Apparently, Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred wants two new expansion teams in Major League Baseball — awesome! — but he also wants radical realignment of MLB's divisions — definitely not awesome.
The plan calls for the two expansion teams to be slotted in Carolina (either Charlotte or Raleigh) and Portland (the one in Oregon — not the one in Maine).
But a "Tennessee" franchise would be far superior to Portland — in that Nashville is 212 miles east of Memphis, and 341 miles west of Knoxville, both via Interstate 40. Those two cities have a combined population of just over 800,000.
By contrast, Portland's two closest neighbors — Eugene, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington — have a combined population of less than half that.
So Nashville is clearly the better choice.
Furthermore, if "Carolina" and "Tennessee" are the two expansion teams, an NFL-style East/North/South/West divisional setup would make the most sense — with the following divisions:
AL East — Orioles, Red Sox, Yankees, Blue Jays
AL North — White Sox, Guardians, Tigers, Twins
AL South — Astros, Royals, Rays, Rangers
AL West — Athletics, Diamondbacks, Angels, Mariners
NL East — Mets, Phillies, Pirates, Nationals
NL North — Cubs, Reds, Brewers, Cardinals
NL South — Braves, Carolina, Marlins, Tennessee
NL West — Rockies, Dodgers, Padres, Giants
Having the Carolina and Tennessee expansion teams compete in the same division has a precedent — in 1969, when the American League's two expansion teams, the Royals and the Seattle Pilots, were both slotted into the same division (the original AL West); and Kansas City in a new AL South makes eminent good sense, in that Missouri was a slave state until 1865, and a Jim Crow state until 1964 (Jackie Robinson was incessantly tormented whenever the Dodgers had to play road games at St. Louis).
This arrangement is clearly superior to any other realignment proposal out there — such as this one, which is making the rounds these days.
Another decidedly bad idea getting bandied about is a "balanced schedule," under which every team plays every other team in the same league seven times, although it would involve shortening the regular season to the "traditional" 154 games — a decidedly good idea — since it could, among other things, guarantee the 5 and 6 playoff seeds one home game in the Wild Card Series (Game 2). It would also mean that the regular season could start two or three days later, and end two or three days earlier.
And in lieu of a "balanced schedule" (a variant of this currently under discussion calls for reducing the number of games between division rivals to 10 — a terrible idea because in the strike year of 1994, the Rangers finished 10 games below .500 yet "won" the AL West), there can be an "11-6-3" distribution (with all teams playing their three division rivals 11 times each, the 12 teams in the other three divisions within the same league six times, with 49 interleague games, the odd game consisting, in most cases, of matchups like Mets/Yankees, Dodgers/Angels, Cubs/White Sox, etc.).
And since the union will almost certainly oppose any increase in the size of the playoff field, baseball's new postseason will end up being the same as the one the NFL used from 2002 through 2019, with the four division winners plus two wild card teams from each league making the playoffs.
But in any event, abolishing the American League and the National League as we know them is an absolute non-starter — and Manfred has to know that.
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