re: Manfred: Realignment and expansion on the table

Aside from the rivalries they’ve fostered over the years, divisions have never made less sense than they do today. 4 team divisions like the NFL makes absolutely no sense given the season is spread across 162 games and not 17. You don’t need to force schedule balancing

Considering teams barely play more division games than inter-league now, it’s more likely divisions are ended entirely in the name of rotating more inter-league teams into a single season

Not sure what they would do for a stadium in Nashville. City is already building the 2027 Wrestlemania and Super Bowl venue that the Titans will go 3-14 in. The current minor league stadium isn’t really expandable outward because of the surrounding area. I think they would have to hope to build in the suburbs. Nashville property taxes were raised 5 years ago and the mayor is already bucking for another. They would almost have to do it again for baseball

for travel purposes i think they would do like the NHL does and have 2 divisions of 8 in each conference rather than 4 divisions of 4.

quote:

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Southeast Division
Rays
Marlins
Braves
Nationals

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Probably gonna have a Nashville team in there soon.


Same with a Salt Lake City team out west.

It sounds like the priority is another team out west, with another east team as a necessary afterthought.

That makes more sense. I saw some speculation on that earlier but I can’t find it again.

quote:

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East Division
Yankees
Mets
Phillies
Red Sox

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I'd be here for that shite show.

ESPN woild literally burn to the ground

Realignment, maybe.
Expansion, hell no.

There aren't enough truly MLB caliber players to fill up 30 teams now, but Manfred is hell bent on having 32 so you can have 16 in each conference. Because that makes realignment work.

And looking deeply at some writing on this ... the SI piece I posted was Twins centric, I didn't notice that ... I can see where it would lessen travel, which is something they could sell to the players in the next contract talks which are going to be problematic, and there are rumblings that they are looking at one centralized broadcast setup. This would fit into that as well.

It would be the biggest moving of the cheese in the 156-year history of professional baseball.

I'm not convinced yet ...

Your info says South St. Louis ... how big an uproar would separating the Cardinals and the Cubs divisionally cause?