The BaumStack Tuesday Edition: Talkin' Baseball
Just when I thought I was out [of hypothetical league realignments and expansions to cover], they pull me back in
For some odd reason, the baseball world has had an influx of relocation/expansion news over the past few months. The A’s are leaving the Bay for Sin City, the Diamondbacks might pack up and leave the desert, Salt Lake City and Nashville are potentially getting MLB franchises, and the Expos still aren’t coming back. For a sport that hasn’t seen any major structural moves since the last round of expansion in 1998 (and the Expos relocation in 2005, though I try to forget about that), this is all a little chaotic.
My initial thoughts are mixed. I love it when major sports leagues expand, since more teams equals more games to watch and more rivalries that spring up. But on the other hand, I generally don’t like relocation. While expansion provides communities with new teams to root for, no-strings-attatched, relocation robs passionate fanbases of their team in order to satisfy the desires of owners that care more about micromanagement than the fans that drive the sport (as evidenced in the NFL’s Rams and Chargers leaving St. Louis and San Diego for L.A., respectively). As a result, though I am excited to see Nashville and Salt Lake City, two rapidly growing urban environments, gain a Big 4 sports team, Phoenix and Oakland both potentially losing a team leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
In an effort to correct some expansion errors before they occur, I have taken it upon myself to draft up a couple ideas for which direction Major League Baseball could go. ESPN has an article shedding insight into the expansion options that pro baseball could potentially target (you can find it here, if you’re into that sorta thing) which sorta got my gears spinning. I like to think that I’m pretty good at realigning college football conferences, but baseball is a little harder to tackle, in my opinion. Despite having an even number of teams, it’s the only Big 4 league to have divisions consisting of an odd number of teams (there will be some people that say that the NBA has this same format, but because the NBA is dumb and stupid, divisions don’t matter for playoff seeding and barely affect scheduling, so they don’t count), so when realigning, things can get a little janky. In fact, they’re kinda a little janky already:
This is where things currently lie, and it’s been this way since the Astros moved from the NL Central to the AL West in 2013. Some will take umbrage with the fact that not all interleague games are included here, but I just took the protected interleague rivalries listed on Wikipedia, as these are really the only interleague games that I consider relevant to our discussion. At first glance, everything looks fine, geographically speaking, but just looking at the divisions straight up without any reference for travel distances doesn’t really do the situation justice. Sure, I can kinda guess where Toronto and Kansas City, and San Diego are on a map in my head, but we need something to really show us what’s wrong with this setup.
Ok this map might be a little confusing, but try to bear with me here. The red lines are AL divisions, and the blue lines are NL divisions. Things get a little convoluted around Chicago, LA, and the northeast, but if you’re confused, reference the spreadsheet I just showed you.
Here we can see a couple issues. First off, the south is kind of on an island. Sure, they got multiple teams down there, but the four teams I would classify as “southeastern” (the Marlins, Rays, Braves, and Astros) are spread across three divisions, and only Atlanta and Miami regularly play each other. In my mind, this hinders the ability for true rivalries to form in the south, which is ironic, considering the sheer amount of football rivalries found in that area of our country. Additionally, the NL Central and AL Central could probably have their lines redrawn a little more efficiently, but I’m not sure that this is likely to happen.
All that being said, the biggest issue, without a doubt, is in western third of the league. The Rockies are ostracized from the rest of the NL West, the Rangers and Astros are closer to the NL East than their own division, and the Mariners are practically located in outer space. In fact, the farthest MLB from the Astros is the Mariners, who play IN THE SAME DIVISION. All in all, this is a nightmare for division travel, which is why I was glad to hear that pro baseball was looking into expanding into Salt Lake City or Portland (as well as Nashville or Charlotte, which would help out an under-served baseball market in the southern US). Of course, unless the commissioner’s office is stupid, they probably won’t stay at six divisions with thirty-two teams, so I took it upon myself to model two ways they could go in the near future. They are as follows:
Option 1: The Most Likely Expansion Proposal
I think the best way to go about thirty-two teams in a league is how the NFL does it, with eight geographic divisions of four teams spread across two non-geographic conferences/leagues. In football, this system has ensured that every team in the league has at least three true rivals, and I think this format coming to MLB could help spark some new team feuds.
To start off, we’ve gotten rid of the Central divisions and replaced them with South and North divisions, similar to the NFL. Next, we’ve added expansion teams in Nashville and Utah (Salt Lake City), since these are the places most heavily rumored to be gaining franchises in the near future. Nashville will play in the NL South, and Utah will play in the AL West, for geographic rivalry purposes.
Now of course, since the size of divisions are shrinking, there are going to be teams in new places battling new faces, but at the end of the day, you gotta break a few eggs to make french toast, and I think the league as a whole benefits from these changes. It’s easy to look at Rockies and Rays changing leagues and complain that baseball is being ruined, but it wasn’t too long ago that the Astros left the NL Central for the AL West, and it wasn’t long before that when the Brewers made an AL-to-NL migration of their own.
If the spreadsheet leaves you confused, here’s a helpful map of what we’ve got going (the two light blue dots represent the proposed Utah and Nashville expansion franchises):
While still a little busy thanks to LA, NYC, and Chicago each having two franchises, it’s a lot cleaner than the old model, and the map displays just how shorter travel distances can be between division opponents in this format. Now, the AL South and NL South might take a bit of getting used to early on, but I think this can greatly benefit baseball in the American southeast and central plains.
Now, this system, while the most likely of the two options I’m presenting here in this article, is probably pretty unlikely to happen. I don’t think the MLB Commissioner’s Office is going to want to swap the league alignments of multiple teams and blow up historic divisions in the name of expansion. If I had to guess, they’ll probably increase the size of their current divisions as opposed to creating new ones that are smaller.
All this being said, the other option I have is a pipe dream that will never happen, but it’s still kinda cool.
Option 2: The Copious Amounts of Methamphetamines Found in the Bloodstream of MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred Expansion Proposal
Bask in the glory of (hang on let me count one sec, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 10) 10 teams changing league affiliations, Montreal getting the Expos back, and Angels-Dodgers and White Sox-Cubs being divisional rivalries. Seattle gets a rival right in its backyard thanks to Portland, NL and AL North now mirror the NFC and AFC North, and the Rockies and Rangers now play divisional games. The Cardinals are in the American League, Houston is back in the NL, and there are only two interleague rivalries that are consistent to our current setup. This sort of crackhead, outside-the-box thinking is what the seemingly ancient sport of baseball needs (I mean think about it, we’ve been playing professional organized baseball in America for nearly 150 years, like that’s insane man), and I would like to inject this stupid idea into the veins of every senior citizen baseball fan in the United States.
Now, there’s a reason for all the madness. This system would be the extreme solution to cutting back on travel distances, as evidenced by the following map:
Just look at how tight those groups are, it’s like a work of art. Now, there’s probably a way you could collapse these even further, especially in the northeast, but I thought this idea was the perfect blend of traditional rivalries, regionality, and craziness. Also, just the thought of the Expos returning to Major League Baseball sent a chill down my spine. If you held a gun to my head and told me to name a defunct sports franchise that needs to come back, I would say the Expos without a second thought (although idk why you’d threaten to shoot me over that, seems kinda weird but whatever). Doesn’t matter that they’re from Canada, they truly are America’s Team.
Anyways, yeah, MLB should expand to Montreal and Portland, or Nashville and Salt Lake City at the very least, and they should realign into eight divisions of four teams because that would be the smart and cool and intelligent thing to do, and also the A’s shouldn’t move to Vegas, that would be stupid.
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