People who are discounting Las Vegas are forgetting that they have not only an NHL team but the Raiders will be based there in a couple of years. Gambling isn’t a problem, and the 52’s draw quite well for a minor league team. I could easily see the Las Vegas Celebrity Chefs being a MLB team. 
Minor nitpick: The Las Vegas baseball team is called the 51s, after Area 51, naturally.
I know that! :smack:
Although I could see where you could get 52, the number of playing cards in a deck. 
How about:
AL East: NY Bos TB Balt
AL North: Cle Chi Det Tor
AL MidWest: Hou Tx KC Min
AL West: Sea Oak LAA (Vegas, Portland Vancouver) Oak could also move to one of those
NL East NY Was Atl Phi (or Charlotte with Atl in South)
NL South Fla Pit StL (Memphis, Nashville, San Antonio)
NL Midwest: Cin Chi Mil Col
NL West: SF LAN Ariz SD
On the NL side, I can’t see them breaking up STL and CHI. Also, why ATL in the East with PIT (much farther North/East) in the South? Seems like an obvious switch. Then the South is FL, ATL, STL, and the expansion franchise.
Throw the Brewers back into the National League? Break up the Cards and the Cubs?:mad:
Well South was the name I applied but I was really going on an East to west basis, but I think that switch makes sens, adn it could well be that Atlanta is further west than Pittsburgh
I didn’t move the Brewers to the NL, Baseball did it a few years ago. But we could swap Cincinnati and StL to put the latter with the Cubs.
My mistake. Somehow I confused the Brewers and the Astros.
Its already been said, but they will never break-up the Cardinals/Cubs which by the way is older than the Yankees/Red Sox hype machine.
They wouldn’t put the Rockies and D’Backs in different divisions, either. They’re the only two teams in the Mountain time zone and have had a natural rivalry since 1998.
You are never, ever going to be able to come up with a perfect geographic alignment. You are especially never going to come up with one if you insist on maintaining the AL/NL split. Believe me, I have tried. Doing this sort of thing is… well, I’m a baseball nerd. There simply isn’t a good solution with 32 teams.
You start to have a bit more flexibility if you add more teams. Personally I would be happy as a clam if there were 40 teams, and if I were King of Baseball I’d have a plan for it. Even then, though, your arrangement of teams will suck unless you are willing to dissolve the AL/NL divide (which I, personally, am totally willing to do.)
In any event, let’s make sure we stay realistic:
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MLB is not going to expand until the Oakland and Tampa Bay things are sorted out. Those teams need new stadiums, and it’s Rob Manfred’s job to make the owners rich, so that’s his priority. Both teams are currently black holes into which money falls, because they have shitty stadiums in shitty locations, and they need to move. They have opportunities to improve their situations in the same market, so don’t expect them to become the Portland A’s or the Memphis Rays.
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MLB has already expressed an extremely strong preference that future expansion start with Portland, so it WILL be one of the two new franchises whenever that happens.
Geographic-based division will always be off with such a tilted balance towards the east. Adding a team in Portland and Vegas will help resolve that a little.
AL East - NYY; Bos; Bal; Tor
AL South - SA (Oak) ; Hou; Tex; KC
AL Central - Det; Chi; Min; Cle
AL West- Sea; Por; LAA; SD
NL East - NYM; Phi; Pit; Cin
NL South - Mia; Atl; Was; TB
NL Central - StL; Chi; Col, Mil
NL West - Vegas; LAD; SF; Ari
AL East preserves the NYY/Bos rivalry and keeps all the big market teams together.
AL South has Oakland moving to San Antonio with the ability to develop a nice texas rivalry with the other two.
AL Central stands pat pretty much.
AL West adds Portland to give Seattle a nice regional game, and moves SD to the AL.
NL East keeps the Phillies and Mets and adds Pittsburgh and Cincinnati which gives Philadelphia an instate rival and keeps Cincinnati on the EST for tv viewing.
The NL South moves TB to the NL ans and gets them out of the huge NE markets to give a little more parity.
NL Central keeps the Cardinals and Cubs together, while keeping Milwaukee which is pretty close to Chicago intact. It also moves Colorado to the Central (don’t really like this move would rather keep Cincinnati here but its the lesser of two bad choices).
NL West adds Vegas as a new team, and keeps the Dodgers and Giants intact.
I would eliminate interleague except for a quick home and home against a rival (ie STL/KC, NYY/NYM, LAD/LAA, etc.)
Also, by having a pod system like this you could also have preferred scheduling where a division would play another division more than the others in the League. An example would be that the NL East and South are attached and each play another an extra two game series (home and away) to help build up or keep old rivalries intact.
If the new team was given to Charlotte instead of Vegas (which makes less sense from a revenue basis, but makes realignment easier)
NL East - NYM; Phi; Pit; Was
NL South - Mia; Atl; Char; TB
NL Central - StL; Chi; Cin, Mil
NL West - Col; LAD; SF; Ari
I wasn’t aware of this. What’s with the love for Portland? Is that from Manfred or someone else?
Then only downside to Charlotte is South Carolina’s racist history. There is a reason there are virtually no little leagues in South Carolina. They all returned their charter when Little League integrated in South Carolina and formed the Dixie Youth Baseball.
Oh wait. Did you mean Charlotte North Carolina? Yeah, that would be good. They’ve needed a team for a long time. But still there is the stigma of the south.
Is that really so much worse than a 100 year old scandal back when players were making chump change?
The East Coast can
Stigma of the South? As if Atlanta doesn’t have an MLB team? Is Nashville or Charlotte that much worse?
And Charlotte, SOUTH Carolina? What in the world?
I think the stigma of gambling, especially against baseball, is waning so a LV team certainly is not out of the realm of possibility.
The new hockey team has shown what could be expected. A smaller stadium, and one which relies on the visiting fans to provide a significant percentage of the attendance.
Besides the fact that so much capital and population has moved into cities like Nashville, Atlanta, Charlotte, etc that they aren’t even like the south anymore. Virginia certainly isn’t the “south” anymore, and North Carolina is certainly om its way also.
Well at least along the Rt 95 corridor. But do you really consider Charlotte not southern anymore?