Your best markets for new baseball teams are probably the New York metro area and, if you had a good stadium, Montreal. That doesn’t help geographically, though. Portland or Vancouver would, and Austin would help a little I guess.
I suspect they’ll expand by two teams, one in each league and go with 4 4-tem division.
AL West: Seattle, Oakland, Anaheim, expansion (Portland, Vancouver, Salt Lake City, Vegas)
AL Central: Texas, Houston, Kansas City, Minnesota
AL Lakes: White Sox, Detroit, Cleveland, Toronto
AL East: New York, Boston, Baltimore, Tampa
NL West: LA, San Diego, San Francisco, Arizona
NL Central: Denver, St. Louis, Cubs, Milwaukee
NL South: Atlanta, Miami, Washington, expansion (Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina)
NL East: Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Mets.
or if they expand to Montreal instead, that goes in the East and Cincinnati in the South.
This is an interesting proposition. I’d be in favor. Six teams in the playoffs? (4 division winners and 2 wild card teams)
That’s how the NFL has done it for the past 20 years, since they went from six to eight divisions. It’d mean first-round byes for the better teams, since you’d likely be looking at five-game series between the wild card teams and the two “weaker” division winners in the first round.
So a wild-card team (or weak division winner) would have to win 4 playoff series to win the World Series? That might mean 26 playoff games (5, 7, 7, 7), correct?
With eight divisions, if they keep wild card teams, then yes, you’re looking at a playoff format like that. I wouldn’t expect them to structure playoffs in such a way that a division winner would have anything less than a five-game series in their first round.
Right now, with the (1, 5, 7, 7) format, a wild-card team would have to play a maximum of 20 games to win the WS. 26 games is a helluva postseason grind. Maybe they’d do a (5, 5, 7, 7) format? That would cut it back to a max of 24 games.
That seems more feasible to me, though, with a potential of 24 or 26 games, and days off for travel, that’d potentially push the World Series well into November.
You could reduce the regular season slightly. Maybe go back to a 154-game schedule. You could do something like this:
- 18 games against each of your three division rivals (54 in total)
- 6 games against each of the other 12 non-division teams in your league (72 games)
- 6 games against the four teams in one division of the other league (24 games)
- 4 games against your “natural” opposite-league rival (e.g., Cubs v. White Sox; Mets v. Yankees, etc)
= 154 games in total
If that’s too much interleague play for some people, you could play around with the numbers a bit to leave interleague play at 20 games a year, like it is now.
- 4 games against the four teams in one division of the other league (24 games)
- 4 games against your “natural” opposite-league rival (e.g., Cubs v. White Sox; Mets v. Yankees, etc)
The owners won’t want to give up the 8 games. That means a lot of revenue. It has come up a few times and they don’t want to shorten the regular season.
I agree – permanently shortening the season would be a non-starter for the owners. That’s 4 fewer home games, 8 fewer TV and radio games, and thus, not a financial hit they’d be willing to take.
My proposal was based on what a reasonable person might do in order to create a viable season, and a viable postseason, with 32 teams.
Unfortunately, reasonable doesn’t generally factor in when it comes to team owners.
Exactly.
I got a report on this post asking to fix the quote. I’m happy to help (especially since folks are still getting used to the new system)… but the quote doesn’t look broken to me. Are others seeing a broken quote in Harrington’s post?
It’s certainly not more insane than caring about pitcher wins or losses. Those are stupid stats that shouldn’t be paid any attention to anymore.
Well, it’s not a normal season. I don’t think anyone now or 100 years from now will view it as a normal season. I think we can all agree on that. So why shouldn’t it count, since we are all aware of how weird and non-normal it is? We acknowledge the Dodgers’ title in 1981, when the team with the most regular season wins didn’t even make the postseason, don’t we?
That would likely put player contracts at risk of not being paid.
Honestly, what’s the harm in just leaning into the weirdness of this season and enjoying it for what it is? Universal DH has been an inevitability ever since interleague play started - everyone’s had plenty of time to realize that the double switch doesn’t require a genius level intellect to implement. Runner-on-2nd (have we come up with a less awkward shorthand for this yet?) is weird, but it doesn’t fundamentally change the game. I notice that the same people who complain about the loss of the DH (“we love defense - whatever happened to the beauty of small ball?!”) are generally the same people who decry the Ro2 (“you can win with just a bunt, a popfly, and smart baserunning. Stop the madness!”).
If you love the strategic component of baseball, this season should scratch every itch in your brain. How do you best implement a super-sized roster for the first 2 weeks of the game? How do you deal with playing time for your developmental players in a shortened season? With the extra roster slots, is this the year you embrace the opener strategy and get through the meat of the lineup once with a high leverage reliever first? How DO you approach the Ro2 in extra innings?
Exactly. Every team, after all, has to deal with the same set of strange circumstances. It might be different from a normal season, but games still get played, teams still win games and lose games, and someone still comes out on top at the end of the season.
I’ve watched some extra inning runner on 2nd (“EIRo2”?) in MiLB last year. It reduces the odds of a marathon, but by no means guarantees that the 10th ends with a bunt & a sac. Or the 11th …
All TV sports have done things in the last 10ish years to shorten play after regulation ends in a tie. MLB is simply the last to embrace a change in that direction.
The sport will survive this. Assuming the business survives COVID.
As to the various sensible proposals above for 8 divisions, 2 expansion teams, etc., I suggest that in that format the wildcards should disappear.
Make the playoffs straight 8>>4>>2>>1 elimination, then fiddle with the best-of-X number in each round to get the “right” = maximally profitable duration of post-season play.
It’s ok now. Maybe I fixed it myself and didn’t notice. Thank you.
How about we do away with the AL and NL? Five 6 team divisions with the division winners and 3 wild cards making the playoffs.
Div 1 - Sea, Oak, SF, LA, LA, SD
Div 2 - Hou, Tex, Ari, Col, KC, StL
Div 3 - Mia, TB, ATL, Was, Balt, Cincy
Div 4 - Bos, NY, NY, Philly, Pitt, Tor
Div 5 - Minn, Mil, Chi, Chi, Det, Cle
Of course, you would have to wrestle with the DH issue.
The other issue is you blow up long standing rivalries because of the leagues for no real good reason. I’m a Mets fan. I’d far rather play the Braves than the Blue Jays.
You’ve also separated out one of the biggest rivalries in baseball - Cubs vs. Cardinals.