We picked 1 through 30 and selected the player we would most want as our cornerstone going forward.

The concept was a lot of fun, and after the picks were revealed, many of you guys suggested that FanGraphs should do our own version – so we did. This week, we conducted an internal version of the same concept, asking 30 of our writers to pick the player left on the board that they would most want as their franchise player.

The results of that draft are below. I’m sure that, just like the ESPN version, you won’t agree with all 30 selections, but this is undoubtedly a fun exercise and hopefully gives some insight the perspectives of a variety of the staff members here.

1-1: Matthew Carruth

Evan Longoria. He was the first name to pop into my head when told I had the first pick and though I considered others, nobody knocked him off. Really wanted to take Felix, but couldn’t justify a pitcher at 1/1 and frankly, Longoria is just more valuable.

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Zack Greinke holds a press conference in front of a forest fire.

This edition of One Night Only contains:

1. Expanded previews for six games — including two with Charlie Blackmon.

2. Pitcher and Team NERD scores for every one of this weekend’s games — now arranged by time and hopefully more accurate.

3. Hella aplomb.

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What a tough question. What are the top rivalries in baseball? I’m sure Yankees fans will claim it’s Yanks-Boston, but if you went out on the West Coast, I bet you’d hear plenty of fans saying Giants-Dodgers deserves more consideration. How exactly do you declare one rivalry “bigger” than another? How do you measure fan excitement, and compare one fanbase against another? Is it possible?

Probably not, but regardless, I’m going to take a stab at it anyway. My methodology is very simple: I’m ranking rivalries based on the amount of Google hits returned for the search “(Team name) (Team name) rivalry”.  I freely admit that I’ve stolen this idea from other people, notably Nate Silver who in the past has used Google hits as a proxy for voter awareness of presidential candidates.

Is this method perfect? No, of course not. It enters in certain biases, as the media undoubtedly shapes which rivalries are written about over others, but I think the results are nonetheless fascinating. Take them with a grain of salt if you will, but overall, I’d say these rankings come close to modeling reality.

This first chart ranks the top rivalries in the American League, separated out by division. The AL East is on the left, AL Central in the….center, and AL West on the right.

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Baseball culture has been changing a great deal recently, particularly when it comes to valid reasons for players to miss playing time. Way back in the old days, teams used to go shorthanded a lot more often than they do now. As Bill James recently wrote, “When a player has a minor injury now, we move him to the minors and let him get healthy before we put him back in the lineup. Thirty years ago players would sit out a week — on the active roster — then play their way back into shape at the major league level.” As specialization increased, and each team began to carry six or seven relievers, teams simply couldn’t afford to lose a player for that length of time. In 2002, the only way a player could leave his team without leaving them a man short was to go on the 15-day or 60-day disabled list. Anything short of being disabled — including a concussion, a childbirth, or a death in the family — and the team would have to play with a 24-man roster. Players were forced to make a difficult choice — essentially, they had to chose between doing the best thing for their families or the best thing for their teammates.

Times have changed. In 2003, MLB instituted the “bereavement list.” Now also known as the “Family Medical Emergency List,” it allows players to take time off for family emergencies, including the death of a relative. And in 2011, MLB instituted both the seven-day DL for concussions and the “paternity leave list,” which allows players to leave their teams for the birth of a child. Colby Lewis was the first person to use the list to attend the birth of his child in mid-April, and seven more players have made use of it since then: Grant Balfour, David Purcey, Ian Desmond, Kurt Suzuki, Jason Bay, Ross Gload and most recently Ian Kinsler. For the most part, the paternity leave list has gone off without a hitch. It’s hardly controversial for a father to want to witness the birth of his child. Right?
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