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From: david@fisher.UUCP (David Rubin)
Newsgroups: net.sport.baseball
Subject: Re: Tigers baseball
Message-ID: <608@fisher.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 7-May-85 08:58:52 EDT
Article-I.D.: fisher.608
Posted: Tue May  7 08:58:52 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 8-May-85 04:28:54 EDT
References: <2555@drutx.UUCP> <4500030@hpmtla.UUCP> <606@fisher.UUCP> <6772@ucbvax.ARPA>
Organization: Princeton University Department of Statistics
Lines: 83

>>	(1) the AL doesn't believe in divisional play, and schedules
>>	    the same number of games in an inter-divisional (e.g.
>>	    Detroit-Texas) matchup as in an intra-divisional (e.g.
>>	    Detroit-Milwaukee) one, and
 
>Not quite. You get 13 games with each division opponent and 12 with each
>non-division opponent.

Well, PRACTICALLY the same.

>>	(2) Each AL Eastern team has seven AL West opponents, but only
>>	    six from the East.
>>
>>					David Rubin
 
> Well, in the NL, you have 6 opponents in the other division and only 5 in
> your own - so what?
 
I was permitting the reader to draw his own conclusion, but to clarify
my point, I will do the multiplication:

				NL			AL

Intradivisional			5*18=90			6*13=78
Interdivisional			6*12=72			7*12=84

>Actually, the reason this happens is that Major League Baseball has decided
>that the fairest way to build a schedule is to have each team play a certain
>fixed number of games against each team in its own division and a different
>(and smaller) fixed number of games against each team in the other division
>in its league, and that 162 games should be played. If we use "d" to
>represent the number of division games and "n" to represent the number
>of non-division games, we get a Diophantine equation (equation with integer
>coefficients, only integer solutions desired) for each league:
> 
>(NL) 5d+6n=162
>(AL) 6d+7n=162
> 
>The solutions for the NL equation include the current d=18, n=12, which
>results in a nice schedule where you see division rivals more often, but
>still have enough competition with non-division opponents. Unfortunately,
>the only solution anywhere near the "reasonable" range for the AL equation
>is d=13, n=12. The next solution is d=20, n=6, which begins to look a lot
>like the current NBA schedule where you only play two games against each
>team from the other conference.
> 
>Interestingly enough, if you try a 154-game schedule (the way it used to be)
>in the AL, the most reasonable solution is d=14, n=10, which also looks pretty
>good. This has the advantage that you wouldn't need yet another set of
>asterisks to put in the record book, and you can get a "perfectly balanced"
>schedule with equal numbers of home and away games against each team.
>But would the owners ever agree to anything that would reduce their beloved
>revenue? Naaaah...
> 
>                                        Bill Laubenheimer
>----------------------------------------UC-Berkeley Computer Science
>     ...Killjoy went that-a-way--->     ucbvax!wildbill

Three comments to your last few points:

	(1) The solution d=13, n=12 is not really a solution, as
	    you've dropped the restriction that d and n should be
	    even.
	(2) Given that the "solution" must be flawed, it would (in my
	    opinion, which every right-thinking individual shares :-))
	    be better to have intra- or inter- divisional opponents
	    play an equal number of games in the season (the deviance
	    limited to 2) so as to have truly divisiosal play (else
	    why even have divisions?), and
	(3) 14 teams is a lousy number to have in a 162-game schedule,
	    but as more baseball is a positive good, perhaps we
	    should take this as another rationale for expansion to 16
	    teams per league (14 games for intra-divisional rivals, 8
	    games for inter-divisional ones) rather than an argument
	    for eliminating 8 games from the schedule.

The real reason that the AL has "divisional" play as they have it now
is that the owners of AL West teams are extremely reluctant to forego
any home dates with the league's best road attractions -- teams such
as the Yankees and Red Sox.  
	
					David Rubin
			{allegra|astrovax|princeton}!fisher!david