Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Is there no concern for the already watered down product? Move the Marlins to Montreal and the Rays to Portland.
Montreal remains the only MLB city which has been left with no team at all after once having one.
The other relocations:
Braves move from Boston to Milwaukee, Boston still has Red Sox
Browns move from St. Louis to Baltimore, St. Louis still has Cardinals
A's move from Philadelphia to KC, Philadelphia still has Phillies
Dodgers and the Giants move to Los Angeles and San Francisco, New York still has Yankees and will get Mets
Senators move from Washington to Minnesota, replacement expansion team given to Washington same year
Braves move from Milwaukee to Atlanta, Milwaukee gets the Seattle Pilots when they move and become Brewers
A's move from KC to Oakland, KC promised and receives expansion replacement team
Pilots move from Seattle to Milwaukee and become Brewers, Seattle promised and receives expansion club replacement
New Senators move from Washington to Texas, long wait, but DC eventually gets relocated Expos
And that was it, 1952-1971 was the great franchise relocation era, and in not a single case was any city left permanently high and dry. Since then there has been but one relocation, the Expos moving to Washington and becoming the Nationals. They were Montreal's only team and no replacement team was promised to them.
The Cubs broadcasters were talking about this last week during a game against the Mets.
My immediate reaction was to go to eight four-team divisions, with as little movement between leagues as possible. I personally have no interest in seeing four eight-team divisions, largely because I don't want the Cubs in the NL West. Short of repeating the geographical mistakes from 1969, unless the Cubs lobby hard enough, they would not be in the NL East (and with them, of course, St. Louis because MLB won't split them).
Thing is, four divisions in the NL is not as clean a split as one might think. Here's what I came up with, assuming the new teams are in Montreal and Portland ...
Central: Cubs, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Houston (comes back from the AL, swapping with Colorado)
East: Montreal, N.Y. Mets, Philadelphia, Washington
South: Atlanta, Cincinnati, Miami, Pittsburgh
West: Arizona, L.A. Dodgers, San Diego, San Francisco
AL
East: Baltimore, Boston, N.Y. Yankees, Tampa Bay
North: White Sox, Cleveland, Detroit, Toronto
Central: Colorado, Kansas City, Minnesota, Texas
West: L.A. Angels, Oakland, Portland, Seattle
Ok, so how about we stop destroying the space time continuum, and switch back the Astros and the Brewers ? Once interleague play was developed and one NL team was needed to go to the American League, it should have been the Brewers , but that piece of garbage Selig wanted his former team in the NL because “ Milwaukee is a national league town”...what a joke. Houston should’ve never moved to AL, but only occurred because they wouldn’t allow any new owner to get approved without him agreeing to move to the AL.
It would be nice to have the 2 Pennsylvania teams in the same division again. As a Mets fan I wish the cardinals and cubs would come back to the NL East. Cardinals and Mets had a big rivalry in mid 80s and Cubs/Cardinals is up there with Yankees/Red Sox regionally.
Baltimore
Boston
Chicago White Sox
Cleveland
Detroit
New York Yankees
Tampa Bay
Toronto
AL West
Anaheim
Houston
Kansas City
Minnesota
Oakland
Portland
Seattle
Texas
NL East
Atlanta
Cincinnati
Miami
Montreal
New York Mets
Philadelphia
Pittsburgh
Washington
NL West
Arizona
Chicago Cubs
Colorado
Los Angeles
Milwaukee
St. Louis
San Diego
San Francisco
Honestly, your divisions are pretty good. You drew a line through the US (and Canada) North/South through Chicago. Teams on the east side of that line (White Sox and others) are all AL and NL East teams. Teams on the west side of that line (Cubs and others) are all AL and NL West teams. There's not even any current teams switching leagues.
So geographically speaking, two thumbs up.
There is still the underlying problem of travel though. But, I don't really see what the West Coast teams would want done with that. There's a huge swath of the "midwest" that are void of baseball teams.
Added bonus of this sort of setup (and 32 teams, 16 per league) is doing away with near-daily interleague play. I really don't care either way what they do with it. But now that there are something like 6 interleague games per week, the novelty is gone. If they want to go back to those 2 weeks or so of everyone doing interleague play again, I'm fine with that. If they want to remove regular season interleague play entirely, I'm fine with that too.
Ok, so how about we stop destroying the space time continuum, and switch back the Astros and the Brewers ? Once interleague play was developed and one NL team was needed to go to the American League, it should have been the Brewers , but that piece of garbage Selig wanted his former team in the NL because “ Milwaukee is a national league townâ€...what a joke. Houston should’ve never moved to AL, but only occurred because they wouldn’t allow any new owner to get approved without him agreeing to move to the AL.
It would be nice to have the 2 Pennsylvania teams in the same division again. As a Mets fan I wish the cardinals and cubs would come back to the NL East. Cardinals and Mets had a big rivalry in mid 80s and Cubs/Cardinals is up there with Yankees/Red Sox regionally.
I don't see that happening. Milwaukee has too much to lose financially losing all of those home dates with the Cubs (there's a reason it's called Wrigley North) and St. Louis.
Colorado should have been the team that was moved to the AL. There was nothing tying them to the NL. The Astros, meanwhile, had been there for 50 years.
When I doodled my alignment, I waffled on putting the Phillies and Pirates in the same division. I think they should be. But I had less reason to keep Washington out of the East considering their proximity to NYC and Philly.
Baltimore
Boston
Chicago White Sox
Cleveland
Detroit
New York Yankees
Tampa Bay
Toronto
AL West
Anaheim
Houston
Kansas City
Minnesota
Oakland
Portland
Seattle
Texas
NL East
Atlanta
Cincinnati
Miami
Montreal
New York Mets
Philadelphia
Pittsburgh
Washington
NL West
Arizona
Chicago Cubs
Colorado
Los Angeles
Milwaukee
St. Louis
San Diego
San Francisco
Not that 8 divisions of 4 are ideal, I would break your plan down further into this, because your NL West has teams in the western/mountain/central time zones and your AL West has teams in the western/central time zones, the start times on TV are going to be crazy:
You have me thinking about westward expansion with the National League's Braves, Dodgers and Giants and the American League's Athletics and Senators relocating and the movement of a third major baseball league, the Federal League.
Very interesting. I really never even gave much thought to what expansion would do to our leagues and divisions. Hello: where has my brain been?
*Expand by adding eleven new teams - Montreal, Portland, Charlotte, Indianapolis, Vancouver, Nashville, New Orleans, Honolulu, Mexico City, London, Havana.
*Eliminate leagues/divisions entirely.
*Each team would play each of the other 40 teams four times each for a total of 160 games (2 games at home, 2 games on the road - every series would be a two-game series).
*Only the top two teams would make the postseason but they would play a best-of-19 World Series that would last most of October.
*Eliminate the DH but require that each position in the batting order - 1 thru 9 - must pitch one entire inning but no more each game. This will effectively end pitching as a specialty. Scoring will increase dramatically, but this could partially be offset by moving the mound in a few feet and raising it a foot or two.
*Scrap extra innings and just use a home-run derby to resolve ties. Or have an MMA bout between two selected players at midfield to determine the winner.
These ideas are all so obviously superb, I'm surprised they haven't been implemented yet...
Baseball better worry about what they have right now. There is a whole group of young people coming up who show little or no interest in watching baseball. When the old folks dissapear one day so might this sport as we know it.
There is a whole group of young people coming up who show little or no interest in watching baseball. When the old folks dissapear one day so might this sport as we know it.
Possibly. The median age for baseball fans is 55 according to ESPN. If that is the road to extinction, then football will not be far behind, their median fan age is 47. For basketball it is 37.
Of course it might be that even before MLB is done in by age demographics, it could run aground on its racial demographics. 83 % of the fans are white, 9% are black and 9% are Hispanic.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
