Theoretical Baseball Reallignment and Expansion

[77smbg9177]

Remember a few years back, MLB was looking at possibly doing another configuration?
I just made up a decent one, IMO that makes more geological sense.
Here it is:

American League -

North East -
NY Yankees
NY Mets
Boston
Toronto
DC
Baltimore

South -
Texas
Houston
Atlanta
Florida
Tampa Bay

Northwest -
Seattle
San Francisco
Oakland
Colorado

National League -

Midwest -
Chicago Cubs
Chicago White Sox
Milwaukee
Minnesota
St. Louis
Kansas City

East Central -
Detroit
Cleveland
Cincinatti
Pittsburgh
Philadelphia

Southwest -
Los Angeles Angels
Los Angeles Dodgers
San Diego
Arizona

In addition, for Interleague games, I would play two different teams from each division, once at home and once away each year.

The DH rule would be done away with completely.

Lastly, up the Wild card picture to include 6 teams per league.
Like NFL, top two would have BYEs -
Each division winner would get one spot - the remaining three would be based on overall best record after that.

Thoughts?

or you can do like football and have two division AL vs NL or East vs South or even North vs South

[all4phillysportsfan]

Mets and Yankees in the same division? That would make some great rivals in New York though. I don't see the Phillies going to the East Central though because they are only 100 miles or so from the coast.

[77smbg9177]

ya but beside that it all looks good right

[77smbg9177]

If the MLB were to expand (although I think it's a bit stretched already), or if a team were to move, where should they move to? I'll list some cities with Major League Baseball history and some other possibilities. Some of the cities are currently probably too small/unable to support a major league baseball team.

Atlantic City - Bacharach Giants of Atlantic City
Dayton, OH - Dayton Marcos
Idianapolis - Indianapolis ABC's, Athletics, Clowns, and Hoosiers
Columbus, OH - Columbus Buckeyes and later Turfs
Toledo, OH - Toledo Tigers, Crawfords, Blue Stockings, and Maumees
Birmingham, AL - Birmingham Black Barons
Memphis, TN - Memphis Red Sox
Nashville, TN -Nashville Elite Giants
Louisville - Louisville White Sox and Black Caps (later moved to Columbus to become the Columbus Turfs), Buckeyes, Fall Citys, Grays, and Colonels
Darby, PA - Hilldale Club of Darby, Pennsylvania (later called the Daisies)
Harrisburg, PA - Harrisburg Giants (also parttime home of the St. Louis Stars)
Newark, NJ - Newark Stars, Dodgers, Eagles, and Peppers
Homestead, PA - Homestead Grays
Monroe, LA - Monroe Monarchs
Montgomery, AL - Montgomery Gray Sox
Buffalo, NY - Buffalo Bisons, Blues, and Buffeds
New Orleans, LA - parttime home of the St. Louis Stars
Jacksonville, FL - Jacksonville Red Caps
Portland, OR - Portland Roses
Fort Wayne, IND - Fort Wayne Kekiongas
Troy, NY - Troy Haymakers
Rockford, IL - Rockford Forest Citys
Middletown, CT - Middletown Mansfields
Elizabeth, NJ - Elizabeth Resolutes
Hartford, CT - Hartford Dark Blues
New Haven, CT - New Haven Elm Citys
Keokuk, Iowa - Keokuk Westerns
Montreal, Canada - Montreal Expos
Richmond, VA- Richmond Virginians
Rochester, NY - Rochester Broncos and Beau Brummels
Syracuse, NY - Syracuse Stars
Altoona (PA, I believe) - Altoona Unions
Wilmington, Delaware - Wilmington Quicksteps

Other candidates:
Las Vegas

Anyway, I was just wondering what cities you would put a team in if you could, whether through relocation or expansion. Feel free to add a city if you'd like, or if you relocate a team tell which team should be relocated.

Anyway, just curious as to what everyone thinks.

[RickJay]

Mot of the cities you have cited are very small, by the standards of Major League Baseball, or are part of other markets.

To give you some idea of what we're dealing with, the smaller city that currently has an MLB team is Milwaukee, which has a metropolitan population of 1.8 million. Almost all the cities you cited are smaller than that, and given that Milwaukee complains about its ability to support the team, it seems unlikely that places like Harrisburg are good choices for expansion. By way of comparison, Buffalo has a metro population of 1.2 million.

The only cities bigger than Milwaukee I can think of that don't have teams are,

Montreal (4.0 million)
Vancouver (2.2 million)
Charlotte (2.1 million)
Portland, OR (2.1 million)
Sacramento (2.0 million)
San Antonio (1.9 million)

The only REALLY good market is Montreal, which is understandably very soured on baseball right now; it'll take a few years and a real ownership group to restore the image of MLB in that city. Other than that, the choices are pretty marginal.

The best expansion choice for baseball right now, to be honest, is probably New York City, a market of about 18,000,000 people in the metro area with an extremely high interest in baseball; the borough of Brooklyn, by itself, is larger than all the cities I listed above except Montreal. Or perhaps even a location in Mexico.

[77smbg9177]

that is true but what about a team in Hawaii or Alaska probaly not right

[RickJay]

The entire population of the State of Hawaii is just over a million people, with 25% having no land access to Honolulu, and it's one of the poorest states in the Union. You'd be better off putting a team in Calgary, Alberta.

Alaska has no really large cities at all.

[RickJay]

As to reconfiguration, the OP's reconfiguration is truly bizarre, placing Philadelphia - which is on the Atlantic coast and just an hour and a half from Baltimore - in the "East Central," while Toronto, which is about two hundred miles west of Philadelphia, is in the "Northeast." To continue along that line, Toronto is now further from any team in its own division than it is from Cleveland or Detroit, and seemingly unnecessarily so, since it's in a six team division. Toronto and Philly should be reversed.

You also have uneven numbers of teams in each division, meaning you must have interleague play every week. And you have leagues with one division of 4 and another of 6 teams, which is wildly unfair.

[77smbg9177]

ya but that is how it is now we have one divison with 6 teams and another with only four.

[RickJay]

Originally Posted by 77smbg9177

ya but that is how it is now we have one divison with 6 teams and another with only four.

Not IN THE SAME LEAGUE. There are no teams in a 6-team division competing with teams in a 4-team division for a wild card playoff spot.

[77smbg9177]

That true that why if you read the playoffs coukd be changed to like the NFL or the NHL, and NBA

[RickJay]

Originally Posted by 77smbg9177

That true that why if you read the playoffs coukd be changed to like the NFL or the NHL, and NBA

I don't see how that helps, really, unless you propose to do away with divisions entirely. Anyway, I think you'd find baseball fans extremely opposed to the concept.

I personally am a fan of the current setup, but going to 16 teams like the NBA or NHL would simply be absurd in baseball. Those sports have always had extremely liberal playoff allowances, and I would point out two things about them:

1. The NHL isn't popular, so it's not like their playoff system helps them, and
2. The NBA is a sport in which playoff seeding is extraordinarily important; it's possible, but amazingly difficult, for an 8th-ranked team to win it all. That's not true in baseball.

It wouldn't be the end of the world or anything, but I don't see a lot of point in it, unless there's another increase in the number of teams, which isn't possible without some dramatic changes in the way the league is run.

[DiamondDave]

This thing makes about as much sense as boobs on a bull

[WilsonC]

A radical reallignment like this would seem like change just for the sake of change - in a sport that generally resists change.

Even if the playoffs were expanded as you suggest, it wouldn't be necessary or particularly productive to reallign the divisions like that. At most, I could see a minor shuffling to balance out the divisions, which would of course necessitate interleague play every week.

I'd just leave the structure as is for the time being.

[645]

Dude what are you smoking?

1) The New York and Chicago Teams don't like the idea of being put together and MLB wouldn't do that.

2) There are teams in both in the AL and NL that would never change League becouse of a long story history and Cleveland and Detroit are 2 of them.

3) If you could get them all to agree to it wouldn't it be more logical having a division of all 5 California teams together?

4) A division of Atlanta and the 2 Florida teams and the 2 Texas teams. That would make for some Killer Road Trips going back and forth all the time. None of them would be happy with that.

5) No more DH? hmmm, Try getting that past the Players union.

Not that I would be againt geological reallignment for I would like to see it but the only way they can really make it work is with Expansion of 2 teams in the west.