At the end of the day, 99% of the population would rather not be on an airplane. If the entire argument for East/West realignment just came down to less travel time for players, then that should be good enough for the fans
No one disputes that people hate travel. But there's two principles at play here:
#1 - That's the ARGUMENT, but their plan is NOT A SOLUTION to reduce travel.
I already showed earlier in the thread: AL East/Central teams will visit the PTZ/MTZ teams for 27 series over 6 years (4.5 per year) in their plan. It was 24 every six years before (4 per year). I used a six-year cycle because interleague took six years to do Home/Away with everyone.
The divisions are all close teams, so it LOOKS like there's less travel. But the schedule changes basically negate that. For example: Washington will be in a geographically tight division with ATL, BAL, CIN, MIA, PHI, PIT, TB. But NYM won't be in their division, the Mets will be with NYY.
OLD: WAS played 15 road series at those nine teams listed.
NEW: WAS will play 15 road series at those nine teams listed.
The differences are:
One extra trip to CIN instead of ATL, PIT instead of PHI, TB instead of MIA, TB instead of NYM, NYM OR NYY instead of definitely NYM. (All of these are equal distance or NOW LONGER).
And they get one extra trip to BAL instead of NYM.
The old interleague format pitted East vs East, West vs West, Central vs Central. You played your division + that rival division a total of about 90 times. Everyone else outside your region, you played HALF of them Home AND Away, based on if they were NL or AL.
This proposed format gives you 84 division games against seven of those 10 teams that were in your division or rival division. Plus 6 against teams that USED TO BE in your division or rival division (about 90), and you'll play ALL of the remaining teams, home OR away alternating by year.
How do you think they'll divide up who's home and who's away? You'll play HALF of each division home, and half on the road. And then flip next year:
STL will change from at LAD, SF, NYM, WAS every single year, to at LAD, OAK, NYM, BAL one year and at LAA, SF, NYY, WAS the next.
Even if they're strategic and give STL at NYY/NYM, home vs MIA/TB; at LAD/LAA, home OAK/SF and reverse it the next year, you don't have enough pairs like that to significantly reduce the travel. And that's because:
They are REDUCING the schedule by six games, but they are keeping the SAME NUMBER of series as before (52) because they're eliminating four-game series. Assuming they're going to have homesteads and road trips of 6 or 9 games just like before, there's no reduction in the amount of flights a team has to take per year.
They are throwing away 115+ years of tradition in order to shave TINY, TINY slivers off everyone's travel itineraries. Which brings me to:
#2 - I outright reject your premise of "reducing travel is enough of a reason." That applies to binary situations: "I can't see in the dark, the light switch should be turned from Off to On." Their plan isn't the only possibility that exists. You CAN accomplish the stated goals with less radical changes.
