Astros moving to American League; Kershaw wins Cy Young Award

Associated Press

MILWAUKEE

Major League Baseball will be making major changes in the next two years — adding two teams to the playoffs, moving the Houston Astros to the American League and extending interleague play to September.

The expanded playoffs could come as early as next year. That will put 10 teams in the postseason, requiring a new wild-card playoff round that probably will be one game, winner take all.

The altered playoff structure is subject to an agreement on a new labor contract with the players’ association, which is expected before the current deal expires Dec. 11.

Also announced Thursday was Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw winning the National League’s Cy Young Award.

Kershaw received 27 of 32 first-place votes and 207 points in voting by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.

Philadelphia’s Roy Halladay, last year’s winner, was second with four first-place votes and 133 points. Phillies teammate Cliff Lee was third with 90 points, followed by Arizona’s Ian Kennedy with 76 points.

Commissioner Bud Selig called Thursday “historical.

“We believe after a lot of study and a lot of thought that the addition of two wild cards will really help us in the long run,” Selig said..

Baseball began its playoff system in 1969 and doubled the playoff teams to eight in 1994, a change delayed one year by a strike. This change will put one-third of the baseball’s 30 teams in the postseason. In the NFL, 12 of 32 teams make the playoffs. In the NBA and NHL, 16 of 30 teams advance.

Selig acknowledged that additional wild-card teams would have eliminated the drama on the final night of this season, when Tampa Bay overtook Boston and St. Louis moved past Atlanta.

“You don’t do things for one year. You do things for a long period of time,” Selig said.

As a condition for approving the sale of the Astros from Drayton McLane to Jim Crane, the Astros agreed to shift from the NL Central to the AL West as soon as 2013, giving each league 15 teams. It’s baseball’s first realignment since the Milwaukee Brewers went to the NL after the 1997 season.

With an odd number of teams in each league, there will be interleague play from April through September. Since interleague games began in 1997, they had been concentrated around May and late-June.