Sometimes the only way to precipitate change is to embarrass the people in charge. That could happen this year if the Toronto Blue Jays keep winning. They lost last night–6-5 to the White Sox–but at 11 games over .500 they’re looking at a 92-95-win season as a real possibility.

And they won’t make the playoffs. With Tampa Bay enjoying the rewards of a decade of last-place finishes and first-overall draft picks, the AL East has now become a 4-team juggernaut. For the fifth time in six years, we’re going to see the Wild Card team come out of the East. And the division leader is going to win around 100 games.

Now contrast that with the NL West, where last year’s division-leading Diamondbacks finished at 90-72, and this year’s Dodgers sit at 75-71. In 2007, no NL team won more than 90 games. Two teams in the AL East won more than 94. The Tigers, at 88-74, missed the playoffs. They would’ve won the NL Central, and could’ve probably taken the NL East (the Phillies won the division with 89 wins, but put the Tigers in among those teams and I like their chances.)

The AL is better than the NL; that’s a given. But Major League Baseball isn’t looking at realignment. They just don’t care. The Padres, the Nationals, the Pirates, the Giants, and, to some extent, the Reds, have been left in the NL, conceivably to be forgotten through lack of national coverage. Everyone knows that the Royals are awful, but with Seattle winning 88 games last year it’s hard to argue that there are more than three bad teams in the American League. Baltimore doesn’t have the record, but they’re playing in a division with four 85-95 win teams. Mora, Huff, Markakis, Roberts, and Adam Jones would all be batting cleanup for the Padres, Nationals, Pirates, or Giants. Try finding the pitching to compete with the Sox, the Yankees, the Jays, and the Devil Rays. That’s a $50 million proposition. I’ll concede that Oakland is bad–as bad as San Francisco–but they’re re-building. They want to be bad.

My point is this: If you were scheduling qualifying races for a track and field meet, you wouldn’t put your four best runners in the same heat. Unless you’re ranking them based on time–then it’s fine. But does Major League Baseball say that the four teams, in either league, with the best records will make the playoffs? No. The last place team in any one division could finish with more wins than the first place team in any other division, and the last place team would be out. Why that’s allowed to happen, I don’t know. It’s so offensively stupid that you have to wonder if the MLB head office is just a room with a bunch of bunk beds and Roman blinds. The league doesn’t care about its fans; it doesn’t care about its owners or its players. It cares about tradition.

In other words, it cares about doing absolutely nothing.