Why MLB Expansion Plan Could Bring Radical Change To Baseball

Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred triggered a controversy when he unveiled plans for expansion and realignment on national television. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Rob Manfred needs to clean up the mess, not make it worse.

His ideas on realignment related to expansion are almost as bad as creating the “Manfred Man” runner in extra innings or imposing a “home run derby” to decide All-Star Games deadlocked after nine frames.

As someone who has covered baseball for more than a half-century, here’s a novel idea the commissioner could consider: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

It’s important to note that Major League Baseball generated $12.1 billion in revenue last year, according to my Forbes colleague Maury Brown.

Manfred needs to fix the All-Star Game — by stripping the fan vote and rescheduling it as a weekend day game for starters — and end the post-season tournament that compromises the integrity of the World Series when wild-card winners oppose each other (as happened three times, most recently in 2023).

Expansion to 32 teams, which he wants, is logical but not for the reasons he suggests.

Four MLB 8-Team Leagues

The creation of four eight-team leagues — but definitely not eight four-team divisions — could free the game from the curse of interleague play and perhaps restore the Good Old Days when separate leagues had their own presidents and umpiring staffs.

It was during those Good Old Days that the American League and National League met only in the All-Star Game and World Series. Records in each league were sacrosanct, untouched by the mixing of teams that never played each other before 1997.

Yes, four eight-team leagues.

More teams, less playoffs, no wild-cards, and guaranteed integrity for the World Series.

Winners of each league would meet in a meaningful playoff, with eventual champions advancing to the World Series.

Manfred’s trial balloon – launched during an interview televised on the Little League Classic last Sunday – hardly lifted off the ground when it was shot down by Howie Rose, the cerebral and highly-respected radio voice of the New York Mets.

“It would be the last move before total destruction of the traditions that made baseball great,” he told The New York Post.

Deciding where to put new teams won’t be easy.

The Tampa Bay Rays, for instance, don’t want to return to decrepit Tropicana Field — even if the caved-in roof is repaired. Nor do they want to continue playing in George M. Steinbrenner Field, a converted spring training park with limited capacity.

With a new owner coming in a couple of months, the team could very well pull up stakes and head north, perhaps to Montreal so that the majors would again have two Canadian clubs.

Potential New Cities For MLB Expansion

Nashville, New Orleans, and Salt Lake City are other possibilities, though they could be in the hopper for expansion teams as well.

And then there’s a decision to be made between Vancouver, BC and Portland, OR – giving Seattle a geographic partner that would cut down its bulging air travel bill.

With those factors in mind, let’s create our own eight-team leagues (newcomers in bold):

American League East — Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Montreal (formerly Tampa Bay), New York, Toronto

American League West — Anaheim, Houston, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Minnesota, Portland, Seattle, Texas

National League East — Atlanta, Chicago, Miami, Nashville, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Washington

National League West — Arizona, Cincinnati, Colorado, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, San Diego, St. Louis, San Francisco

Since the Cubs and Cards have a long-standing rivalry, putting them in different divisions would be difficult — but they’d still be in the same league and play each other often (though less than they did before).

The other option is putting the Nashville expansion team in the NL West (a better bet if New Orleans wins the new NL franchise).

And who knows whether the troubled Miami franchise will actually stay in South Florida? The Sunshine State will still be a bastion of spring training, as it was for years before the Rays and Marlins were created as expansion teams in the ‘90s.

It seems a much better system than Manfred’s.

As former outfielder Cameron Maybin posted, “Some divisions get watered down, others overloaded, and rivalries that drive October story-lines we love just vanish.

“Baseball needs competitive integrity, not manufactured shakeups.”

Work Stoppage Looms

As for Manfred, he wants to have expansion completed before he retires in 2029. But he’ll have to head off a likely work stoppage that threatens the 2027 season.

Nothing will happen until a new Basic Agreement between owners and players is approved.

The current one ends on Dec. 1, 2026 and a lockout is virtually certain over the age-old salary cap dispute. Except for the well-healed New York teams and the Dodgers, there are 27 current clubs that seem willing to do whatever it takes to restore fiscal sanity to the game — even though Manfred reports it generated an estimated $12 million in revenue this year.

With billionaire owners and millionaire players trying to make sense out of dollars, dividing the pie has never been easy.

Agreeing on expansion, realignment, rules and roster changes, broadcasting, and schedule reduction (from 162 games back to the traditional 154) will just make matters more difficult.

Manfred concedes nothing will happen until the two teams currently biding their time in minor-league parks find new homes. The former Oakland Athletics, housed in Sacramento’s Sutter Health Park until their new Las Vegas facility is finished, are one problem. But the Tampa Bay Rays, stranded at George M. Steinbrenner Field after Hurricane Milton imploded the roof of Tropicana Field, may be a bigger one – especially with new ownership on the horizon.

“If we expand, it provides us with an opportunity to geographically realign,” said Manfred during his lengthy TV spot last weekend. “We could save a lot of wear and tear on our players in terms of travel.”

That theory runs contrary to the current Manfred-endorsed schedule allowing each team to play each of the 29 other teams.

Owners and players must approve any changes, though both will welcome the instant revenue new teams will pump into the game with expansion fees of $2 billion apiece.

Another potential source of new revenue is expanded playoffs. The owners have been pushing for a 16-team post-season tournament for several years. If the players agree to expand the playoffs, the regular season could be reduced from 162 games to the traditional 154, which spanned most of the 20th century.

More playoff games means higher broadcast fees, also adding money to the major-league pot.

Jigsaw Puzzle

“We’re having very detailed conversations with a number of parties,” Manfred said. “We
hope it have it resolved in the next couple of weeks. It’s a little bit like a jigsaw puzzle.”

A jigsaw puzzle is exactly what The New York Post published with its own projections of post-expansion alignment.

Major League Baseball has not expanded since adding the Arizona Diamondbacks to the National League and Tampa Ray Rays to the American League in 1998.