Hypothetical: What if we realigned the divisions geographically?
Last night, Commissioner Rob Manfred explained that he’d welcome the idea of potentially realigning MLB among expanding it to 32 teams, instead of 30. Baseball purists will immediately balk at this idea. Change is difficult. It makes us re-think how we view the sport looking forward. It also changes the way we view statistics and makes us look at history through a different lens. Not all change is good. Sometimes it can alter the sport in a way we didn’t imagine, but when it comes to the league itself and its exposure, baseball fans should be in favor of expansion. Realignment is tricky, but it would absolutely be necessary if we expanded to 32 teams. Remember when the AL West had 4 teams (Seattle, Oakland, LA Angels, and Texas)? Conversely, the NL Central had 6 teams (Milwaukee, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Chicago Cubs, Pittsburgh, and Houston). Realignment was necessary.
But before we talk about expansion, let’s talk about realignment first.
I wanted to take Commissioner Manfred’s idea of geographical alignment and see how it would affect the 30 current teams we have in the league now. In the past, we’d have to go through and do an analysis of the distance between the teams and calculate it out from there. But it’s 2025, and we have AI to do this for us. So, I asked ChatGPT to realign the divisions based off geographical proximity. The one caveat is we kept the Athletics in Sacramento instead of moving them to Las Vegas. For the expansion exercise, we moved the Athletics to Vegas. I also needed to swap the Reds and the Cardinals, as it made more logical sense to me proximity-wise, than what ChatGPT originally came up with. Anyway, here’s what it came up with:
Here’s a table version of that map, outlined:
Upon first glance, this looks weird. Assuming the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Midwest divisions make up the AL, and the Southern, Central/Plains, and the Western Division make up the NL, this would take some getting used to. However, the Northeast division looks like an absolute powerhouse, considering the market size. Swap out Tampa Bay and Baltimore’s markets for the massive Mets and Phillies’ markets, and you have an incredible division race. However, I can imagine certain fanbases in that division getting upset when an underperforming division winner gets a playoff spot over said powerhouse of a team in the Northeast that got beat up facing tougher divisional opponents. I can hear (or read) the debate already. But it’s a fun exercise, and I’d be interested to see if it increases the quality of play and decreases player wear and tear due to the minimized travel between series.
Just for fun, let’s look at the current playoff picture (as of 8/18) with this hypothetical:
Woah, this changes the outlook. The AL is stacked, with the Mets and the Yankees both missing the playoffs. In the NL, you have both the Royals and Rangers (who are under .500, by the way) in wild card spots. Granted, this could all be changed in a full season where they schedule the games differently according to division spread and geographical location, but wow this is wild.
Expansion
The second variable in this hypothetical is expansion. The divisions likely wouldn’t be realigned without having added teams to the field. The goal for Commissioner Manfred is to have a plan in place by 2029 for expansion, once the Athletics’ and Rays’ field situations are figured out. All things considered, it seems that the two cities primed for MLB teams next are: Salt Lake City, Utah, and Nashville, Tennessee.
Now, we all somehow got through middle school math and we can come to the conclusion that 32 teams are not divisible by 6, which of course, are the current number of divisions we have. But, we can look at the NFL who already did this math for us. They split the 32 teams into 8 divisions, with 4 teams in each.
So I went back to our AI friend in ChatGPT and asked it to recalculate divisions geographically, while adding Salt Lake City and Nashville as potential expansion teams. Here’s what it came up with:
Here’s a table version of that map with the divisions outlined:
With the expansion teams both landing in the NL in this format, it’s tough to forecast the playoff picture here, but the NL is weak still. Plus, MLB would need to, once again, re-format the playoff seeding. With the NFL, each division winner gets a home playoff game, with the best record getting a first round bye. There are then 3 wild card teams that get in. So, with the expansion to 32 teams, 14 teams get a chance at the playoffs, instead of 12 teams with our current 30 team league. There would be extra incentive to get the best record in the conference to secure that first round bye.
If this expansion happens, it will come just over 30 years since the league added the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays in 1998.
What do you think are eventual repercussions (positive or negative) from this inevitable expansion and realignment?