Readers' Thread: Realignment
- Paul Semendinger
- Aug 24
- 1 min read
By Paul Semendinger
August 24, 2005
***
Here's a fun exercise.
Suppose you were hired by Rob Manfred to design the realignment plan for baseball comprised of eight four team geographic divisions (which would include two expansion franchises).
How would you design this system? (EJ and I discussed some ideas with this as a fun exercise on the SSTN Podcast last Monday.)
Here is a schematic I came up with:
Yankees, Mets, Red Sox, Blue Jays
Pirates, Phillies, Nationals, Orioles
Marlins, Rays, Braves, Nashville or Charlotte (expansion)
Giants, Padres, Dodgers, Angels
Mariners, A's, Diamondbacks, Portland or St. Lake City (expansion)
Royals, Rockies, Rangers, Astros
Twins, Brewers, Tigers, Guardians
Cardinals, Reds, Cubs, White Sox (*Corrected from earlier)
Share how you would format the leagues...
(For this exercise don't debate the proposal. We'll have plenty of time in the coming years to debate all of this. Instead the task today is that you were hired to design the new format. In this scenario, the debate on this proposal is over and it's a done deal.)
***
The Yankees should be in a division by themselves since they can’t beat division teams. Or put them with all weak teams so we can call it the DOORMAT DIVISION.
If it were up to me, I'd go with a (6) Division Format instead of (8), mainly because it would work out better for scheduling purposes having a few more teams in each Division. Each Division would have betwee (6) and (7) teams, with a few Divisions possibly even expanding to (8) teams. An alignment like below would also allow for new expansion teams to enter the league in the future, from cities such as Charlotte, Salt Lake City, Portland, New Orleans, Brooklyn, New Jersey, Charlotte, Oklahoma City, Memphis, San Antonio Jacksonville and Orlando to name a few possibilities.
If each new Division played 108 games within their own Divisions, that would leave room for 54 remaining games. Two Leagues…
First and Foremost.... MLB will expand, not contract ..... so the good old days are long gone! Whatever combination of the 8 Divisions MLB determines will illicit outrage, shock and much hand ringing! Unfortunately the long memory of baseball traditionalist will be the loudest! Change is coming as sure as this winter will!
Like many of my fellow geezers here, I miss the days of fewer divisions, fewer playoff teams, and more meaningful regular seasons. Mr. Manfred however has mandated eight divisions, so eight divisions he will get. For the sake of my convenience, I've placed expansion teams in Charlotte and Nashville. I suspect an expansion team will be out west, but these two helped me get to my goals of preserving/creating geographic rivalries. The divisions named after players will be confusing at first, but if we're blowing tradition apart, lets go big! BABE RUTH DIVISION = Toronto, Boston, NY Yankees, NY Mets WALTER JOHNSON DIVISION = Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Charlotte HANK AARON DIVISION = Atlanta, Miami, Nashville, Tampa STAN MUSIAL DIVISION = Houston, KC, St…
My goal would be to return things as nearly as possible to the Golden Age of 16-team baseball, just doubled in size. So I reject the notion of four 4-team divisions per league (I still view this as realignment and thus in the ambit of the assignment). I would keep the leagues as is, with one expansion team in each (as you have it). I would abolish the abomination of inter-league play. Playoffs are the division winners (who get byes) and the next four-best records.
AL East: Boston, Toronto, New York, Baltimore, Tampa Bay, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago (only one team outside the Eastern Time Zone)
AL West: Seattle, Portland/Salt Lake, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Texas, Houston, Kansas City, Minnesota.
NL…