Realignment after Expansion

[Trov]

There is talks about baseball expanding two teams.  This would lead to some realignment.  For nearly 100 years MLB had the NL and AL and the two sides never crossed until the world series.  They had their east and west divisions, each having one winner to meet for their league championship.  Then in the 90's baseball said we need to make some changes to engage fans after the strike.  So they realigned some teams moved from AL to NL and divisions were made.  The leagues, after the expansion of Marlins and Rockies had 14 in AL and 16 in NL.  The divisions were not equal in numbers.  AL west had 4 teams, and NL central had 6 teams.  Then as interleague play developed MLB took Houston out of NL to even up the leagues and divisions.  Playoffs over the years have expanded again, but still had NL and AL. 

In recent article shared on the main page here from diamondcentric suggest a radical change.  A part of that change would also hose the Twins for geography based division, not uncommon for MN teams.  I wanted to first touch base on the idea of getting rid of AL and NL.  Personally, I do not care about it being the rules are uniform now and you play each team at least 1 series every year anyways.  It is more about the history of the two leagues.  The history of Yankees or Boston in AL and Dodgers in NL.  The fact that you can have a "subway" series for world series, or the bay area world series(not possible now with Oakland leaving) but the point is you can have world series that has a city or state rivalry built in.  That will go away.  You can still have playoffs that do that, but not for the whole thing.  Personally, that is where I would be a little upset.

The other thing I wanted to comment on is the fact that suggest divisions put Twins in division with Rockies, Rangers, and Astros.  We have no close ties to any of them, and really there are better options in my opinion for the sport.  What is interesting is they split up the Chicago teams into East and West, how does that make sense? Assuming the World Series would be east versus west you could still have a chi-town throw down.  For some odd reason the New Yorks are not in same division either.  I would flop Mets and Baltimore is it lines up more with geography anyways. I get the writer wanted to keep some "rivalries" but why not make new ones if you are blowing up the whole thing? You already have the rivalry weekend with interleague play. 

It will be interesting to see with expansion how much of a blow up of the divisions and league there will be.  I think it will be hard to sell some fans on getting rid of AL NL.  I mean I get it is not what it once was, but to scrap it all together would be something Manfred would do in a push to the future, but will really get upset a lot of fans too. 

https://diamondcentric.net/news-rumors/diamondcentric/heres-how-mlb-realignment-should-look-after-expansion-r5407/

[DJL44]

MLB said the same city teams will not be in the same division. That's a really good decision if you want to maximize baseball interest in large markets (which they absolutely want to do).

I wouldn't be surprised to see San Antonio get an expansion team. I would make that division Astros, Rangers, SA, Royals.

So much of this depends on which cities bid for expansion teams. I expect bids from San Antonio, Nashville, Charlotte, Portland and Salt Lake City.

[nicksaviking]

Those are almost the right divisions, but not quite. KC would be with Colorado and the Texas teams and the Twins would be with the other Midwest teams. Anyone who's ever been to KC, or actually looked at a map would see how out of whack that part is.

[TheLeviathan]

6 hours ago, nicksaviking said:

Those are almost the right divisions, but not quite. KC would be with Colorado and the Texas teams and the Twins would be with the other Midwest teams. Anyone who's ever been to KC, or actually looked at a map would see how out of whack that part is.

100%.  I would really hope if this happened that they'd cut down to two divisions in each league with 8 teams.  Then your move even makes more sense when we join the Cubs/White Sox/Brews/Guardians/Cards/Reds/Tigers.

I think it aligns well with the playoff format where the top two teams are the byes so you could allow each division winner to claim those spots with 4 wild cards from either division.

[Trov]

19 hours ago, DJL44 said:

MLB said the same city teams will not be in the same division. That's a really good decision if you want to maximize baseball interest in large markets (which they absolutely want to do).

I wouldn't be surprised to see San Antonio get an expansion team. I would make that division Astros, Rangers, SA, Royals.

So much of this depends on which cities bid for expansion teams. I expect bids from San Antonio, Nashville, Charlotte, Portland and Salt Lake City.

How does making sure the New Yorks, Chicagos, and LA teams in different divisions(assuming you go east and west conferences/leagues) maximize baseball interest in large markets?  The teams are so well established you are a fan of one or the other.  Could you explain the risk of having Yankees and Mets in same division would reduce New Yorks interest baseball, versus they being in different divisions?  The fact that if you go East and West they would never play in the World Series already has that affect.  So being in different divisions would help?  

Personally, I think if they go the route of East and West, they should do away with divisions, as they already are playing every team at least once, and do like what NBA does straight up top 6 teams make it on each side.  Top 2 get byes with top ranked teams getting home field. 

I personally would love to keep the NL AL aspect and have divisions still split up like they do, I think that keeps more interest and then no worries about having same cities same league even. 

[DJL44]

9 minutes ago, Trov said:

How does making sure the New Yorks, Chicagos, and LA teams in different divisions(assuming you go east and west conferences/leagues) maximize baseball interest in large markets? 

It means New York can have two divisional pennant winners instead of just one. If the two teams are rivals in the same division it forces the fan base to choose. There will be a winner and a loser. If the teams aren't in the same league, then people can be at least a casual fan of both.

[The Great Hambino]

9 hours ago, TheLeviathan said:

100%.  I would really hope if this happened that they'd cut down to two divisions in each league with 8 teams.  Then your move even makes more sense when we join the Cubs/White Sox/Brews/Guardians/Cards/Reds/Tigers.

I think it aligns well with the playoff format where the top two teams are the byes so you could allow each division winner to claim those spots with 4 wild cards from either division.

It's disappointing to me that everyone just defaults to 4-team divisions.  They already have issues of imbalanced playoffs caused by weak division champions with 3 divisions per league; bumping that up to 4 only exacerbates the issue.

You can justify it in football since the small number of games means you can't play everyone, so rewarding the champ of a smaller group that plays each other a bunch makes sense.  With a bigger season and more balanced schedules, there's no need.   If you want to have 4-team pods within an 8-team division for administrative purposes or identifying rivals that play each other a little more often, cool.  But it can be like the NBA where the divisions technically exist but don't really mean anything

[TheLeviathan]

50 minutes ago, The Great Hambino said:

It's disappointing to me that everyone just defaults to 4-team divisions.  They already have issues of imbalanced playoffs caused by weak division champions with 3 divisions per league; bumping that up to 4 only exacerbates the issue.

You can justify it in football since the small number of games means you can't play everyone, so rewarding the champ of a smaller group that plays each other a bunch makes sense.  With a bigger season and more balanced schedules, there's no need.   If you want to have 4-team pods within an 8-team division for administrative purposes or identifying rivals that play each other a little more often, cool.  But it can be like the NBA where the divisions technically exist but don't really mean anything

And even in the NFL we get the NFC South happening on a semi-regular basis...that's with a great cap system and the best parity in major sports!

Baseball's hot mess?  Woof.

[nicksaviking]

Lost in this, MLB absolutely shouldn't expand. 

There is already a parity divide between the jumbo markets and the rest of the league, and now we're adding two more of the smallest markets in the country? Yeah, they'll spend on payroll and celebrate their expansion team for five, maybe ten years. Then woo hoo, we have Tampa Bay part II!

[The Great Hambino]

16 minutes ago, nicksaviking said:

Lost in this, MLB absolutely shouldn't expand. 

There is already a parity divide between the jumbo markets and the rest of the league, and now we're adding two more of the smallest markets in the country? Yeah, they'll spend on payroll and celebrate their expansion team for five, maybe ten years. Then woo hoo, we have Tampa Bay part II!

If they can't find a viable second location for expansion, I wouldn't be surprised if Nashville becomes what LA used to be for the NFL: the boogeyman that gets communities to shell out giant stadium subsidies under the threat of relocation.  A whole lot of stadiums were built between the mid-90s and mid-00s (including markets like Cincinnati and Pittsburgh that are already smaller than Nashville), which means a whole lot of stadium leases are going to be expiring in the next 5-10 years

[DJL44]

26 minutes ago, nicksaviking said:

Lost in this, MLB absolutely shouldn't expand. 

There is already a parity divide between the jumbo markets and the rest of the league, and now we're adding two more of the smallest markets in the country? Yeah, they'll spend on payroll and celebrate their expansion team for five, maybe ten years. Then woo hoo, we have Tampa Bay part II!

MLB absolutely should expand. The talent level of the worst players might be the highest in MLB history. Each expansion team brings in another $300M worth of topline revenue each season.

[Trov]

On 1/13/2026 at 8:43 AM, DJL44 said:

It means New York can have two divisional pennant winners instead of just one. If the two teams are rivals in the same division it forces the fan base to choose. There will be a winner and a loser. If the teams aren't in the same league, then people can be at least a casual fan of both.

In all the duel cities teams have been around long enough that fans will have picked their team.  Rarely will a fan be a passive fan of their other city team.  Under the hypo that both Yankees and Mets for example win a division it would not increase any viewership or fandom than if they were fighting for a single division race, as it would still be likely they are fighting for wild card too.  Sure, there could be limited seasons where they would be fighting for division and wild card is not an option, and the losing team fan base will not be happy and not follow playoffs.  However, in that situation it would be unlikely that the other team would have won the other division, being they would not have had a good enough record to be a wild card, so they for sure would have been worse than the division leader of the other division, unless the very rare case that on of the other remaining divisions would have the wild card spots.

I just do not see how keeping them in different divisions would be all that important in a geography based division.  I mean in NBA Clipper fans are Clipper fans, and Laker fans are Laker fans.  There are times that celebs will go to both games, they are the rare situation, and not all of them do that. NBA has "divisions" but they mean nothing now as top 6 make playoffs, and remaining top 10 make play in.  

I would propose if you do geography based conferences, you just do similar top 6 make playoffs, top 2 get byes. Why break it down by division, if you are trying to get to play each team.  Back in the day when you had weight to division play it made sense, but now that it is more equal, and you could make almost fully equal, who cares about divisions then?

[nicksaviking]

58 minutes ago, Trov said:

In all the duel cities teams have been around long enough that fans will have picked their team. 

I suspect keeping them separate has more to do with perception. If the Yankees are winning the AL East and the Mets are doormats in the NL East people will rip on the Mets as typical.

But if they were in the same division, then the Yankees are actively making the Mets look bad. 

For a more compelling example, the Angels already have a bad reputation, if they had been in the same division as the Dodgers the last decade, nobody would EVER talk about the Angels anymore, and if those two teams were actually competing for the same division, you'd could be sure that the Dodgers would be stealing way more of their fans than if they weren't competing against each other.

The opposite theory doesn't seem to fly by my math. While a LA/LA, Chi/Chi, NY/NY World Series would create some nice headlines, the league doesn't want that. Instead of having two markets playing for a championship, now they only have one market. They want NY and LA, not NY or LA.

[TheLeviathan]

On 1/13/2026 at 12:12 PM, DJL44 said:

MLB absolutely should expand. The talent level of the worst players might be the highest in MLB history. Each expansion team brings in another $300M worth of topline revenue each season.

Two more Colorado Rockies doesn't seem to benefit league health IMO.  

MLB needs to get their finances in order first.

[DJL44]

40 minutes ago, TheLeviathan said:

Two more Colorado Rockies doesn't seem to benefit league health IMO.  

MLB needs to get their finances in order first.

MLB is incredibly profitable. The Rockies are one of the more profitable teams.

[TheLeviathan]

2 hours ago, DJL44 said:

MLB is incredibly profitable. The Rockies are one of the more profitable teams.

Purely measuring health by profit is a great way to JC Penny's yourself.  

Boxing makes lots of money still too, doesn't mean it isn't broken or a shell of what was/could've been.

[nicksaviking]

19 hours ago, DJL44 said:

MLB is incredibly profitable. The Rockies are one of the more profitable teams.

Rockies might not be the best example, and of course MLB wants expansion teams because it will increase overall profit. 
 

But after the novelty of the new teams wear off, it’s going to exasperate the competitive imbalance, which will eventually doom the league. 
 

These owners have put profit over the best interests of the league, the fans and the entire sport for decades. This is another example.