Last week, I wrote this article on how MLB could reduce its regular season schedule.
That’s almost certainly going to happen in conjunction with expansion, which Commissioner Rob Manfred has said is likely to come after the A’s and Rays get their stadium situations settled. Which might now actually happen within the next 3-4 years!
Anyway, recently I found these graphics online that propose a realignment (once expansion happens) that I think would be almost perfect:
In this case, two teams, both expansion
clubs, would have to switch leagues. This realignment would keep existing rivalries intact (Cubs/Cardinals, Yankees/Red Sox, Dodgers/Giants, among others) and would create new divisional rivalries between the Pirates and Phillies, and Marlins and Rays.
These alignments would have the advantage of being geographically compact, as shown on this map:
As you can see, expansion markets noted in these potential divisions would be Portland or Salt Lake City (which would go in the AL West) and Nashville or Charlotte (which would go in a newly-created NL South. This is a great visual showing how compact most of the divisions are. Only the AL West would have a fairly large travel imprint, and if Portland were the city chosen, the cities would at least all be in the same time zone. None of the divisions noted here encompass more than two time zones and several are in just one.
We’ve discussed expansion here before, and I think the two cities now in the “lead,” such as it were, to become MLB cities are Nashville and Salt Lake City. Both have ownership groups and/or committees actively pursuing Major League Baseball.
Here’s a potential 150-game schedule that could be used in such an alignment:
17 games against every team in your division (51 games)
Three games against every other team (84 games)
Three additional games against your designated “rival” (3 games)
One additional game against the teams in the other divisions in your own league (12 games)
Yes, that’s a 12-game reduction and teams aren’t going to want to lose six games of revenue, but perhaps that could be made up by additional TV revenue. It would allow the season to start at least a week later and maybe up to 10 days later, much better for spring weather in northern cities.
When MLB expands, I would love to see an alignment and schedule like this.
