What Would a Post-Expansion MLB Look Like?
Baseball will grow again.
In the modern era, there never has been a longer expansion drought.
Perhaps once the stadium situations involving Oakland and Tampa Bay are settled, baseball will consider expanding for the first time since admitting the Diamondbacks and Rays in 1998. (It’s possible that teams like Tampa or Oakland would relocate, but research by Craig Edwards earlier this week revealed how infrequently MLB teams change addresses.) Perhaps now that baseball owners have cashed in some of their investment in MLB Advanced Media, expansion talk will become more serious in the coming years. Having a new CBA agreement could also help.
Wherever, whenever baseball expands, at some point, every business seeks new markets to enter.
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred expressed interest in expansion last year and is in favor of targeting international markets like Mexico City and Montreal . There are also domestic contenders often cited like Charlotte, Las Vegas, Portland, San Antonio. Some believe a third team would do well in the NYC market, though territorial rights – among other issues – complicate matters. Back in 2012 for Baseball Prospectus, Maury Brown used a thorough methodology to rank expansion candidates.
Given the game’s history in Montreal (the Expos drew 2.1 million or more fans four times in five years from 1979 to -83), and the recent successful exhibition games there, I suspect Montreal is a favorite to land a team. Who wouldn’t love to hear more of this:
“From a technical perspective it would be easier to divide the schedule up by four. Having five teams in the divisions is problematic from a scheduling perspective.”
So with expansion, baseball will have have to redraw its maps, and there would be some interesting issues to work through.
Issue No. 1
Are four-team divisions in each league optimal or two eight-team groupings?
Issue No. 2
Should MLB expand the playoffs to six teams per league, or keep the field at five?
Issue No. 3
Should MLB realign teams by geography, or try and preserve as many of the rivalries and division arrangements as possible?
Issue No. 4
Should MLB keep interleague play or abolish it? (With teams evenly distributed in leagues, interleague play is no longer a scheduling necessity.)
There are other issues to consider, but for the purposes of keeping this post manageable, I will stop there. While we on the outside ultimately have little influence in how these decisions will play out, it’s still fun to play baseball czar regarding the issue. We can try and predict what we think will happen versus what we think should happen.
What Would Likely Happen
Here’s how I suspect the leauge would address each of the issues cited above.
Issue No. 1
I suspect MLB, as Manfred hinted in the story mentioned earlier, would divide the league into eight, four-team divisions. The more division races, the more potential interest down the stretch. Also, assuming an unbalanced schedule, players would be in favor of a format that reduces total travel time and miles. Splitting leagues into four divisions also levels the field to a degree, as larger coastal markets would generally be grouped together.
Issue No. 2
In something approximating sporting law, almost all playoff formats expand over time. While I think baseball will be careful not to turn the postseason into NBA- and NHL-style affairs, the sport is probably headed toward a six-team field in each league, with two teams receiving byes and four teams participating in play-in rounds. (Whether that remains one game or multiple games is a subject for another post.)
Issue No. 3
Baseball’s traditional element still carry value, so I believe most significant rivalries would be protected in any realignment discussions.
Issue No. 4
I suspect interleague play would remain, though perhaps in a lessened and modified way.
What Ought to Happen
As noted above, playing the role of baseball czar has its pleasures. Here are my own contributions.
Issue No. 1
I’m in favor of four, eight-team divisions. I fear the sub-.500 division champion that a four-division setup will occasionally allow, and I like the idea of division championship being meaningful and attached to a first-round bye in the postseason. Moreover, eight-team divisions could allow for more rivalries to develop as teams would play more diverse – and equitable – schedules.
The following are some modest proposals for realignment.
This proposal is a hedge between trying to create some better geographic fits while respecting traditional rivalries.
| AL WEST | AL SOUTH | AL NORTH | AL EAST |
|---|---|---|---|
| Angels | Rangers | White Sox | Yankees |
| Mariners | Astros | Tigers | Red Sox |
| A’s | Royals | Indians | Blue Jays |
| Rockies | Twins | Brewers | (Montreal?) |
| NL WEST | NL SOUTH | NL NORTH | NL EAST |
|---|---|---|---|
| Giants | Braves | Cubs | Mets |
| Dodgers | Marlins | Cardinals | Phillies |
| Padres | Rays | Reds | Nationals |
| Dbacks | Expansion 2 | Pirates | Orioles |
In going to eight, four-team divisions, some teams become awkward geographic fits and some organizations might benefit from switching leagues. Baltimore sits between Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., two potential natural rivals. The Rockies could benefit by switching to the DH league, and the Mariners would welcome replacing Texas-based teams with a Denver-based team to reduce some travel mileage. It might make some sense to group the Florida teams together with Atlanta.
The following is an eight-team division proposal without any teams jumping leagues:
| NL WEST | NL EAST | AL WEST | AL EAST |
|---|---|---|---|
| Giants | Mets | Angels | Yankees |
| Dodgers | Phillies | Mariners | Red Sox |
| Padres | Nationals | A’s | Blue Jays |
| Dbacks | Pirates | Twins | Orioles |
| Rockies | Braves | Rangers | Indians |
| Cardinals | Marlins | Astros | Tigers |
| Cubs | Reds | Royals | Rays |
| Brewers | Expansion NL | White Sox | Expansion AL |
Issue No. 2
With an even number of divisions, an increased playoff field almost certainly requires an even number of playoff teams whether that be four- or six- per league. I’d love to see a best-of-three, play-in series that featured eight teams vying for four spots determined in the first weekend of October. Baseball would have its own, truncated version of March Madness.
Issue No. 3
I’d be fascinated to see a geography-driven realignment.
Here’s a radical proposal to make four-team divisions largely based upon geography:
| AL WEST | AL SOUTH | AL CENTRAL | AL EAST |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mariners | Rangers | Reds | Yankees |
| Rockies | Astros | Tigers | Mets |
| Dbacks | Brewers | Indians | Red Sox |
| Padres | Twins | Pirates | Blue Jays |
| NL WEST | NL SOUTH | NL CENTRAL | NL EAST |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dodgers | Braves | Cubs | Nationals |
| Angels | Rays | Cardinals | Orioles |
| A’s | Marlins | White Sox | Phillies |
| Giants | Expansion 2 | Royals | Expansion 1 |
Why not place both New York, Chicago, Bay Area and Los Angeles teams in the same division? There could be a true Rust Belt division in the AL. The NL East, Central and West look like a lot of fun. This regional realignment focus could add, improve and strengthen rivalries and fan interest. It is through regional rivalries that college football derives much of its interest and passion.
Issue No. 4
Let’s end interleague play, which would add an element of unknown, curiosity – and viewership – to the All-Star Game and World Series.
Feel free to play commish for the day in the comments section. For now, it’s a fun thought exercise. But it will perhaps become a real exercise for baseball decision makers in the not too distant future.
A Cleveland native, FanGraphs writer Travis Sawchik is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Big Data Baseball. He also contributes to The Athletic Cleveland, and has written for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, among other outlets. Follow him on Twitter @Travis_Sawchik.
AL South: Twins
Minneapolis is either the third or fourth northernmost venue. +1 if you include Montreal.
Also a missed opportunity for a new Twins/Brewers rivalry. I think if both teams are in the AL, they should really be in the same division.
Edit: Looks like he took care of this in his radical realignment.
Sorry, Twins. Twins were are hard team to fit. It’s difficult to find a perfect fit for every team … but all four teams are in the Central time zone
I feel in that case it’s just a matter of renaming the division(s). Call it the AL Central instead. Although it wouldn’t match with the naming of the other divisions, it at least makes more sense.
Lose the geographic names all together.
The Babe Ruth Division, Jackie Robinson, Roberto Clemente, Hank Aaron, Ted Williams, Connie Mack, Buck O’Neil, Mountain Landis.
Honorable mention to Willie Mays, Marvin Miller, Ban Johnson, Lou Gehrig, and Branch Rickey.
While not exactly the same concept, the Big Ten named their divisions the “Leaders” and “Legends” a few years ago when they first expanded to 14 teams. It was pretty much unanimously hated and they now named the East and West.
No need to get cute with division names. Just make them easy to understand and remember.
This. Just Re-name it the AL Central and your set. All 4 would be in the central time zone. And if Mexico City is the other expansion team – they fit perfectly into the NL South. There’s a lot of ways to align it depending on the expansion teams.
Mexico City is quite a hike from Atlanta & Miami, further than you might think. Mexico City would make great sense paired with Houston & Texas since Texas borders Mexico.
I would think Charlotte is far more likely to get a team before Mexico City. Safety, logistics, and the value of the Peso would all factor in.
Canadian teams have from time to time had trouble getting free agents due to currency fluctuations. For mexico that may become a big issue over the next few years.
The problem I see with Charlotte is it would make the southeast too crowded for atlanta and Baltimore.
I’m thinking Las Vegas or San Antonio would better fit the map.
If you rotated your Modest Proposal so that the Reds were in the NL South, the Twins were in the NL North and an expansion team in the AL South, that’d work out pretty well.
Look, instead of repeating the same 4 names for each division of the 2 leagues, why not just use 6 different names.
AL WEST
Mariners
Rockies
Dbags
Padres
AL CENTRAL
Rangers
Astros
Brewers
Twins
AL ROKER
Reds
Tigers
Indians
Pirates
AL EAST
Yankees
Mets
Red Sox
Rays
NL CALI
Dodgers
Angels
A’s
Giants
NL MIDDLE
Cubs
Cardinals
White Sox
Royals
NL INTERNATIONAL
Blue Jays
Expos
Havana
Albakerkie
NL OTHER
Nationals
Orioles
Dbacks East
Dumb Ass’s Old Team
It’s like how the Braves and Reds were in the original NL West just because the whiny Cubs couldn’t handle a bunch of west coast trips and the Cardinals naturally insisted on staying with the Cubs.
I think the biggest problem there there need to be more Texas teams. Or at least some kind of a bridge. Sending the Cubs, Braves, or Reds to the West is bad.
If the NL added an OKC team into the mix, or even a further West team, they could flip the Astros and Brewers, make the Astros an NL West team, make Kansas City an AL West team and it should pretty much work.
Oh boy, that AL South in both proposals is a mess. Teams would be really unhappy with that, I bet.
Just call it AL Midwest and be done with it. The actual distance in travel isn’t all that bad. It’s just weird to call a division with teams in Minnesota and Wisconsin a southern division.
Honestly, the current setup of having both Texas teams travel to the west coast is pretty frustrating for most of their team’s fans. Anything that would help prevent post-9:00 PM local time first pitch would 100% get my support
I think the best pairing would be the Texas and Florida teams. Miami, Houston and Dallas are major airports for travelling fans, no state income tax for unbalanced schedules. Atlanta, Cincinnati, Baltimore and Washington as the next most SE quartet. Work Seattle and Colorado together with the Bay Area teams, and the Dbacks with the SoCal trio. Then you have the Midwest/Northeast blob + 2 expansion teams to play with, travel being a non issue.
Good luck getting so many NL fans to accept having their teams move to the AL and have to start using the boring DH. One or two switches (although still very disappointing) would be one thing, but with as many as your proposal would require, there could be riots or significant boycotts.
This. Make it easier to quickly drive/fly to your team’s away games and watch them on TV. The reference to regional rivalries working so well in college sports is a great point.
I like 4 divisions of 8. Then you can have division winner get a bye, and the 2nd and 3rd place teams would play a best-of-3 series. That would also make the first 2 rounds of the playoffs truly divisional rounds, with lots of rivalries building up there.
Or just do a series a elimination wild card games to whittle down the Wild Cards.
e.g. in each league:
2 Division winners get HFA in DS. WC1 advances to DS.
Monday: WC3 hosts WC4, loser eliminated.
Tuesday: WC2 hosts winner. Loser eliminated, winner advances to DS.
I like this option a lot. Gives teams at every level of contention something to play for. If you’re outside the playoff you want to get in. If you’re in 4th place you want to get to 3rd and secure HFA in the first wild-card game. If you’re in 3rd place you want to get to 2nd and avoid the first wild-card game altogether. If you’re in 2nd place you want to get to 1st place and avoid both wild card games.
Yeah I’d opt for this.
Alternatively, in the 8 division set up, it would be fun to only have the div winners advance but as you indicated, that would invariably include a below 500 team or two.
Perfect fit with my proposal below.
I know it goes against history, but how about going back to 8 teams making the playoffs? Simple: each division winner makes the postseason. This isn’t football–let’s not devalue the regular season even more! All the talk about “winning your division should mean something,” and then going to a 6-team playoff where 2 division winners are treated the same as two wild card teams?
Interesting ideas. Calling a division that is half teams from Wisconsin and Minnesota the “AL South” seems like a stretch, though.
They’re probably not going to go too crazy with re-alignment. (Personally I don’t think they should either.) Maybe something like this?
AL East
Yankees
Red Sox
Orioles
Blue Jays
AL North
Tigers
White Sox
Indians
Twins
AL South
Royals
Astros
Rays
Mexico City
AL West
Angels
Mariners
Rangers
Athletics
NL East
Mets
Phillies
Nationals
Montreal
NL North
Cubs
Cardinals
Pirates
Brewers
NL South
Braves
Marlins
Rockies
Reds
NL West
Giants
Dodgers
Padres
Diamondbacks
IMO, switch the Cardinals and the Reds and you’re onto something here.
You do not put the Cardinals and Cubs in separate divisions. Period.
yeah. stl-chc, bos-nyy and lad-sfg would have to stay in the same divisions you’d think.
Being a Montreal Expos fan, my only problem is that it would be kinda awkward to play in the same division as the Nationals, if you get what I mean.. but that’s just a personnal issue.
Still better than Toronto, which is a provincial capital.
That’s a lot of mileage with Rockies going to the east a lot and vice versa for Braves and Marlins.
I don’t get why we need to put Cardinals-Cubs (and similar rivalries) in the same division in a 4 division league if it makes the geography work better.
Chances are the schedules will be more balanced, the rivalry will survive, and if they are both good, they can play each other in the playoffs
I was reading this, thinking to myself, “Man, this guy is really on to something”. Then I saw the Rockies in the NL South and it killed it. lol
Personally, I think the Rockies would be a great addition to the AL.
Looks good but the rangers will want to stay with Houston and if Mexico got a team they would line up better with the socal gang instead of the Dbacks. And if they don’t Vegas would fit fine in either cali division.
Flip Rockies and Rangers and is perfect
Regarding issues 1+2 (division + playoff format): there’s a perception in baseball that a long layoff is bad for the team. And there’s also the perception that subjecting a division winner to the risk of quick elimination is unfair. For those reason, you’re unlikely to garner support for a system where some division winners get a bye of a full series. It would also be very difficult to have 4 divisions AND wild cards.
It works in the NFL. A bit different but if two of the division winners aren’t very good, then most people won’t have many misgivings about them being eliminated.
The top 2 records in each league get a bye. The two worst division winners have to play the wild card series. It gives everyone something to play for until the end of the season. Don’t want to play the wild card series? Compete and scoreboard watch against the other division leaders. The teams on bye can’t complain about a trip the next round, resting players (especially with all these innings limits now) and setting up their rotations. It works for the NFL. I think that’s very reasonable and makes the end of the season exciting on a variety of fronts.
Straight seeding.
Four division winners, two wild cards. Two best records get a bye.
Other four get three game series with no off days. Wild cards get no home games. Sub-.500 winner gets home field but the stronger wild card.
Maximum layoff: 5 days.
2 divisions per league. Division winner get byes. 4 Wild Cards play a two 3 game series the first week of October. Then the playoffs basically proceed as usual.
I don’t think my marriage would survive if a team moved here to Portland.
In the eight-team division playoffs, there could still be first-round byes. What you could do instead is have the third-place West team play the second-place East team and vice versa in each league. That would create bye drama and wild-card drama and likely ensure that each top team plays hard through the end of the season.
As a Cubs fan on the East coast, there are few things I would hate more than the eight-team alignments proposed — I hate west coast start times. It saddens me to see that every proposed alignment doesn’t include more of the old NL East. The Cardinals, Pirates, Mets, Expos and Phillies are the opponents I want to see day in and out.
At least it’s better for the Cardinals and Cubs to deal with it than actual Eastern Time Zone teams like the Reds and Braves used to do. Now that was unfair.
Yeah, the more I think about it, the more I like 4 team divisions.
Meh, The Pirates in the AL. No thanks.
I think we’re closer to a “Major League Baseball” rather than league identities with the next expansion. So I’ll offer one that’s a hybrid of Travis’ four-division setup…
EASTERN: Montreal, Toronto, Boston, Mets, Yankees, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit
SOUTHERN: Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Atlanta, Miami, Tampa, Cincinnati, Mexico City/Havana
MIDWESTERN: Milwaukee, Cubs, White Sox, Minnesota, Kansas City, St. Louis, Houston, Texas
WESTERN: Seattle, San Francisco, Oakland/Portland/Sacramento/Las Vegas A’s, Angels, Dodgers, San Diego, Arizona, Colorado
Very similar to mine below. I like it.
suspect it’ll be Charlotte over Mexico City/Havana. I’m not sure who really has the territory rights there…probably a DC/Atlanta split, which is just dumb anyway.
Plus many wouldn’t be able to afford regular trips to a stadium in those two cities.
Right? I don’t get where all this Mexico City speculation is coming from. I’d love to see that happen some day, but that will be a heck of a challenge for MLB. Charlotte makes more sense for the next expansion.
Mexico City would be a huge market. Charlotte seems like an NHL move. Might as well go with Portland.
It’s more than just population and TV ratings. I saw Manfred’s comments, but as I said somewhere above, safety, logistics, and even currency would all be real issues. I would love to see baseball expand to Mexico. I just don’t see it happening right now.
Plus there will be that huge wall to contend with. Do we even know if planes will be able to fly over it?
The NC fan base is overwhelmingly pro-Braves. There are Cubs/Yankees/other big team fans sprinkled throughout but basically no Baltimore/DC fans.
However, this would certainly involve expanding the DH to all of MLB (since the MLBPA will never give it up), so no thank you.
Or they could do the right thing and get rid of the dh and expand the rosters.
I like this one.
Philly in the Southern doesn’t makes sense to me when Pitt is in the East.
I might try:
North East: Montreal, Toronto, Boston, Mets, Yankees, Phillies, Baltimore, DC
Great Lakes: Twins, Brewers, Cubs, ChiSox, Detroit, Cleveland, Pitt, Cincinnati
South East: Houston, Texas, Floria, Tampa, Atlanta, Charlotte, St. Louis, KC
WESTERN: Seattle, San Francisco, Oakland/Portland/Sacramento/Las Vegas A’s, Angels, Dodgers, San Diego, Arizona, Colorado
If you wanted to argue swapping Toronto and Pitt, I’d get it.
If the DH is coming to both leagues, how about this: Each team decides whether they’re a DH home team before each season. Then the teams have the flexibility to decide which way they want to play based on their roster. I could imagine many times the Rays would have liked to forgo the DH in recent years and force the Yankees and Red Sox to figure out what to do with Alex Rodriguez and David Ortiz.
As long as midwester is national league and has no dh, I could live withit
Tigers get screwed out if every historical rival? Uhhh, nope.
East- NYM, NYY, Boston, Toronto, Philly, Balt, Washington, Charlotte (or Montreal)
Midwest- Detroit, Pitt, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Cubs, CWS, Minny, Cincinnati,
South-ATL-Miami-Tampa-KC-STL-HOU-TEX-Mex.City
West- Same
NL South is about to be a snooze fest
Why not have 3 leagues and do a round robin championship? (Okay, there are many reasons not to, but hey, it’s an idea.)
I’ve thought of that. American, National and Pacific. Three 10-team leagues.
AMERICAN: Boston, Yankees, Baltimore, Tampa, Toronto, Cleveland, Detroit, White Sox, Minnesota, Kansas City
NATIONAL: Mets, Philadelphia, Washington, Atlanta, Miami, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Cubs, St. Louis, Milwaukee
PACIFIC: Seattle, San Francisco, A’s, Angels, Dodgers, San Diego, Arizona, Colorado, Texas, Houston
As a fan of a Texas team, I don’t really care what the re-org looks like but please just don’t let it be this.
As much as I like the idea of 2 8-team divisions in each league, I don’t see a scenario where the St. Louis, Chicago, and Milwaukee markets could be shoehorned into a Western division. For one, the Cubs have limited night games, and two, the Midwest isn’t like New York. 8pm start times are ridiculous for us, let alone the 9:05 start times for 7pm west coast games.
For that reason alone, either a radical realignment along geographic grounds, or a moderate 8-division realignment is more realistic.
Radical Geographical Realignment (not sure how AL/NL or DH would exist):
West: SEA, SF, OAK, LAD, LAA, SD, ARI, COL
East: TOR, BOS, NYY, NYM, PIT, PHI, DET, expansion1
North: MIN, MIL, CHC, CWS, KC, STL, CLE, expansion2
South: MIA, TB, ATL, TEX, HOU, CIN, WSN, BAL
8-of-4 Realignment
— really depends on who the expansion teams are, and/or where Oakland and/or Tampa Bay move. Basically the Rockies and Mariners ruin everything by being so distant from everyone else. A Las Vegas expansion or relocation (which has to be on the table with NHL and NFL moving there) could help out. But playing with teams, two Eastern time zone teams makes this easiest:
American League
No State Income Tax Division: HOU, TEX, MIA, TB
Legalize It Division: COL, SEA, SF, OAK
Northeast Division A: TOR, NYY, BOS, DET
North Division A: CLE, KC, CWS, MIN
National League
East Central Division: ATL, BAL, WSN,
Southwest Division: LAD, LAA, SD, ARI
Northeast Division B: NYM, PHI, PIT,
North Division B: CHC, MIL, STL, CIN
I know you’re against the 4-team-division concept. I just want to add that more divisions with fewer teams LOWERS the odds of a compelling race in any given. That is obvious both in the historic record of MLB and other sports, but also in the very concept. I just wish we could trust Manfred’s office to understand that.
It lowers the odds of a compelling race between two good teams, but it does increase the odds of a .500 team still being alive into the last week of the season. For good or ill, I think that’s what MLB wants.
Exactly.
That is what four divisions and two wild cards buy them: one more playoff slot. In their mind, if five playoff slots are good, six will be better. Just hope they don’t go to 8 with no byes, just straight seeding for the matchups.
My point is, I’ll gladly concede the 6th playoff spot, as a trade-off for the stronger and fairer postseason field that would come with two 8-team divisions and 4 wild cards, rather than 4 divisions and 2 wild cards.
For any fixed number of playoff spots, allotting more of them on the basis of league-wide standings, rather than the leaders of arbitrary divisions, tends to strengthen the playoff field. And reducing the number of byes helps avoid absurdities like the 2015 Pirates taking their 2nd-in-MLB record into the wild card game, while far inferior division winners got to set up their LDS rotations.
And I see no difference in fan interest between division races and wild-card races. Last year’s Cardinals were locked out of the division with 16 games left — and effectively out of it in August — but they were in the wild-card race to the last weekend, and their attendance stayed high.
AL East
NYY
BOS
BAL
TOR
AL South
KCR
TEX
TBR
Mystery Team
AL Central
MIN
MIL
CHW
CIN
AL West
SEA
OAK
LAA
ARI
NL East
NYM
MON
PHI
WAS
NL South
STL
ATL
MIA
HOU
NL Central
CHC
DET
CLE
PIT
NL West
SFG
LAD
SDP
COL
[Mostly] makes geographic sense, while preserving as many AL/NL affiliations as possible and avoiding divisions with cross-town rivals. Assumes one expansion team would be in Montreal and the other would be somewhere that makes sense in the AL South (Mexico City, Charlotte, San Antonio).
That NL Central/AL Central would be a mess.
Ricketts and Dewitt would sue.
What I would like to see (though it will never happen given that law about playoff formats expanding) would be to shrink the playoffs back to four teams in each league. If each league is four divisions of four teams each then you would eliminate the Wild Cards; if each league is two divisions of eight then there would be two Wild Cards (each of whom would presumably make the Division Series outright, so perhaps home field advantage for the DS round should be strengthened to 4-1 or something to increase the division/wild card differential). I might vote for 4×4 and eliminating Wild Cards myself, but I can see arguments either way.
I’m not a fan of redistributing teams across the leagues. Not sure why exactly; perhaps just a vague sense of (Burkean) conservatism. This is how it’s always been, it works well, there’s no real problem with it. And I suspect that having subway series become routine would wear out its welcome very quickly.
I don’t really care that much about interleague play one way or the other; I get why people don’t like it and might even agree in principle but it also seems basically fine and harmless in practice.
This probably won’t be a very popular proposal, but I don’t think your radical realignment goes nearly far enough.
I’d love to see something more like the NBA with the leagues divided between east and west, with eight 4-team divisions. Then eliminate interleague games (or maybe keep 2 series with a rotating interleague division, so 24 games per team per year).
That would all but eliminate the possibility of single-metro World Series (unless two teams from the midwest had to get split between East and West leagues, but that could be easily avoided). Travel would be a non-issue. Late games on the west coast for east coast teams wouldn’t be an issue.
The only downside is that it flies in the face of tradition, which is baseball’s backbone. Since we’d be mixing leagues, there could be DH issues, but I think you could get around that by adding a 26th man to each roster and letting the home team choose whether or not to use it for each game.
As an O’s fan I’ve thought about realignment a lot. Part of me would hate to give up playing our current rivals as often as we do. But realigning would get us out from under having to win a division against two of the top three revenue teams in MLB, plus Toronto being way up there too. Regardless, the geographic proposals that basically drop the O’s in the current NL East more or less would take some getting used to for sure.
I would go:
NLE: Mets, Phils, Nats, New Expos
NLN: Cubs, Reds, Bucs, Brewers
NLS: Braves, Fish, Cards, Rox
NLW: Giants, Dodgers, Pads, DBs
ALE: Yanks, RedSx, BJs, O’s
ALN: ChiSx, TIgers, Twins, Tribe
ALS: Rays, Royals, Stros, Expansion 2 (Memphis, Nashville, Charlotte, NOrleans?)
ALW: Halos, M’s, A’s, Rangers
if 8 divisions, which is what they’ll prob do. Then have 2 WCs play the 2 lower ranked div winners, similar to what the NFL does.
But I think I’d prefer a set up similar to the NHL – going 4 divisions with the 4 winners getting a bye and the 2nd a 3rd team having to go thru each other to get to play the div winner. Can have 3rd team get no home games in a best of 3 round.
If we’re going pure geography, why not this for the West divisions:
West 1:
– SEA
– OAK
– SFG
– COL
West 2:
– LAA
– LAD
– SDP
– ARI
Alternatively, if one of the expansion sites is Portland or Las Vegas, sub that team in for COL and move the Rockies to a division with TX or midwestern teams.
Geographically, that makes sense. I just don’t see MLB placing both teams from the same city in the same divisions.
Putting the Rockies in the American League is a fun thought. I don’t know if it would be “helpful” though. They already struggle enough to get pitchers in free agency. Joining the AL may make increase the problem.
It won’t ever be this radical but I say break the teams into 4 separate leagues of 8 where 3 of each make the playoffs. I’m not going to bother with names.
West (mountain and pacific time zones)
Mariners
Angels
Dodgers
Padres
Giants
Athletics
Rockies
Diamondbacks
Midwest (central time zone)
Twins
Brewers
Cubs
White Sox
Cardinals
Royals
Rangers
Astros
East 1 (the north and coastal part of the east)
Blue Jays
Red Sox
Yankees
Orioles
Mets
Phillies
Nationals
Montreal (expansion)
East 2 (the interior and south part of the east)
Tigers
Reds
Indians
Pirates
Braves
Marlins
Rays
Charlotte (expansion)
2nd and 3rd place team from each league play a 3 game series played entirely at the 2nd place team’s field (I would love to see it over 2 days with a DH one day) with the winner advancing to a 7 game series with the league champion.
As for the DH we settle on the issue with my preference being the compromise of tying the DH to the pitcher (once one leaves the other has to as well unless he takes over both duties).
As for a schedule each team plays 2 home and 2 away series against the teams in their league every year working out to 84 games. They will play one home and one away series with another division (rotating yearly) adding another 48 games. Finally they will play the teams from a third division one series each with half coming at home and half on the road equaling another 24 games bringing us to a 156 game schedule.
For example the teams in the west would play a home and away series against the teams in the midwest and play 4 of the teams in the East 1 at home and 4 on the road. The champion of the west division would then play the champion of the East 2 division in the semi finals. This would rotate annually.
You and I are very close in overall opinion. Cheers to you!
I am reluctant to put teams that are very close to each other in the same league much less the same division. Putting them together brings forth the very real risk of one team becoming an afterthought. At least when they are in different leagues, you have two separate narratives to keep things interesting plus always the potential to meet in the World Series. I would highly recommend not putting the Nationals and Orioles in the same division, much less the Yankees/Mets.
Au contraire. Fans of teams very close together would love to see them play each other much more often and would fill both stadiums.
I don’t know about same-city match-ups, because would be potentially threatening attendance figures as fans of both teams might see it as a two-for-one. But neighboring cities? I could see rivalries being fueled, just as you suggested. I know I would love to go to the enemies’ stadium to see my team defeat them if it were convenient.
You can’t really view the AL and NL as fluid or interchangeable until they do the only sensible thing and drop the DH in the AL.
Best post on this thread
With Montreal and San Antonio as expansion teams:
WEST———–CENTRAL——-EAST————SOUTH
Seattle———-Minnesota——Yankees———Baltimore
San Francisco–Milwaukee——Mets————Washington
Oakland———White Sox——Boston———-Atlanta
LA Dodgers—–Cubs————Philadelphia—-Tampa Bay
LA Angels——-St. Louis——–Pittsburgh——Miami
San Diego——-Kansas City—-Detroit———-Texas
Arizona———-Cincinnati——Toronto———-Houston
Colorado——–Cleveland——Montreal——–San Antonio
I swear I didn’t see yours before I submitted mine. Virtually identical.
I think Mexico City instead of San Antonio… it still works though.
I think Vancouver would be a great place for expansion. The city always makes its presence felt in Seattle, and those teams would have a built in rivalry, plus obvious rivalries with the other Canadian teams.
Then you could add them to the West and not jerk the Texas teams around.
The Asian population would likely respond well to the influx of players from the east as well.
Imagine an AT&T style park where homers can go into the water with the Lions Gate Bridge and snow capped mountains beyond the outfield fence. It would be amazing.
Isn’t there a rule against putting teams from the same city in the same league?
Correct me if I’m wrong.
The best case would be to not have an AL or NL and just the MLB. 4 divisions with 8 teams each. I’d be pro DH or allow the home team to pick before each game whether teams could DH or not. 4 divisional winners and top 2 wild cards get bye. Next 4 teams get the play inc game.
South – TB, MIA, BAL, ATL, HOU, WAS, PHI, Expansion (Raleigh)
East – NYY, NYM, BOS, TOR, PIT, CLE, CIN, DET
West – SD, LAA, LAD, SF, OAK, SEA, AZ, Expansion (Vancouver)
Central – CHC, CHW, STL, KC, MIL, MIN, COL, TEX
Also good with adding Montreal to the East and putting PIT in South
I like proposal 1 but swap the Twins and Indians so that was the AL North mirrors the NFC North. Now all 4 cities can hate each other all year!
I’d also consider putting the expansion team in the AL West for Portland, sliding the Rockies to the AL South and the Tigers back in the AL East. I’d prefer the Orioles back in the East but in this scenario I don’t feel comfortable moving anybody else to the NL except the O’s.
Toronto is much closer to the other midwestern great lakes cities such as Cleveland, Detroit, and Chicago than it is to either Boston or New York.
“DO IT NOW!”
-Every Mariner fan
Realignment or putting Edgar in the HoF?
Yes.
For that issue 3 proposal, an AL West of the DBacks, Rockies, Padres, and Mariners has the potential to be a terrible shitshow like 60% of the time, and I actually like those teams.
Gotta think your modest 8-division realignment plan would sit very badly with the Braves.
4 leagues:
West: Seattle, San Fran, San Jose, L.A., Anaheim, San Diego, Phoenix, Denver
Northeast: Montreal, Boston, New York, New York, Philly, Pitt, Toronto, Detroit
Southeast: Washington, Baltimore, Charlotte, Atlanta, Tampa, Miami, Houston, Texas
Midwest: K.C., St. Louis, Minnesota, Milwaukee, Chicago, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland
I kind of like your radical realignment. As an Angels fan, it would be fun seeing them compete directly with the Ddogers, Giants, and Athletics.
In your more likely first scenario, how about adding in the Portland Swallows in the NL West, with the DBacks going to the NL South. Then get the Twins out of the AL South by pushing them to the AL North, the Tigers or Indians to the AL East, Montreal to the NL East, and the Orioles to the AL South. It isn’t perfect but a helluva lot better than having one of the northernmost teams in the South.
How about starting a 3rd league? All of the expansion teams go to the new league, and to round it out you put teams with a shorter history into the new league (like expansion teams from the 1970’s to the present). I’d just hate to see storied franchises forced to switch leagues and rivalries after decades or more than a century of history
I’d probably go with two four-division leagues. I’d also start with the premise that you do not break up the Yankees/Sox, Cubs/Cardinals, or Giants/Dodgers division rivalries. The expansion teams I added are Portland and Charlotte. I then swapped leagues for the Rockies and Rays to get tighter regions.
ALW – Mariners, Portland, A’s, Angels
ALS – Rangers, Astros, Royals, Rockies
ALN – White Sox, Tigers, Indians, Twins
ALE – Yankees, Red Sox, Orioles, Blue Jays
NLW – Giants, Dodgers, Padres, Diamondbacks
NLS – Braves, Marlins, Rays, Charlotte
NLN – Cubs, Cardinals, Reds, Brewers
NLE – Pirates, Phillies, Nationals, Mets
If the expansion was Montreal instead of Charlotte, I’d swap them with the Nationals in the NLE, moving the Nationals to the south. Similarly with Mexico City instead of Portland, I’d swap the Rockies to the ALW, and Mexico City to the ALS. Vegas could just straight replace Portland also.
Yup. This is great. Love that AL South. And the new Seattle Mariners/Portland Platypi rivalry will no doubt be heated. The Rockies already seem like an AL team, and the Rays would probably embrace a move to the NL, too.
What is with everyone’s chubby that Portland could be viable baseball market? They can’t support minor league teams. It is a joke. I feel like Montreal is a done deal they are just waiting for the right time. San Antonio or Austin would intrigue me as possible markets. Expansion brings offense, and offense puts butts in seats.
I’m all about Montreal and another Texas team. I also would welcome a third New York team. I left room for these scenarios in my radical re-alignment.
We’ve got a rabid NBA and MLB fanbase and even our JUNIOR hockey league does really well here. I don’t know where you get this idea Portland couldn’t support an MLB team.
(now the constant rain delays are a different issue)
Assuming the first expansion team is Montreal, and the second is in the south, then this is my breakdown for eight four-team divisions.
American League
East (Northeast): Yankees, Red Sox, Orioles, Blue Jays
North (Midwest): Indians, Tigers, White Sox, Twins
South (South-Central): Rangers, Astros, Royals, Expansion Team
West (West): Mariners, Angels, Athletics, Rockies (Change of League)
National League
East (Northeast): Mets, Phillies, Nationals, Expos
North (Midwest): Cubs, Cardinals, Brewers, Pirates
South (Southeast): Reds, Braves, Marlins, Rays (change of League)
West (Pacific): Giants, Dodgers, Padres, D-Backs
This system works geographically if the expansion team is east of Colorado. If the expansion team is west of Colorado, then the Rockies could join the AL South with the expansion team going to the AL West.
I think these division make geographical sense without disrupting many core rivalries or forcing many teams to change league. Time zones are not a major issue with this set-up issues, with a maximum 1 hour difference between teams.
this was so much more fun reading and thinking about than the actual day’s events… thank you all.
i doubt MLB will push for too radical a solution since it seems fairly conservative in nature and rich owners won’t want to upset their perceived markets, but because this is pure fun:
Angels Rangers White Sox Yankees
Mariners Astros Tigers Red Sox
Rockies Royals Indians Blue Jays
Portland A’s Brewers Twins Orioles
NL WEST NL SOUTH NL NORTH NL EAST
Giants Braves Cubs Mets
Dodgers Marlins Cardinals Phillies
Padres Charlotte Rays Reds Nationals
Dbacks San Antonio Rustlers Pirates Montreal Youppis
I have got to believe that if we see more normal relations with Cuba a major Disney like resort with a state of the art retractable roof stadium near Havana would be great for baseball and a tremendous tourist draw.
Love your use of “A modest proposal” though perhaps in playing off the swift work you should’ve titled your most radical realignment “A Modest Proposal for realignment”. Keep up the incredible work, I am thoroughly intrigued by each and every one of your posts.
Byes really don’t work in baseball. Teams don’t benefit much from time off (and may actually be hurt by too much) and they lengthen the playoff schedule. Instead I would like to see division winners/top ranked teams get more home games or start a series with a a game advantage.
Also, 4 team divisions would mean 4 division winners. With 5 or 6 teams making the playoffs, not all division winners would get byes/advantages.
Time zones are more important than north/south. Keep as many teams in the same time zone as possible.
AL West
Seattle
San Diego
LAA
LAD
OAK
SF
ARZ
COL
NL West
KC
HOU
TEX
San Antonio
MIN
MIL
STL
CHC
AL East
NYY
TOR
BOS
PHI
NYM
CHW
DET
CLE
NL East
BAL
WAS
TBR
ATL
MIA
CIN
PIT
Charlotte
have 1 month of interleague where the league with the better record gets home field advantage. Each team plays a quick 2 game series against each team in the other league. All Star game is a tie breaker if there is a tie. (32 games)
Each team has 2 home and 2 away three game series with everyone from their own division (94 games)
Each team plays 1 home and 1 away 2 game series with the other division (32 games).
158 total games.
More double headers to end the season in mid sept.
Expand active roster to 30, reserve to 50.
Playoffs division winners get a buy.
3 game wild card play in with 4 wild card winners from each league, games 1&2 are a double header. Rounds after are 7-7-7 with fewer days off. Format for the 7 game series are 2-2-1-1-1
The 7th best AL and NL teams play in an 8 team tournament against the japanese, Korean, dominican, Venezuelan, mexican, and taiwan champs which.
As a Montreal Expos fan, I really like Montreal in the AL East rather than in the NL East, because it would be somewhat awkward to play vs the Nationals if you get what I mean.. Plus, playing vs Toronto, Boston and NY creates natural rivalries, especially Toronto. It makes a lot more sense than Baltimore, Philly or Washington. Anyway, this is simply my biased opinion.
If there were to be expansion, I would like the 4 teams per division approach. The problem is determining the divisions based on rivalries and location while keeping the current AL/NL structure intact.
It would be easier to take your 8 team alignment and divide it even further. Something like this:
AL Northeast
Toronto
Montreal?
Cleveland
Detroit
AL East
NYY
Boston
Baltimore
Tampa Bay
AL Central
CWS
KC
Texas
Houston
AL West
Seattle
Oakland
LAA
Minnesota
NL Northeast
NYM
Philadelphia
Cincinnati
Pittsburgh
NL East
Washington
Atlanta
Miami
Mexico City?
NL Central
Chi Cubs
St. Louis
Milwaukee
Colorado
NL West
SF
LAD
SD
Colorado
This isn’t perfect and it assumes that both expansion are coming from the East, but it keeps both leagues intact on how they are currently structured. The only realistic move would be to swap Minnesota and Colorado to the other leagues.
Arizona is meant to be in NL West
This gets me thinking about if the DH would be added to the NL or abolished altogether. If the Orioles did move to the NL, it would be hard for them because they have several DH type guys. The same with other teams if they were forced to move.
Kill the two leagues. No need for NL/AL. Full DH. 4 eight team divisions: MLB EAST (Yankees, Mets, Phillies, Jays, Red Sox, Nationals, Orioles, East Expansion Team); MLB NORTH (Twins, Brewers, Cubs, White Sox, Tigers, Indians, Reds, Pirates); MLB SOUTH (Marlins, Braves, Rays, Astros, Rangers, Cardinals, Royals, South Expansion Team); MLB WEST (Rockies, Angels, Padres, Giants, Mariners, As, Diamondbacks, Dodgers). 13 games against all division rivals and a 2 or 3 game series against every other team in baseball. 4 division winners get a bye, 8 wild card teams. Seed the playoffs based on record with a set bracket.
And for the record the time zone thing is overblown. So long as you have half the teams in a division E/C time you have paired matchups in the zone and there’s the same amount of 6/7PM starts as there are now. And having all those West/Mountain teams in the same division with 91 games of the schedule in the natural times zones and you’re fine as well.
I think the best way is to try to be as geographical as possible (regional rivalries, travel time, time zones for game times etc) while also staying as true to tradition as you can. Montreal seems like a good bet for an expansion. Las Vegas and Portland feel next in line.
AL North
White Sox
Twins
Tigers
Indians
AL South
Rangers
Astros
Royals
DBacks
AL East
Yankees
Red Sox
Blue Jays
Orioles
AL West
Mariners
A’s
Angels
Portland/Las Vegas
NL North
Cubs
Pirates
Cardinals
Brewers
NL South
Braves
Reds
Marlins
Rays
NL East
Phillies
Mets
Nationals
Montreal
NL West
Dodgers
Giants
Padres
Rockies
It’s never going to be perfect (it’s not perfect now).
6 of out the 8 divisions contain the same teams or the same teams + the expansion team. Every division has the same time zone (or only 1 hour off). Only 2 teams change leagues and they haven’t been around long enough to establish deep traditions. You could flip Montreal and Baltimore if you wanted to establish Montreal vs Toronto and Baltimore vs Washington rivalries (but Montreal vs Washington would be interesting too).
There’s a number of ways to re-align depending on the expansion teams (and that’s a good thing). If it’s Mexico City or Charlotte instead of Portland/Vegas, put them in the NL South and move Dbacks to the West. (And move Reds to NL North, Brewers to AL North, Twins to AL Central with Royals, Rangers and Astros – same time zone)
I was going to write my own comment but this setup is exactly what I was going for. I definitely think the two expansion locations should be Montreal and Portland (with Charlotte a close third).
Why 4 team divisions? Any time I think about 4 team divisions I want to pre-emptivley quit baseball forever.
Because 8 team divisions simply require too much travel for MLBPA to ever agree to it. Baseball is not like the NBA or NFL, it’s an everyday sport, so you don’t want teams to be traveling all across the country for 19 games against a divisional opponent.
In terms of fairness 8 team divisions is probably the way to go, but 4 team divisions simply have too much of a travel advantage for it to matter. Besides, you can work around some of the competitive issues of 4 team divisions by requiring the worst division winner to play a one-game playoff against the wild card team.
That problem has other solutions. In my opinion. E.g.: MIL MIN DET CHC CHW CIN DET CLE. How much travel is that? 91 games against those teams? Max 2.5hr flight. 36 more home games against the rest of the league. 12 road series, one west coast swing, one south swing and one east swing. Done. Thoughts?
It makes the most sense – geographically and travel wise. It works for the NFL. In the OP scenario – the Cubs, Brewers and Cardinals traveling to the west coast that much is brutal for the players and fans. 9 P:M local time first pitch is almost unwatchable. A large group of teams in a division from all over the place kills most of the regional rivalries. And that work so well in sports.
Plus, it sounded like that’s what Manfred is leaning towards when discussing possible expansion scenarios.
That NL South would be barf in 2017.
Due to travel concerns, it’s almost certain that we will see 4 team divisions and not 8. In that scenario, you want to create divisions that reduce travel time and keep all the important rivalries (Yankees vs Red Sox, Cubs vs Cardinals, Mets vs Phillies, Dodgers vs Giants) in tact while also keeping league switches at a minimum. These would be my divisions:
AL East: Yankees, Red Sox, Blue Jays, Orioles
AL North: White Sox, Twins, Tigers Indians
AL South: Astros, Rangers, Royals, Diamondbacks
AL West: Mariners, Portland, A’s, Angels
NL East: Mets, Nationals, Phillies, Montreal
NL North: Cubs, Cardinals, Pirates, Brewers
NL South: Marlins, Rays, Braves, Reds
NL West: Giants, Dodgers, Padres, Rockies
With four team divisions, the playoff format is extremely important, because smaller divisions will yield some bad division winners. Still, winning the division should be important, as there’s nothing better in baseball than a close pennant race.
The compromise? The top three division winners in each league get a bye to the divisional round, rewarding them for winning their division. The worst division winner in each league then hosts a one game playoff against a wild card team. This way, every division winner gets to host at least one home playoff game (giving teams major incentive to win their division) while still punishing the worst division winner in each league by forcing them to play a one-game playoff to make the divisional round.
Oh, and one more thing: Change the divisional series round from Best of 5 to Best of 7. A best of 5 series unnecessarily deprives fans of extra playoff baseball. Heck, the NBA does Best of 7 for every round even though basketball has far less single game randomness than baseball.
I’d also keep interleague play, as I believe interleague play gives you a good glimpse of what league is superior talent-wise (AL dominance in interleague is pretty good evidence that the AL has more talent, coming from a Mets fan). Plus you get to see some cool regional rivalries like Mets vs Yankees, Giants vs As, Dodgers vs Angels, and Cubs vs White Sox.
This is the closest to the alignment I would suggest except I’d have pirates in the east and Montreal in the north.
You can quibble with it, but you have to admit it would be fun having Expos 2.0 and the Nationals (formerly the Expos) in the same division.
The notion of making Dodgers/Angels, Cubs/White Sox, Mets/Yankees into division rivalries is seriously awful. One of the joys of living in a two-team city is being able to see all teams of both leagues come through town. Let’s not lose that.
Not that it has a fireball’s chance in Hell of happening anyway (now that it’s frozen over thanks to the Cubs’ World Championship this year), especially since you want both leagues to be represented in the two team markets, but why wouldn’t you just keep the Brewers (practically just a state line away from Chicago) in the NL Central and put the Royals in the AL South for your radical realignment?
You know, instead of whining about heavy travel issues, just get rid of the unbalanced schedule (while going with the modest four division alignment). That way, all teams have to travel more and deal with more early/late start times, but none of have to deal with it excessively. The unbalanced schedule was never that much of a necessity to begin with, and it’s a better solution than having teams change leagues, combining the leagues, and/or breaking up huge rivalries.
East
San Juan
Miami
Atlanta
Charlotte
Washington
Baltimore
Pittsburgh
Philadelphia
North
Toronto
Montreal
Boston
NY Yankees
NY Mets
Cleveland
Detroit
Milwaukee
Central
Cincinnati
St Louis
Chicago Cubs
Chicago White Sox
Kansas City
Minneapolis
Texas
Houston
West
Seattle
Anaheim
Oakland
Los Angeles
San Francisco
San Diego
Arizona
Colorado
32 teams, four divisions, eight teams each. Rays move to Charlotte and expansion teams are added in Montreal and San Juan (Puerto Rico needs a team, let the US congress fund the stadium as partial repayment for their history of messed up legislation on Puerto Rico). 12 teams make the playoffs, with the division winners getting first round byes. In the wild card round, the division’s second place finisher gets home field against the third place finisher in a best of three series, with the second place team hosting games one and three. Next round would be a true divisional series keeping the current best of five format. When four teams are left, they are seeded by record and the 1 seed plays the 4 seed and the 2 seed plays the 3 seed in a best of seven series. World series home field goes to the team with the best regular season record. The league would have to decide on the DH (I say no DH, but at this point it probably makes more sense just to fully implement it). Central and West divisions play against North and East in the all-star game, which is meaningless, but some other way to make it interesting is developed.
Please don’t put the only 2 Canadian teams in the same division as each other and the Yanks and Sox, pretty pleaseeeeee
Guys, guys… I got this:
NL Uncomfortable Births
Giants
Twins
NL Oz
Las Vegas Lions
Tigers
Cubs
NL Governments
Royals
Nationals
NL Rikki-Tikki-Tavi
Dbacks
Montreal Mongooses
NL Landscapes
Rockies
Metropolitans
NL Religions
Padres
Angels
Phillies (reverting to Quakers)
AL Fashion Accessories
White Sox
Red Sox
Red Stockings
AL Birds
Cardinals
Blue Jays
Orioles
AL At Sea
Pirates
Mariners
AL Sea Creatures
Rays
Marlins
AL Wild West
Indians
Braves
Rangers
AL Drink or Workout?
Brewers
Athletics
AL Final Frontiers
Astros
Mexico City Moons
AL Old Yorks
Yankees
Dodgers
i am sure many will disagree, but to me the most logical expansion city is Mexico City. It is a very large city with a huge middle class. Mexico City would likely be one of the best funded teams if not the most funded team.
Mexico City has a huge population and lots of rich sponsors in the waiting, but a long flight from the US, and air quality issues – both pollution and altitude complications like Denver. Monterrey would be a better Mexican choice.
Monterrey is one of the least safest places they could possibly put a MLB team.
Of all of the municipal areas that I’ve heard under consideration for expansion, here is how I rank them in terms of viability (leaving aside issues of existing teams’ claims to geographical areas, politics, funding, or actual likeliness – this is just based on overall logicalness, distance from existing teams, revenue possibilities, fan population bases):
1. Brooklyn, Newark, East Rutherford NJ, Edison NJ, New Haven CT, and/or Hartford CT — There are way more people and is way more money in New England, New York, and New Jersey than is the appropriate prorated share for just three teams (NYY, NYM, and BOS), so another team is warranted. Even two new teams from this list of locations might work. Might be great to have a New Jersey team and/or a Connecticut “state team”. People in San Jose wear Sharks jerseys even if they’re not that into hockey, as a way of showing regional pride. Same thing with the NBA teams in Portland, Oklahoma City, and Salt Lake City. I imagine that a Connecticut or New Jersey MLB team might generate some of the same spirit.
2. Charlotte or Raleigh-Durham
3. Portland, Oregon
4. Monterrey, Mexico — Huge city, closer to the US than Mexico City and with more of a baseball-friendly altitude, would draw live, TV, and merchandising fans from all over Mexico.
5. Montreal — Obviously a top choice, but the metro area is comparatively small, so would need to draw fans from all of Canada to the East of Montreal to have a large enough support base
6. Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga, or San Bernardino — Third LA area team, positioned as far from Chavez Latrine and the Big A as possible. The Bums and Angels are among the richest teams in MLB. They could use another team down there.
7. Nashville — Small metro area, but distant from MLB cities, and many popular minor league teams nearby, so we know that fans are into it.
8. San Antonio, Austin, or Oklahoma City
9. Salt Lake City — Altitude might make things weird, like Denver
10. Las Vegas — Could also function as a third “LA area” team, instead of #5.
11. San Jose, Puerto Rico — Not many people on the actual island, but might draw TV and merchandising fans from other Caribbean/Latin nations, and Caribbean/Latins in diaspora.
12. Vancouver — Too much overlap with Seattle. Still, Canada has about 35 million people, and only one team, and Vancouver is farther from Toronto than Montreal is.
13. Mexico City — Huge population and lots of rich sponsors in the waiting, but a long flight from the US, and air quality issues – both pollution and altitude complications like Denver.
14. Albuquerque or El Paso — Not enough population.
15. Columbus OH, Indianapolis, or Louisville — Strong minor league attendance, but way too close to existing teams.
16. Orlando — Florida as is can’t even support two teams right now, maybe not even one.
======================
Fun radical realignment with 10 team expansion vision:
NORTHEAST LEAGUE
** Colonial Division – Boston Red Sox, Connecticut (New Haven), New Jersey (Edison), New York Mets, New York Yankees
** Allegheny Division – Baltimore Orioles, Cincinnati Reds, Philadelphia Phillies. Pittsburgh Pirates, Washington Nationals
** Lakes Division – Cleveland Indians, Detroit Tigers, Minnesota Twins, Montreal, Toronto Blue Jays
** Heartland Division – Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox, Kansas City Royals, Milwaukee Brewers, St. Louis Cardinals
SOUTHWEST LEAGUE
** Southern Division – Atlanta Braves, Charlotte, Florida Marlins, Nashville, Tampa Bay Rays
** Frontier Division – Colorado Rockies, Houston Astros, Texas Rangers, San Antonio, Monterrey Mexico
** Redwood Division – Oakland A’s, Portland, Salt Lake City, San Francisco Giants, Seattle Mariners
** Golden Division – Anaheim Angels, Arizona Diamondbacks, Los Angeles Dodgers, Rancho Cucamonga, San Diego Padres
The first proposed alignments make sense if you’re trying to preserve some of the rivalries. But if you’re going to do something a little more radical, I think it would make some sense to have West look a little different…
AL West: Seattle, San Francisco, Oakland, LA Angels
NL West: LA Dodgers, San Diego, Arizona, Colorado
It would weird to see both LA teams in the same division, and I wouldn’t expect that. But here you’d at least have teams from different cities with travel distances under control.
This would be more of a Pacific Northwest and Southwest alignment.
For the record, using a wireless keyboard has been a nightmare, as words completely disappear without me noticing. The letter “c” magically appears at times as well. Point is, my spelling and grammar isn’t as bad as some of these proposals.
The first item on the agenda for a rational realignment would be to get rid of AL/NL split.
Interleague play isn’t going anywhere and shouldn’t. It is fun. Fun things should stay.
Travis you are a content providing machine!
Also the Twins really get boned in the radical realignment. Heh – AL South.
I’ve been toying with this idea a lot lately. I think whenever expansion does happen it will be Montreal & Las Vegas. Montreal is an easy choice given the Expos backstory and I think Las Vegas ends up being the 2nd team over Mexico City as long as the NHL & NFL teams there arent a disaster. If 2 major sports leagues can sucessfully break into Vegas – with one of them being a sport that has little to no grassroots in the market – then Im sure they would emerge as the best option in the league’s eyes assuming theres a stadium plan in place, which I assume won’t be as big a hurdle as it would be in other markets.
If it is LV/MTL, I would put the Expos in the NL since thats where they were and give Vegas the DH. Looking at a map, this looks like the best division alignment to me: http://imgur.com/Ri9ZRsX.png
AL:
BOS-NYY-BAL-TB
TOR-CLE-DET-CWS
MIN-KC-TEX-HOU
SEA-OAK-LV-LAA
NL:
MTL-NYM-PHI-WSH
PIT-CIN-ATL-MIA
MIL-CHC-STL-COL
SF-LAD-SD-ARZ
If theres 4 divisions that makes play-in game logistics hard to figure out so I’d be in favor of expanding the playoffs to 16 teams like the NHL & NBA but with playoff series being 5-5-7-7. Thats a whole other discussion for another day, but by time expansion happens (circa 2030) the time for expanded playoffs will be here. And I can’t see why the league/owners would be against 24-40 additional playoff games each year and all the ticket and merchandise sales that come with it.
Lastly, I think Vancouver would be a great baseball market. There is a big Jays following in that city and evidence of this is strong attendance for their A-ball team and the yearly tradition of 30,000 fans invading Safeco whenever the Jays are in town.
As it is right now we’ve got six divisions and six teams in the largest baseball markets in the country: New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. As luck would have it, each division has exactly one (1) team from those dominant, multi-team markets. I wouldn’t expect to see any of these teams move into each other’s division during realignment, and would certainly not count on any of these markets moving both teams into the same league. The system is set up now to maximize the number of large market teams that can enter the playoffs since no one large market team immediately locks out another by winning their division.
I’d prefer something like this:
NL EAST
New York
Washington
Miami
Pittsburgh
NL NORTH
Chicago
Philadelphia
Milwaukee
Cincinnati
NL SOUTH
Atlanta
Mexico City
San Diego
St. Louis
NL WEST
Los Angeles
Arizona
Colorado
San Francisco
AL EAST
New York
Baltimore
Montreal
Boston
AL NORTH
Detroit
Toronto
Minnesota
Chicago
AL SOUTH
Cleveland
Houston
Tampa Bay
Kansas City
AL WEST
Oakland
Los Angeles
Seattle
Texas
On Mexico City: Elevation 7,380 feet
Not happening.
If there is a MLB team in Mexico, it’s far more likely to be in Monterrey, Tijuana, or Juarez/El Paso.
More likely should be Montreal and Las Vegas.
Pretending to be the commish, I would do the following;
Keep interleague play. Make every team play a home double-header on a Saturday during the months of June, July & August. Each team will have a home & away double header each month. This gives back to the fans, don’t charge for both gms. Charge the fans for 1 1/2 gms. This will benefit both owners & fans. Parks will fill up with fans that plan vacations to come see their teams. The parks should be sold out, players will get an extra 6 days off a yr. Allstar game: let winners get money or something.
Divisions would look like this;
NL WEST
Dodgers
Angels
Padres
Diamondbacks
A.L. WEST
Mariners
Rockies
Oakland
Giants
N.L. CENTRAL
Cubs
Cardinals
Royals
White Sox
A.L. CENTRAL
Rangers
Astros
Twins
Brewers
N.L. SOUTH
Braves
Miami
Rays
EXPANSION (1) *Charlotte
A.L. NORTH
Detroit
Indians
Reds
Pirates
N.L. EAST
Nationals
Orioles
Phillies
Blue jays
A.L. EAST
Yankees
Mets
Red Sox
EXPANSION 2 (*Montreal)
6 team from each league make playoffs with top 2 getting a bye week. Best 3/5 for first 2 rds. Then best of 7 for league championship & world series.
Like a sport with 4 teams too many.
I’ll take “The NHL” for 400, Alex….
Phoenix, Florida, Islanders, Carolina…dead, dead, dead, dying
The one thing I always love with these sorts of realignment talks:
“I’m OK with change. I don’t mind if they shuffle the deck all over the league. Move all sorts of teams to make geographic rivals and even out travel. Lots of room to adjust. Just don’t ****ing touch my team or its chief rivals.”
basically “I’m OK with change. I’m just not OK with change.”
There is no perfect solution. Someone’s going to get “screwed over” by a divisional shuffle, or lose a long-time rival, or shift leagues and gain/lose the DH against their will. If splitting the Cubs and the Cards makes it easier, so be it. If dropping the Rockies into the AL or the Orioles into the NL helps ease the pain, fine. As a Blue Jays fan I would love to see a hypothetical Montreal team in the same division, but if baseball interests are best served by putting Expos 2.0 into the NL, that’s cool. I’d love to see the Jays get a divisional rivalry back with the Tigers too, but if that’s not in the proverbial cards, c’est la vie.
You can’t be fine with adjusting the divisions to account for expansion, only to attach so many provisos onto it that you cut off 1/5th of the league from being touched just because that’s the part you really care about.
I would support four 8-team divisions, four playoff teams, and no inter-league play. Winning an 8-team division would bring back the old school “pennant race” vibe IMO. Why does most everyone support having more playoff teams? I think that is a terrible idea. We should have LESS playoff teams not more. Having a first round bye is also a bad idea. I don’t think teams want to sit around for a week not playing. As we have seen recently when teams have long waits they don’t play well. Having 87-88 win teams win the World Series is bad for baseball IMO. This is one reason why the national TV ratings for the World Series are terrible compared to 35-40 years ago. There are other factors as well of course but having mediocre teams in the World Series is boring.
What if:
North
Chicago Cubs
Cincinnati Reds
Cleveland Indians
Detroit Tigers
Kansas City Royals
Milwaukee Brewers
Minnesota Twins
St Louis Cardinals
South
Atlanta Braves
Austin Athletics
Charlotte White Sox
Houston Astros
Miami Marlins
Tampa Bay Rays
Texas Rangers
Washington Nationals
East
Baltimore Orioles
Boston Red Sox
Montreal Expos
New York Mets
New York Yankees
Philadelphia Phillies
Pittsburgh Pirates
Toronto Blue Jays
West
Arizona Diamondbacks
Colorado Rockies
Los Angeles Angels
Los Angeles Dodgers
Mexico City
San Diego Padres
San Francisco Giants
Seattle Mariners
No DH
Reply Only
-Home Runs
-Plays at home plate
144 game schedule
84 = 12 games vs each division opponent
48 = 6 games vs rotationally paired division Ex: (East vs West and North vs South)
12 = 6 games vs paired opponents from the other 2 remaining divisions. The pairing will be determined by matching teams with the same ranking from the pervious seasons divisional standings. Stipulation to the pairings could occur to produce a matchup between previous season’s World Series opponents.
6 games a week
(Tuesday-Thursday) (Friday-Sunday)
Monday is universal off day except for holidays and Monday Night Baseball (Monday Tuesday Wednesday series)
All Star Week
-Continue with the timed tournament style Home Run Derby format
-Each division has its own All Star team
– The 4 teams matchup according to their same rotational pairings for scheduling Ex: (East vs West and North vs South)
12 team Playoff
-4 division champs have 1st round bye
-1st round: 8 teams: 2nd place teams host 3 game series vs Wild Card team
-2nd round: 8 teams: 4 division champs host 5 game series
-3rd round: 4 teams: 7 game series
-World Series: 7 game series
Four 8-team divisions, and in lieu of wild cards and the division series, all first and second place teams participate in a challenge round, so long as the second place team finishes within 7 games of first. The second place team has as many as seven head-to head games against the top team to catch up in the standings, effectively extending the pennant race between the two teams to 169 games. The challenge round ends as soon as one team or the other clinches first place. If the teams are tied at the end of game 169, a winner-take-all game 170 is played. This approach makes every game of the 162-game regular season valuable for all teams (including most first-place teams) within any kind of plausible reach of first or second place.
Little late to the party, but here is the right setup for 4 divisions:
WEST:
Giants
Dodgers
Padres
Angels
Mariners
A’s
Diamondbacks
Rockies
SOUTH:
Rangers
Astros
Expansion (Mexico City/Puerto Rico/San Antonio)
Braves
Marlins
Expansion (Charlotte/Oklahoma City/Nashville)
Reds
Indians
*It’s tough managing travel area with teams spread across the entire Southeast as there are fewer teams here. If Rays remain in Tampa, one of the expansion teams here can replace the Expos in the NORTH, and they can become the Expos in the North with Rays remaining here in SOUTH. There’s really no method to make the SOUTH specifically in the SOUTH. You’d either need to have the Reds/Indians, or go with moving Cardinals/Royals, but that would break up the Cardinals/Cubs rivalry in the division.
CENTRAL:
Cardinals
Cubs
Pirates
Brewers
Twins
Royals
White Sox
Tigers
NORTH:
Yankees
Mets
Red Sox
Blue Jays
Expos (formerly Rays)
Phillies
Nationals
Orioles
Most rivalries would remain intact in this setup. The NORTH is especially ripe with them adding the Mets, Phillies, Nationals to the mix.
In this setup, I would assume teams would mostly play teams within their division, but possibly alternating home/away series with other divisions on a year-by-year basis. Of course, this setup would cause some issue with the DH. Personally, I would prefer an across-the-board move to the DH. And we get to eliminate interleague play. I think the novelty of that has worn off.
I’m not sure how to arrange playoffs, or how many teams you let in. Division winners with bye weeks? Then do you go best records? In order to really embrace the 4 team divisions, you have to stop thinking NL vs AL. I don’t know what this would do to the All Star game, either.
It’s pretty drastic, but MLB might be due for a shake-up?
Learn from the NFL and don’t have 4-team divisions and the all-too-frequent mediocre division winners they put in the playoffs while excellent teams sit at home.
How about this for a radical realignment: 8 divisions with 4 teams, Division 1 has the four teams with the highest payroll, Division 2 has the next four teams and so on.
…I fear the sub-.500 division champion that a four-division setup will occasionally allow…
I am predict there shall be a .500 or worst division winner pretty much every season.
162 games, playing virtually every day. 4 or 5 days off for teams with a bye, then expect a good showing? This game is all about feel.
You really aren’t doing many teams any favors. If you want to move teams between Leagues, go with this:
American League
West…………South………..Central………East……
———————————————————————
A’s……………Astros……….Brewers……..Blue Jays
Giants……….Cardinals……Cubs…………Mets
Mariners…….Rangers…….Twins…………Red Sox
Rockies……..Royals………White Sox……Yankees
National League
West…………South………..Central………East……
———————————————————————
Angels……….Braves………Indians………Nationals
Dodgers……..Marlins……..Pirates………Orioles
D-Backs……..Rays………..Reds…………Phillies
Padres……….NASHVILLE.Tigers………..Charlotte
Expansion: Nashville, Charlotte (Montreal still has tax issues)
This collects the West into the “Northern Pacific” and “Southern Pacific”; the South into the “Western South” and “Eastern South”; the Central into the “Western Central” and “Eastern Central” and the East into the “Northern East” and “Southern East” and reduces everyone’s travel expenses.
Or, keep (more-or-less) the current League Assignments and bring in Montreal and Nashville. Move Pittsburgh and either Colorado or Arizona (Seattle’s choice as they have the most egregious travel) into the AL so Philly & Pittsburgh now have a chance at an All-PA World Series then move Houston and Minnesota into the National League so Houston & Texas have that same opportunity.
NLE: Montreal, New York Mets, Philly, Washington
NLC: Cubs, Cincy, Milwaukee, Minnesota
NLS: Astros, Braves, Cardinals, Marlins
NLW: Dodgers, Giants, Padres, (D-Backs or Rox)
ALE: Boston, Baltimore, Yanks, Toronto
ALC: Cleveland, White Sox, Tigers, Pirates
ALS: KC, Nashville, TB, Texas
ALW: (Rox or D-Backs), Angels, A’s, M’s
Every State with more than one team now has a chance at an In-State World Series — and, an All-Canadian one as well!
The only real issue I can see with this is the difference in Market Sizes between the NLE and NLC! But, both the ALE and NLE are going to have bigger cities, regardless.
No Expansion. The Athletics should move to Mexico City. The Rays should move to Montreal. You add a French and Spanish market. Major League changes need to happen to facilitate ease of travel and geography. No teams in the same state, only the same city, in different leagues.
AL West
Arizona, Houston, Angels, Mexico City, Texas
AL East
Atlanta, Miami, Yankees, Philadelphia, Washington
AL Central
White Sox, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Pittsburgh
NL West
Colorado, Dodgers, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle
NL East
Baltimore, Boston, Montreal, Mets, Toronto
NL Central
Cubs, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Minnesota, St. Louis
Alternatively, to insure a U.S. team always in the World Series, you could keep the AL/NL East teams the same, but with Montreal replacing the Rays. However, this causes some long distance travel for Seattle, Miami, and Mexico City.
My attempt at an 8-division realignment:
NL EAST
Orioles
Nationals
Phillies
Pirates
NL NORTH
Cubs
Cardinals
Royals
White Sox
NL SOUTH
Indians
Reds
Braves
Charlotte (expansion team)
NL WEST
Dodgers
Giants
A’s
Angels
AL EAST
Yankees
Red Sox
Mets
Tigers
AL NORTH
Twins
Brewers
Blue Jays
Montreal (expansion team)
AL SOUTH
Rangers
Astros
Rays
Marlins
AL WEST
Mariners
Rockies
Dbacks
Padres
This keeps all logical “regional rivalries” together (Yankees/Mets, Cubs/White Sox, Indians/Reds, Dodgers/Angels, Giants/A’s, Rangers/Astros, Marlins/Rays, Royals/Cardinals, Blue Jays/Montreal, Orioles/Nationals). Also keeps longstanding rivalries like Yankees/Red Sox, Dodgers/Giants, and Cubs/Cardinals. And all the teams in each division are located reasonably close to each other.