I want radical realignment
The Astros-Rangers ALCS has convinced me it's time to get hyper local
The Houston Astros and Texas Rangers will play Game Seven tonight and the excitement of this series — with regional fervor, benches clearing bad blood, and Texas pride evident — has convinced me to change my mind about something I’ve always resisted.
I want radical realignment for Major League Baseball.
What’s radical realignment in Major League Baseball?
It’s making substantial changes to the divisions and the leagues. It’s totally re-thinking who is competing against who the most often.
Radical realignment is coming to Major League Baseball. It was considered during the 2020 Covid year. It would have likely occurred if the short-lived 2001 contraction plan came to reality. It’s definitely coming. Maybe it’s if/when the Oakland A’s move to Las Vegas. Maybe it’s when MLB expands to 32 teams. But it’s coming.
Whenever I’ve previously heard about radical realignment, I’ve resisted. I like tradition. I grew up in the Bay Area, a two-team market. The A’s in the American League. The Giants in the National League. It was perfect. We got to see all the teams and all the players.
I was actually one of those weirdos who liked both Bay Area teams, although if we’re being honest here amongst friends, most people in the Bay Area also liked both teams too. That all changed in the 1990s, but that’s another story for another newsletter.
Interleague baseball arrived in the major leagues in 1997. Purists didn’t like it. But you know who does like it? Paying customers. Admittedly, a game between the Arizona Diamondbacks and Minnesota Twins doesn’t really move the needle. But the regional games matter. Attendance booms and passions ignite for the Subway Series and the Freeway Series.
We need to lean into this more. Rivalries are what makes Sports fun. The Rangers and Astros became division rivals in 2013. Initially, it was weird that the Astros switched leagues. It took a decade until both teams were relevant, but it worked. Their rivalry is outstanding. Fans of both teams have packed both ballparks this October. The intensity in the stands carries onto the field. The trash talking from the regular season spilled into these playoffs. It’s been fabulous theatre.
They are the only teams in Texas. They absolutely should be playing each other a lot.
It worked in Texas, so let’s go hyper regional everywhere.
What would the new divisions look like under radical realignment?
As a Bay Area native, it pains me to do this, but I’m going to list my new divisions under the assumption the A’s move to Las Vegas. Dang, that’s a tough sentence to type.
I’m sticking with the current six divisions with five teams each. Whenever expansion occurs, it will likely be four teams in eight divisions. Or maybe eight teams in four divisions. Until we know for sure the expansion teams — and that’s probably still almost a decade away — it’s pointless to group them together.
Here’s my radical realignment plan with the current MLB teams:
New NL West — San Francisco Giants, San Diego Padres, Los Angeles Dodgers, Anaheim Angels, Seattle Mariners.
This keeps the four California teams together in a division. The A’s leaving the Golden State makes it easier to find a home for Seattle. This is like the old Pacific Coast League and that’s cool too.
New AL (South)west — Texas Rangers, Houston Astro, Las Vegas A’s (although I really hope they chose a new nickname), Arizona Diamondbacks, Colorado Rockies.
Three of the five current AL West teams stick together and are packaged with the teams in Denver and Phoenix. They were expansion teams in the 1990s, so it’s not like they have a century of tradition in the NL. This is sensible geographically. The Texas teams are thrilled to not play so many games that start at 9 pm local time.
New NL Central — Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox, Milwaukee Brewers, St. Louis Cardinals, Cincinnati Reds.
I want the Chicago teams together. It’s mandatory to keep the Cubs-Cardinals rivalry intact. And since the Brewers are one hour north, they need to be grouped together. I was quite tempted to move the Royals to this division to pair the Missouri teams together, but I’m scared of the wrath of Reds fans. Gotta keep the Cardinals-Reds paired.
New AL Central — Toronto Blue Jays, Detroit Tigers, Cleveland Guardians, Kansas City Royals, Minnesota Twins.
Another division that remains mostly the same: four of the current five teams (minus the White Sox) and we’re adding Toronto. Geographically, it makes more sense to pair Toronto with these teams, and as you’re about to read, I need to get rid of a current AL East team.
It’s already getting tricky. It’s about to get more tricky. Let’s move to the southeast next to illustrate why.
New NL East — Atlanta Braves, Tampa Bay Rays, Miami Marlins, Washington Nationals, Pittsburgh Pirates.
The first three are easy. But who are we going to pair with them? Geographically, nobody is really close. If Charlotte or Nashville become an expansion team in the future, that’s an obvious match, especially if it’s eight divisions with four teams. But that’s well into the future. Right now, it’s six divisions of five teams. We need two more.
I really wanted to keep together all three Mid-Atlantic teams — Philadelphia Phillies, Baltimore Orioles, Washington Nationals — but the math doesn’t doesn’t work for the other divisions. The Nationals have the least history and they’re already in the NL East, so they are staying put.
Then it comes down to this: do we want to keep the Phillies-Mets in the same division, or the Orioles-Yankees, or the Phillies-Pirates?
I’m torn. The Phillies and Pirates got separated in 1994 and there hasn’t been much of an uproar. They might be in the same state, but they are located on the extreme edges of Pennsylvania, and the cities identify rivalries more with border states. So that decides it. I’m separating the Phillies and Pirates.
Which means … the Pirates admittedly get the shaft by joining the new NL East. I know, it makes more sense to pair Pittsburgh with Cleveland and Cincinnati. But if you do that, Toronto or Minnesota joins the new NL East. And that’s even crazy in my crazy plan.
New AL East — Boston Red Sox, NY Yankees, NY Mets, Baltimore Orioles, Philadelphia Phillies.
You absolutely must keep Red Sox-Yankees together. The whole point of radical realignment is grouping the New York teams together. The Mets-Phillies rivalry remains, so does the Orioles-Yankees rivalry, and I dig a budding Orioles-Phillies grouping. This is a fun division. I mean, when us West Coasters scream “East Coast Media Bias” these are precisely the five teams we mean.
Summarizing my radical realignment plan
In all, 20 of the 30 teams stay in their current division.
Eight teams switch leagues, although three of them (Rockies, Diamondbacks, Rays) are the most recent expansion teams without an enormous history. This unequivocally is better for the Mariners and Angels to play their Pacific Ocean brothers and avoid multiple trips to Texas.
The White Sox leave the AL, but they join their crosstown rival Cubs, plus a Brewers team that was in their same league as recently as 1997. That’s a win. I mean, right now, who is the White Sox rival anyway?
The Phillies and Mets depart the NL, but the new AL East becomes an absolute banger of a division, with historic rivalries, and that is supremely good for ball.
The team this hursts the most is the Pirates. They stay in the NL, but join a more competitive division. They aren’t with natural geographical rivals like the Reds, Phillies or Guardians. Sorry bruh. It’s impossible to make all 30 teams happy.
Objectively, I think this is better for 29 of the 30 teams.
What do you think?
Really like this plan, Soosh. As a Cards fan, having the White Sox join the NL Central makes perfect sense and a chance to create new rivalries with teams who've been around a very long time. But since it would probably eliminate the interleague rivalry games, the only downside is that I will miss having the Cards feast on KC every year.
Toronto makes more sense distance-wise than Pittsburgh to me with that group TBH, but sure. MLB should really consider it. Toronto-Detroit is barely a rivalry but Cleveland-Pittsburgh is REAL.