What an Atlanta Braves 50-game season might look like

As each day passes, chances for an Atlanta Braves short season increases.

The latest proposal this morning from the MLB looks like a different multiplier was plugged into their spreadsheet and it dumped out the same bottom-line numbers. Thus the chances of an imposed 50-game schedule for the Atlanta Braves are increasing – daily.

I’ll dispense with the details of this offer, for an illustration probably suffices: if the owners/MLB and the players/MLBPA have staked out positions that are a mile apart from one another, this new proposal likely moves MLB… about 2 feet closer.

So 5,278 feet remain.

At this point, the owners’ position seems clear:  “we’re good with spending X dollars on player salaries. However many games you want to play (starting at 50), we’re good: just divvy up the dollars by the number of games in this ‘season’. ”

Under those circumstances, the players might as well accept the fifty games and move on from there. Yep, that gets them a 100% pro-rated salary level, which is akin to them declaring victory by saying “I got to eat this entire pie… all one-third of it.”

So if it’s going to be fifty games… how will that work?

There are a couple of possible scenarios that might make sense – let’s go through them:

1. ONLY DIVISION GAMES. With 4 divisional opponents, that would be boring, though it would produce a true winner for all six MLB divisions. Play each divisional rival 12 or 13 times in round-robin fashion: 4 home-and-home sets per opponent.

Getting a total of 52 games evens out the distribution with 13 apiece per opponent.

2. ONLY AUGUMENTED DIVISION GAMES. One of the prior plans had the NL/AL East teams all lumped together, NL/AL Central, etc. That’s 9 opponents, which translates to 5 games each, plus an extra game against 5 of the 9 teams.

That’s a bit more ugly since it creates several 2 game sets, which would not be ideal under the totality of the circumstances. If you can eke out 54 games, then it works better: 6 games per opponent, which is perfect for the home-and-home scenario.

63 games would get you to 7 games per opponent; 72 games for 8 such mash-ups… though the chance of either doesn’t seem likely.

3. UNBALANCED AUGMENTED DIVISIONS. This combines plans 1 and 2, and requires 52 games. Schedule 8 games against each ‘normal’ divisional rival – 4 at home/4 on the road. That’s 32 games, leaving 20 remaining.

Now set up 5 sets of 4 against the American League’s counterpart division: the AL East for the Atlanta Braves. Again, the travel for just a 2 game set is not a good idea, so that means 4-game sets with no chance for the home/home match.

Of these three, the 2nd option with 54 games works best:

• Universal DH
• No League boundaries
• East / Central / West divisions
• 14-team expanded playoffs.
• Trade deadline and playoff-eligibility deadline both happen on September 1st.

Let’s go further:  l propose a sixteen team playoff in this fashion:

• Two division ‘winners’ per division (one for each league).
• The five next best records in each league also get into the playoffs.
• All teams are seeded by records.
• First round: separated by league, top seeds play bottom seeds (best of 3).
• Next round: re-seed the remaining teams, top seeds remaining play bottom seeds (best of 5).
• Third round: League Championships. Best of 7.
• Fourth round: World Series. Best of 7.

UPDATE:  I swear that all of the above pre-dates this tweet:

Does this benefit the Atlanta Braves? Not really. Any scenario in which they have to compete against both the NL East and AL East isn’t especially good, but they should be a strong candidate to be in the playoffs regardless.

Of course all of this is academic unless somebody builds a bridge over this 5,278 foot chasm. And quickly.