Some 2024 thoughts about MLB expansion and realignment

It’s gonna happen eventually. Here’s how I see it as of now.

Every time I post on this topic it generates some interesting and healthy discussion, so I figured, “Why not try talking about expansion and realignment again? Haven’t done it here in a couple of years!”

It’s been said on a number of occasions by Commissioner Rob Manfred that he wanted the stadium situations in Oakland and Tampa Bay to be worked out before expansion happened.

Well. The A’s are moving to Las Vegas. Probably. Maybe. This article isn’t intended to rehash that. However, I will point out that the Tropicana Hotel on the Las Vegas Strip, supposedly the location for a Vegas stadium, was imploded earlier this week. Thus there’s now a site. But that’s it. No final renderings, no architect, no full funding plan.

For the purposes of this article, I will assume that the A’s will land somewhere in the western United States, whether it’s Vegas or another city.

Speaking of “Tropicana,” no doubt you have heard that the roof of Tropicana Field, the home of the Tampa Bay Rays, was destroyed by Hurricane Milton:

The Rays issued this statement Thursday:

It seems unlikely, given the current plan to build a new stadium for the Rays on essentially the same site, that they’d spend much (or anything) on repairing the Trop. Daniel Russell and Adam Sanford of our SB Nation Rays site DRays Bay posted this article with some speculation about where the Rays will play in 2025. From that article:

It’s too early to know how significant the damage is, but it’s easy to imagine the Rays have played their last game at Tropicana Field.

With the team preparing to tear down this stadium and construct a new one for the 2028 season, it’s also difficult to imagine spending a single more dollar on repairing the significant damage wrought by the hurricane, with the field and its electronics soaked in rainwater and damaged by high force winds.

However, for the purposes of this article I am going to assume that the Rays will play somewhere in the Tampa Bay area going forward and not permanently relocate, even if for some reason they have to temporarily play somewhere else in 2025.

There’s one other potential wild card for a current franchise. No doubt you have heard about the proposal to build a new stadium for the White Sox on “The 78,” a tract of fallow land south of downtown Chicago. Of course, the Sox are trying to ask the city, county and state for $1 billion to help build it. So far — and probably forever — that’s a non-starter. There have been rumors Sox ownership would threaten to move to Nashville if they don’t get this money, to which I say, “Careful what you wish for.”

And again, for the purposes of this article I am going to assume that the White Sox stay put in Chicago.

There are 30 MLB teams. When expansion comes, it’s likely two teams would be added for a total of 32. That would make scheduling much, much easier, as the current setup with 15-team leagues makes interleague play every day necessary. That makes for some odd scheduling, especially with MLB’s insistence on the balanced schedule, which I still dislike greatly.

There have been proposals and rumors about some sort of radical realignment of MLB teams and in one of them it’s proposed having the Cubs and White Sox (and Mets and Yankees and Angels and Dodgers) in the same division. I cannot emphasize enough how awful an idea this is. MLB is going from four “rivalry” games this year to six in 2025 and that’s way more than enough. To think of the Cubs and Sox playing 14 or 16 or 18 times a year — literally no one wants that. There are other ways to reduce travel (which is one of the reasons for such a proposal) without completely disrupting the league structures that have existed, both National and American, for over a century.

I am not a “don’t change baseball at any cost” person. I like the pitch timer and some of the other modern rule changes. But baseball, more than any other pro sport, keeps its fans engaged at least in part because of the unbroken league histories. That way you can share the same history lived by your parents and grandparents and even great-grandparents. Break it up and you’ve broken that bond. Yes, a couple of teams (Brewers and Astros) have switched leagues in modern times, but neither of those clubs had that century-plus of history, and in the Brewers’ case, Milwaukee had a NL history that made some sense for the Brewers to be admitted into that league.

So I’d keep the teams in the leagues they’re in and add one city to each.

Here are some potential expansion candidate cities:

Montreal
Orlando
Nashville
Charlotte
Raleigh
Austin/San Antonio
Salt Lake City
Portland
San Jose
Mexico City

All of these cities have their pluses and minuses and I’m not going to belabor that here; this ESPN article from last February lays them out pretty well. Ten candidates. You might have your favorite(s).

I would choose Nashville and Salt Lake City.

Why?

TV market size, for one. Portland (No. 22) is a larger TV market than Nashville (No. 27) or Salt Lake City (No. 29), but the folks in Portland don’t really seem that interested anymore. Further, Nashville has a large organization (MLB Music City) already dedicated to bringing baseball there. With the addition of the former Arizona Coyotes, SLC now has two major league professional teams and, at least by TV market size, is bigger than the following cities that already have MLB teams: San Diego, Kansas City, Cincinnati and Milwaukee. (Also Las Vegas, but that’s another story.)

Here’s how I would align the two leagues with this expansion — and yes, I would keep “National League” and “American League” for historical reasons, even though they’d pretty much be NFL-style conferences. Actually, they pretty much are now, and have been since interleague play began (1997) and the offices of league president were eliminated (1999).

NL East

Phillies
Pirates
Mets
Nationals

NL Central

Cubs
Brewers
Cardinals
Rockies

NL South

Braves
Marlins
Reds
Nashville

NL West

Diamondbacks
Dodgers
Giants
Padres

AL East

Red Sox
Yankees
Blue Jays
Orioles

AL Central

Guardians
Tigers
White Sox
Twins

AL South

Rays
Astros
Rangers
Royals

AL West

Mariners
Angels
A’s
Salt Lake City

Okay, so maybe some of the division names are fudged a little bit, but hey — the league isn’t paying me to come up with them!

None of the eight divisions would span more than two time zones (and four of them would be in a single time zone), and, more importantly, there wouldn’t be more than a two-hour flight (or a bit more) between any divisional cities. It would also reinstate a Phillies/Pirates divisional rivalry, and keep the Cubs/Cardinals, Red Sox/Yankees, and Giants/Dodgers rivalries properly where they belong — within one division.

That would allow MLB to bring back the unbalanced schedule, which would at least allow most of the teams to play most of the other 31 teams every year. As follows:

17 games within your own division (51 games, an odd number for tiebreaker purposes)
6 games against 10 of the other 12 teams in your league on a rotated basis (60 games)
3 games against two of the other 12 teams in your league on a rotated basis (6 games)
3 games against 11 of the 15 teams in the other league on a rotated basis (33 games)
4 games against your designated interleague “rivalry” team (4 games)

In this scenario, you’d play your designated “rivalry” team (Cubs vs. White Sox, for example) every year, two-game series home and home, and 11 of the other 15 teams in the other league, rotated on an annual basis so you’d play every team about three of every four years. It’s about as balanced as you can get while still increasing the number of divisional series. In this setup, the Brewers, Cardinals and Rockies would all visit Wrigley three times a year, instead of the current twice. That would help in the case of postponements. Everyone would still play 26 of the 31 other teams every year. That seems “balanced” enough to me.

All of that adds up to 154 games. MLB has hinted quite often that they would like to reduce the 162-game schedule and this would do that, and pay homage to the 154-game schedule that was in effect from 1904-60 (1961 in the NL). Of course, one of the reasons to do that is to have expanded playoffs, and no doubt with a 32-team league MLB would have a 16-team postseason.

With this sort of divisional setup you could actually have true “divisional” playoffs, with the first round being between the top two teams in each division. Do that in a format similar to the current wild-card series, where the team with the best record hosts all the games. The eight survivors of this round would go on to play Division Series in the format now used.

That’s how I see it. You likely have a different opinion. Have at it!