During the Little League Classic, Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred jumped on ESPN’s telecast to talk about several things, but chief among them was possible expansion to 32 teams and realignment of the current divisions.
Now, this is nothing new. MLB has been looking at expansion for several years but always claimed it wanted to hold off until the Athletics and Rays figured out their stadium situations. Another way to look at that is that the MLB wanted to use cities without baseball
franchises as ammunition in its negotiations with cities like Tampa and Oakland. Now, with the A’s making a pitstop in Sacramento before settling in Las Vegas, and the Rays appearing to remain in Tampa, Manfred has started talking up teams No. 31 and No. 32, though he didn’t name city names.
This is rather interesting when it concerns the Royals. There will be no holding Nashville or Raleigh or Portland or Salt Lake City or Mystery City X over Kansas City’s head when it comes to their new stadium. Which is a relief. The Royals will be staying in or around Kansas City. It always appeared that the chances of the team moving away from Kansas City were low, but this all but ends that conversation.
Still, expansion and then realignment will affect the Royals.
Expansion will come first, and it only makes sense that the league will jump from 30 teams to 32 teams all at once. This would also create an Expansion Draft, which are pretty dope. A topic for another day, obviously, but it will be fun to speculate which players the Royals would protect and which they’d leave open to going to a brand-new team.
For the purposes of this column, let’s assume that the expansion teams will be either one of A) Portland or Salt Lake City and B) Nashville, Orlando, or Raleigh. My money would be on Salt Lake City, which recently landed an NHL franchise and has a motivated, wealthy benefactor, and Nashville.
Alright, so now that’s another team in the West and another team in the East.
Manfred’s comments made it appear that he wants to realign the divisions almost entirely based on geography, which I believe would be a mistake. There still needs to be a National League and American League. Please, Manfred, do not split things into Western Conference vs Eastern Conference. No one wants that.
Well, maybe Manfred and his 30 to 32 bosses want that, and if that’s what they want, that’s what the fans will get. Here’s a quote from Manfred that, to me, speaks volumes:
“I think we could save a lot of wear and tear on our players in terms of travel. I think our postseason format would be even more appealing for entities like ESPN because you’d be playing out of the East, out of the West and that 10 o’clock where we sometimes get Boston-Anaheim would be two West Coast teams. That 10 o’clock slot that’s a problem for us sometimes becomes a real opportunity for our West Coast audience.”
Sure sounds like he wants to rid of cross-country series, doesn’t it?
If that’s that the case, then what everybody’s favorite former general manager Jim Bowden proposed a couple of years ago might come to fruition. You can read Bowden’s entire column here, but I’ll break it down for you:
- Leagues renamed to Western Conference and Eastern Conference
- Teams grouped together merely by location
- Four divisions per conference
- Royals in the Southwest Division of the Western Conference along with the Houston Astros, Texas Rangers, and St. Louis Cardinals.
One thing Bowden and Manfred both tout with these new conferences is less travel:
“Geographic realignment would enhance the schedule and save teams considerable time and expense that’s currently consumed by unnecessary travel. I hope to see it happen when MLB expands, and the sooner the better.”
I’m not sure how this realignment would enhance the schedule, as he claims, but it would save teams considerable time and expense, something we all know billionaires lack.
I also don’t agree with the “unnecessary travel” comment. This is a league of entertainers. It wouldn’t be as entertaining to watch the same teams face each other over and over and over. Cough up the money to purchase nice airplanes for your team, and the wear-and-tear will ease.
Pushback against the elimination of the American and National Leagues exists. A Mets broadcaster, Howie Rose, posted this on X regarding Manfred’s comments:
Realignment can occur without killing the AL and the NL. Recently, also over at The Athletic, Stephen J. Nesbitt took a crack at it. His idea is also based on geographical proximity but still has two leagues with four divisions, but it more mirrors the NFL’s structure than the NBA’s. What I mean is, each league would have a West and East and now a North and South.
Before getting to his divisions, Nesbitt wrote:
“But I think there’s a simpler way to realign divisions without changing league names or disrupting traditional rivalries, like Cubs-Cardinals and Dodgers-Giants, in the name of shaving off a few airline miles.”
Like manna from heaven.
His realignment only has two teams switching leagues—the Rays head to the NL while the Rockies join the AL.
I mean, it’s the Rays and Rockies. No one cares about the Rays or the Rockies. Will anyone even notice?
Nesbitt has the Royals sticking in the American League as part of the new AL South alongside the Rockies, Rangers, and Astros. Everyone seems to want the Royals to group with the Texas teams.
Regardless of what happens, it looks like the Royals will be a new division as the Central, in both the NL and AL, will cease to exist. What’s left to be determined is who would be the Royals’ division mates.
Before I even read the articles I’ve linked to above, I pulled up a relatively current map of cities with Major League Baseball teams. The only difference it had was with the A’s still in Oakland. Easy enough to change. With that in mind, I charted my own realignment, with new teams located in Nashville and Portland.
Interestingly, it mirrors Nesbitt’s idea, at least regarding the Royals—I have them with the Rangers, Astros, and Rockies. Even with a new team in Portland or Salt Lake City, there just aren’t that many teams West of the Mississippi.
Now, if MLB puts teams in both Salt Lake City and Portland while keeping Nashville, Orlando, and Raleigh in its pockets for future negotiations with those darned troublesome cities that request the owners pay for their own stadiums, that changes things, and would allow the Royals to continue playing with some combination of the Twins, White Sox, and Guardians.
Whatever happens with realignment, I’d like to see the Royals continue playing their biggest rival.
Which begs the question: who is their biggest rival? I’ll dig into that in my next post.
