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With teams in Las Cruces, White Sands (Alamogordo),Roswell, and Santa Fe New Mexico, Trinidad and Pueblo Colorado, and Alpine and Pecos Texas, how should the Pecos league break them up into a Northern and Southern Division? Should it be based on length of travel, natural ravels, or even an estimated power ranking? That is the question facing Andrew Dunn and the Pecos League.
If it was up to me, I would look at travel and rivals. Based on that, the Southern Division would be Las Cruces, White Sands, Alpine, and Pecos and the Northern Division would be made up of Roswell, Trinidad, Santa Fe, and Pueblo West. Now let me explain how I put these teams together.The Southern Division was easy and fit together naturally. It has three different sets of rivalries. Due to approximate to each other Las Cruces and White Sands, and Pecos and Alpine make up two sets of rivals, plus Las Cruces and Alpine are rivals from back before the Pecos League. From a travel and scheduling point of view Southern Conference would be easy to setup. Let me give you an example. Las Cruces would travel to Alpine for 5 game series at the same time White Would be at Pecos for 5 games. At the end of the both series Las Cruces would then go to Pecos for a 3 game series while White Sands plays Alpine in a 3 game series.
With the Southern Division set the Northern Division is more based on the 4 remaining teams and travel. The division does have the possibility of a three way rivalry between Sant� Fe, Trinidad, and Pueblo.Now that the Pecos League is going to a two division alignment, we should also look at how to take advantage of that alignment. First I would have limited play between the 2 divisions. I would have each team play two 3 game series against each non division team. I would also have those games at the start of the season. In the division each team would have a 3 game and 5 game home series. This would be a 72 game season with 36 home and away games. This would break down to 42 interdivision games and 24 non-division games. All games would count, but the divisional games would count more just do to the number of interdivision games.
The Northern and Southern Division winners would match up in a 7 game playoff to determine the Pecos League championship. Home Field advantage would go the winning division of the All Star game. The game format would be a 2-3-2 with 2 travel days. This would help add meaning to the All Star Game.
The All Star game would be between the Northern and Southern Division with the 2013 All Star game being in Roswell and the defending League Champions hosting the next years All Star Game. Between the home run derby and the start of the game the defending League Champions could be presented a Championship banner.
Bob Bailey is a contributing writer for PecosLeague.com
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