A Little Realignment Exercise Because I’m Bored

I recall AC or some other jabroni did this once upon a time but I can’t find it. Anyway, let’s do the news bits first.

The Challenges in Oakland and Tampa Bay

As has been said numerous times by the oft-reviled commissioner of baseball, MLB expansion to 32 teams is inevitable, but first they have to resolve the situations with Oakland and Tampa Bay. Having gone to many Oakland A’s games in my time as a Bay Area native, I can say that the experience is fun (especially when the Moneyball teams were really good), but the stadium itself is trash and they definitely need a new venue. I think the Tampa Bay issues have more to do with accessing the ballpark which is on like a peninsula in St. Petersburg, west of actual Tampa. The Rays have tried everything from a proposed new park in Ybor City to a timeshare with Montreal, but suffice it to say that both the A’s (including fighting for media rights with the Giants) and the Rays have challenging issues that most teams don’t have to worry as much about.

For the A’s, I always thought the city of Oakland was content in telling ownership to go to hell re: public money, but most folks probably know about the proposal in Howard Terminal which is along Jack London Square. That part of Oakland (and really, any part of Oakland) is hard to get to because of traffic (bah, I-880 is the worst) and various choke points, even with BART (which I have my own complaints about because I was spoiled by CTA) but is at least further away from the Coliseum site which basically has nothing to offer now that the Warriors have moved across the Bay. And with the recent news that a funding package has been denied to Oakland, it sounds like this project is all but dead. The feeling is that the A’s will just move to Vegas just as the Raiders did, so we’ll probably see this happen within the next few years.

Regarding the Rays, it sounds like they’re trying to redevelop the site where the sardine can that is Tropicana Field sits, and they’ve received backing from the local chamber of commerce. It sounds like MLB and the Rays themselves are committed to sticking around the Tampa Bay area, so here’s hoping they figure it out too.

Potential Expansion Sites

If we assume that MLB will just try to stay in North America (which may include Mexico) for now, then that probably puts cities like San Juan in Puerto Rico, Montreal, and Monterrey or Mexico City into play, but I think that’s far less likely than them just sticking around in the States. Here is the current MLB map, with the lone team outside the USA of course being the Toronto Blue Jays:

The 30 current MLB clubs and their locations

You might notice the vast emptiness that is the American West (there’s a fun video explaining the main factors of why that is), and if we put aside the myriad issues with funneling all that water to Vegas and Phoenix, let’s assume MLB won’t suddenly decide to throw a team in Albuquerque or Nebraska. I’ve done a crude update of the map to show the potential expansion cities that make the most sense:

Expansion cities, yay

The green dot is where the A’s are most likely going to go in Las Vegas, while the black dot is Portland. The two blue dots are in Nashville and Charlotte, as I believe MLB would like to be better represented in the Southeast. Nashville in particular seems likely because there is a group already dedicated to turning that into the next MLB city, and they also recently added more advisors, including Don Mattingly, to the group. So my idea is that if the A’s move to Vegas, then Portland will get a team, and if the A’s stay in Oakland, then Vegas will get a team anyway. As for the other two, Nashville takes precedence, but if that craters, Charlotte is probably the most logical alternative. Since the leagues are even, one expansion team will enter the American League while the other will be thrown into the National League. Which brings us to possible realignment after MLB figures out who gets to blow two billion dollars to play ball too.

A Possibly Silly Realignment Plan

Teams have obviously switched leagues before, with Milwaukee going to the NL during the last expansion while Houston went to the AL once full-year interleague was established more recently. I think this might have to happen again for a few clubs (don’t ask me which ones) because the recent change to the schedule has become more balanced, which has fun competitive reasons but also I believe logistical reasons to mitigate travel. As a reminder, each team has the following schedule for 2023 (and probably beyond):

  • Each division has five teams, so each team will face each division rival 14 times (seven home, seven away) for a total of 56 games;
  • Each league has 15 teams, so the 10 teams outside of the division will take up six games (three home, three away) for a total of 60 games;
  • The remaining 46 games are split up with a two-and-two against the traditional interleague rival (for the Cubs it’s obviously the White Sox) and then three-game sets against the other 14 teams in the other league, alternating ballparks each year.

So I redrew the map to accommodate this, although I was racking my brain to think up the balanced schedule math with now 32 teams, which would work with eight divisions of four teams each or four divisions of eight teams each, honestly it probably doesn’t even matter now because of full-year interleague and the extra wild cards, but I’ll do four divisions of four teams in each league just to keep some tradition alive (I’ll do the math below but here’s my map):

It’s probably not the best solution, but it’s just a proposal!

This was partly inspired by the bubble schedules during the 2020 pandemic sports season, particularly by the NHL that basically realigned everything to reduce travel. The teams in the West will still have to travel quite a bit more (and the teams in the other regions too when they visit out West) but within their respective divisions it won’t be so bad, methinks. Let’s take a look at the divisions as currently set up:

West

I wanted to try to keep teams in their original leagues as much as I could, so the AL West will look like this:

  • Seattle Mariners
  • Portland/Vegas (depending on if the A’s move)
  • Athletics (whether Oakland or Vegas)
  • Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim which is not exactly Los Angeles

The NL side will stay the same, booting the Rockies though:

  • San Francisco Giants
  • Los Angeles Dodgers in actual Los Angeles
  • San Diego Padres
  • Arizona Diamondbacks

I think this has the best chance to maintain traditional rivalries in the West as we’ve seen since interleague play started.

Central

In this region, most of the teams are from their original central divisions but we lump in the Rockies so I guess Cubs fans will see Kris Bryant less often now because it made more sense to have them switch leagues. Here’s the AL side:

  • Minnesota Twins
  • Chicago White Sox
  • Kansas City Royals
  • Colorado Rockies

This maintains three traditional AL rivals and nobody outside Colorado cares about the Rockies anyway (I kid, I kid). Let’s switch to the NL where we’ve kept the division pretty much intact:

  • Chicago Cubs
  • Cincinnati Reds
  • Milwaukee Brewers
  • St. Louis Cardinals

I guess they’re not going to be able to beat up on the Pirates anymore! But just looking at the map, this division, and the region as a whole, should have among the least amount of travel of any in MLB under this scheme.

South

This includes the expansion franchise, and since Portland/Vegas went to the AL, Nashville/Charlotte is now NL. Let’s take a look at the AL side first:

  • Texas Rangers
  • Houston Astros
  • Tampa Bay Rays
  • Baltimore Orioles

This maintains the in-state rivalry between Texas and Houston, and I guess Tampa Bay has to be happy they’re just going to have to battle Houston now instead of the Yankees and Red Sox. Here’s the NL:

  • Atlanta Braves
  • Nashville/Charlotte
  • Miami Marlins
  • Washington Nationals

I think there might be objections by original NL East fans because Atlanta won’t be doing as much battle with the Mets or Phillies, and as the likely best-equipped team in this division, it might be a cakewalk for a few until the other three teams decide to try again, or just try period.

East

It was kind of tough to decide which team would need to switch leagues here, but the most recent expansion club was the Blue Jays so I think that will do. Here’s the AL side:

  • Detroit Tigers
  • Cleveland Guardians
  • New York Yankees
  • Boston Red Sox

These are all pretty much original AL clubs so I think they’d want to stay that way, and so would their fans. Here’s the NL:

  • Toronto Blue Jays
  • Pittsburgh Pirates
  • Philadelphia Phillies
  • New York Mets

This allows a larger in-state rivalry for the Phillies and whatever the Pirates are, and the Blue Jays should make it an interesting division chase for the top three teams who aren’t the Pirates.

    The Math

    The NFL went to seven playoff teams per conference, with the top team in the conference getting a first-round bye while the other six teams play head to head to make it to the next round. I imagine with an expansion to 32 teams, MLB might try to force MLBPA’s hand in doing something like this, but this might allow MLBPA some additional leverage. For the playoffs anyway, that means four division winners and either two or three wild cards, with the appropriate number of byes depending on how many they agree on, and I think we have to consider that playoff expansion is inevitable.

    As for in-season games, we first consider the makeup for MLB under expansion:

    • Four teams per division, which means each team has three divisional rivals;
    • Each team must play 12 teams per league out of division;
    • Each team in a league must play 16 teams in the other league, plus their traditional interleague rival. This includes 12 teams not in the same geographical region, and four teams that are in the corresponding division.

    I’m not going to try to figure out if the traditional interleague rival changed with this scheme, but I think we can work backwards from interleague all the way up to the bulk of division games:

    • Three-game series (alternating ball parks each season) per interleague rival not in the same geographical region, so that’s 3 x 11 = 33 games;
    • Two-and-two (home and away) against the corresponding interleague division (i.e. AL Central plays NL Central), so that’s 4 x 4 = 16 games;
    • Three-and-two (home and away, alternate who gets the extra home game each season) against the traditional interleague rival (i.e. Cubs vs. White Sox) so that’s 5 games;
    • Against non-division same-league rivals, we can do three-and-three (home and away), so that’s 6 x 12 = 72 games;
    • This leaves 36 total games remaining for the division play, so that’s 3 x 12 (four three-game series against each division rival).

    Final Thought

    This schedule has the benefit of being much more balanced, we still get to see every team play every other team each season, and now there might be extra travel days to accommodate all those weird two-game series. I’m not sure if that’s enough division play, and too many two-game series is dumb, so this is probably the best that can be done with 32 teams, particularly if MLB is forcing at least one of them to travel to Australia or something each season to grow the global game. I’ll let the people who actually get paid all the money to figure out how to cram all that within the MLB calendar so we don’t get frozen games towards the beginning and end of the season or have the World Series in December, but I think this works? What say ye?

    Until next time, take care of yourselves and each other.

    46 thoughts on “A Little Realignment Exercise Because I’m Bored”

    1. If the pitcher who lost games 2 & 5 of the 2016 World Series gets signed by any team, they’ll only have to pay him league minimum. It’s encouraging that no one has emerged to have that piece of shit pitch for them.

      The irony is that the only thing standing in the way of that happening is probably a public apology or contrition of any kind, yet there is approximately zero possibility of him doing anything like that.

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    2. Interesting stuff. In general I oppose divisions altogether (just splitting the teams into East and West leagues would be ideal if the balance of teams made sense, which I’m pretty sure it doesn’t). I just hate the idea of having more divisions with fewer teams, guaranteeing each arbitrary quartet one playoff team no matter how little they may deserve it.

      If/when the league expands, I don’t know that there is a satisfactory alignment. Ick.

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    3. andcounting,

      I think even with the inherent randomness and chaos in baseball, bad teams tend to get exposed so I hope that will be mitigated particularly if you award only the best team in the league with a bye. Because money talks, the extra playoff spot is inevitable. I also don’t know if 12 games per division foe is enough, but being forced to play everyone more should help ensure bad teams get lower seeding even if they’re leading a bad division.

      Agreed that he who must not be named can stay perpetually unemployed because he sucks and doubles down on sucking.

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    5. Rice Cube,

      The more divisions there are, the less likely that the right teams get in the playoffs. I don’t care about too many teams making the playoffs. I do care about good teams not making the playoffs while bad teams do. With four divisions in each league? That will definitely happen. In the NFL, the Buccaneers are under .500 and hosting a goddamn playoff game against a team .250 better than they are. There are only 6 teams in the NFC with records worse than Tampa’s, half of which are in their own division. They are 9th, possibly 10th in the conference. There is nothing preventing that or worse from happening in baseball if they align similarly.

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    6. SK:
      I can’t believe therewas a time in recent memory ( not recent like the tv show Dallas, much more recents) when I would eagerly listen to live broadcasts of cubs fest sessions on WGN’s crappy stream. I was a middle aged freak then.

      When I was a wee lad, even in CA, our cable package would pick up WGN so in the summers I’d switch to a Cubs game right after Price is Right. Those days are long gone.

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    7. andcounting,

      In that case I think it will be a battle between the 8 x 4 (owners) and the 4 x 8 (probably the players on the side of actual competition), the 8 x 4 has a shot at maintaining some form of traditional realignment, but if they actually want to reduce travel, then one thing they could try is to combine a couple regions, which would make travel crappy for whoever gets stuck with the West teams but that’s the way the cookie crumbles.

      I.e. stick West & Central together and then East & South together, can still keep the two leagues but now each league only has two divisions since they’re having wild cards all over the place anyway.

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    9. Gonna need a better offense next offseason, but free agency seems thin so let’s go player development

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    10. Rice Cube:
      andcounting,

      Rice Cube,

      From a theoretical/statistical point of view (not that I can do math), wouldn’t bad teams be more effectively phased out over 162 games than 17 or 18, especially with a much more balanced schedule than possible in the NFL?

      Not really. What the longer, balanced schedule does is gives you greater certainty that the teams with bad records are bad and the teams with good records are good. The NFL’s saving grace is that their short, unbalanced schedule could have misinformed us about how bad Tampa is or how good Dallas is. They’ve committed to the resolution that someone from each region of the country from each conference absolutely will make the playoffs. Ok. We can all live with that. Football is a different animal.

      The best way I can portray the division dilemma is to just randomly shuffle a deck of playing cards and deal 32 cards to 8 players, four sitting on the left side of the table, the other four seated on the right. Each player puts their highest card into the center.

      Now, there’s a very small chance one of those cards (aka the division winners) could be a 2.

      To determine wild cards, every player would put their remaining cards on the table, and you’d select the next 2, 3, or 4 highest cards from each side, irrespective of which player is holding them (i.e. divisions no longer matter). If only six teams from each league make the playoffs (only six cards per side of the table) there’s a very small but statistically real chance an Ace fails to make the playoffs and a 2 does make the playoffs (if one player winds up holding four Aces and another holds four 2’s). But there’s a very low probability that the top 12, 14, or 16 cards wind up in the center.

      TL/DR: The cards are dealt as soon as the divisions are assigned. The season tells you what those cards are, but it does absolutely nothing to ensure they’re evenly distributed. Some division is eventually going to wind up with nothing better than a 5 or nothing worse than a queen.

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    11. Ricketts suggests that building back up the farm system was critical, but now the Cubs are “back on offense,” adding to the team and trying to compete for the division. That was the message the Cubs wanted fans to get this offseason.

      It’s so funny because THEY NEVER SAID ANYTHING REMOTELY LIKE THAT.

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    12. andcounting,

      I did this with a few assumptions because humans are present and owners are greedy:

      1. They won’t play fewer than 162 because the owners want the gate revenue, although I do wonder if they’d cave on that a bit since they seem to value the postseason money more;

      2. They won’t play more than 162 because MLBPA would openly revolt, and the calendar is stuffed up already;

      3. Pursuant to 1. above, due to the allure of postseason money, they’ll want an extra wild card to accommodate the extra two teams in a league of 32, and whether they actually do it remains to be seen.

      With 3 wild cards, you at least guarantee that if one division is loaded, all of them get in even if they’re penalized by never playing at home in the first round, but I see why that would be problematic to a lot of purists. I don’t think they can ever go back to the old days where you just play to be the best in the league, especially if fans and front offices pretty much check out once they know they have no chance and that could be up to three months of the season playing in front of tumbleweeds. The possibility of playoffs at least makes them try deep into August (dying laughing)

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    14. Cubs in 2016: Our tomatoes are the best.
      Cubs in 2017: It’s very important that our tomatoes remain the best, so we’ll gladly trade a few seeds for good, ripe tomatoes.
      Cubs in 2018: These tomatoes might not look so hot, but they have elite spin rate and are worth every penny.
      Cubs in 2019: Ok, these tomatoes are starting to get really expensive. Also, we’re out of seeds.
      Cubs in 2020: OUR TOMATO FARM HAS SUFFERED BIBLICAL LOSSES!!!!1
      Cubs in 2021: These rotten tomatoes want too much money, and we shall trade them for seeds and an injured cherry tomato.
      Cubs in 2022: Every tomato season is sacred. You can watch our seeds grow on Marquee if you live here and subscribe to MetroDish Cable LLC.
      Cubs after 2022: WE ARE GOING TO BE VERY AGGRESSIVE IN THE RIPE TOMATO MARKET.
      Cubs in 2023: What we wanted our fans to understand is that we are tomato farmers, not tomato shoppers. Hopefully these two tomatoes we bought will last all year.

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    17. Rice Cube,

      Yeah, no problem with the extra wild card. The thing is, the more balanced the schedule is the less need there is for divisions. You can get away with two divisions per league because your jetlagged ass is flying all over the place no matter what.

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    18. Rice Cube,

      It’s all relative. Truth is, they can make a lot more money with an in-house network even if their ratings are much lower than they were with WGN and RSNs.

      But if they wanted to vastly increase the value of their brand they’d do everything possible to make Cubs games the easiest sporting event to watch anywhere in the world.

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    23. I’m down with intriguing MiLB deals

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    33. Something tells me that money would cause your Lego addiction and your housing concerns to converge into Lego Xanadu.

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    35. Haven’t had a chance to read the comments yet, but is there any way to re-align so that you have a new Eastern and Western League or Conference similar to the NBA? Other than whiny fans, that is. I’m guessing if you stick two new teams out East and only one in the West it’s even more difficult.

      Good work, RC. I’d most favor a two league and no division setup. A distinct geographic difference between the leagues would be ideal IMO.

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    36. dmick89,

      I feel like Rob Manfred doesn’t really care about the fans so we can assume that’s not an issue (dying laughing)

      I think AC did like the two divisions per league too, and all we really have to do is combine two of the regions I had laid out to make four super-divisions of eight teams each, two per league. The other thing they could do is a flat out split right at the Illinois/Indiana border’s longitude, but then a bunch of teams would have to switch leagues and that would really set off a revolt. My feeling is that the league will either go with four divisions per league or something similar to what I said earlier about just combining the West and South into one mega-division with the Central and East being the other mega-division, then the wild cards will fall where they may.

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    37. Unbelievable, no news whatsoever regarding whether Ian Happ and the Cubs are going to arbitration or have settled/figured out an extension. Wonder what this means?

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    38. andcounting:
      If the pitcher who lost games 2 & 5 of the 2016 World Series gets signed by any team, they’ll only have to pay him league minimum. It’s encouraging that no one has emerged to have that piece of shit pitch for them.

      The irony is that the only thing standing in the way of that happening is probably a public apology or contrition of any kind, yet there is approximately zero possibility of him doing anything like that.

      There’s still a non trivial chance that he could cut an appendage in half with a drone. Here’s hoping.

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    40. I vote we start calling the pitcher who lost games 2 and 5 of the 2016 World Series Voldemort simply because it’s easier to type.

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