My Major League Baseball Realignment Plan

The White Sox and Nationals are playing today.  Even worse, the Tigers and Marlins will play on the last day of the season.  What if the Marlins Tigers are in a race for a playoff spot on the last weekend of the season and they're playing a team from the other league?  That's just stupid.  The NFL figured this out and they now have all division games on the last week of the season.  Now that's not possible with 15 teams in each league and five teams in each division, so we have a problem.  I have a solution.

Before I get to my solution, let's get a few of things out of the way.  First, I hate interleague play.  I would get rid of it completely, but I know it's not going anywhere.  Second, Major League Baseball created this problem themselves by moving the Astros to the American League.  It was understandable since it was easier to make the playoffs in the AL West where you were competing against three other teams than it was in the NL Central where you were competing with five other teams.  Still, I would have left things alone.  But I know they're not just going to move the Astros back to the NL, so I have a plan to fix this problem of interleague play every day.  Finally, I know this isn't going to happen any time soon and one reason is that it's probably too NFL-y for Major League Baseball, but I like it a lot better than having interleague play every day.

First, let's agree that Major League Baseball is in good shape.  Steroids aren't as big of a problem as they were a decade ago and attendance is strong.  Major League Baseball's top five seasons by attendance have all happened in the last eight seasons.  The last time Major League Baseball expanded was 1998.  I think the game is in much better shape now than it was then.  And the population of the United States has grown by about 14% since that time and we're always getting more and more talent from Latin America and Asia.  So I think Major League Baseball is ready to expand.  So I'm adding 1 team to each league and we're going to have to realign into eight four-team divisions (just like the NFL).  Here are my divisions:

NL West:  Dodgers, Giants, Padres, Diamondbacks
NL North:  Cardinals, Cubs, Brewers, Rockies
NL South:  Braves, Marlins, Nationals, NL expansion team
NL East:  Mets, Phillies, Reds, Pirates
AL West:  A's, Mariners, Angels, AL expansion team
AL North:  Indians, Tigers, Twins, White Sox
AL South:  Rangers, Astros, Royals, Rays
AL East:  Yankees, Red Sox, Orioles, Blue Jays

Now these divisions aren't perfect.  The Rockies are kind of an outlier in the NL North, but look at the map.  Denver really isn't close to any Major League city.  Kansas City is closer to the teams in the AL North than the AL South, but somebody has to go to the South.  There might be other ways to do it.  For example, you could probably switch the Nationals and the Reds.  Or you could put both of them in the South and put the expansion team in the East.

But most important is figuring out where we're putting the expansion teams.  So I have some possible locations:

NL South (or East):  Indianapolis, San Antonio, Austin, Charlotte, Memphis, Nashville, Louisville, Oklahoma City.  All of those cities are in the 30 largest cities in the country.  I left out Jacksonville (the 11th biggest city in the country) because they can't even support a football team.  There are a couple of other possibilities also, such as Virginia Beach (39th), Raleigh (42nd), or Durham (84th).  I think I'd pick Charlotte, but whatever.

AL West:  Portland, Las Vegas, Albuquerque, Salt Lake City, Boise (or Oklahoma City, San Antonio, or Austin, but that would be some rough travel for that team).  I have to go with Portland here.  It's the 29th largest city in the country.  Pete Rose is not welcome in baseball so you can't put a team in Las Vegas (I am opposed to everything that city stands for anyway).  I can't see putting a team in New Mexico.  And Salt Lake City and Boise aren't even in the top 100 largest cities in the country.

Next we have to figure out what to do with the playoffs.  I'm keeping 10 teams in the playoffs.  Now we have the Wild Card Game between the two wild cards.  With four divisions in each league, there would only be one wild card.  So I would have the wild card play the division winner with the worst record.  One thing that I like about that is that even if a team is running away with its division, it would still be competing with the other division leaders.

I don't love this plan, but I absolutely hate interleague play every day.  The best thing to do would be to have 28 teams and four divisions with seven teams each, but that's not going to happen.

I'll see if I can figure out some more solutions to Major League Baseball's problems as the season goes on.