What do you think about this realignment plan? I think it’s important to preserve the National and American League.

49 comments

  2. A lot better than that bullshit one from a while back that put the giants and dodgers in different leagues

  9. Why do we have to keep changing it? Baseball isn’t broken, it doesn’t need fixing.

  14. I’d rather the go back to just AL/NL and play more teams more frequently. Preserve some rivalries with extra games but otherwise do more like a round robin of the entire AL (with some interleague) through the season. Then playoff seedings based on that.

  20. I don’t think there’s any perfect format, but this one is VERY good if you’re going to keep the American League/National League model.

    If you’re going to go to the East/West model Rob Manfred has been floating, there are also very good alignments there.

    That said, I was confused earlier this week when Manfred went out of his way to insist that the two team markets would still be split up in that model. That makes no sense whatsoever to me.

    What’s the point in doing it at all you’re not going to maintain the same philosophy throughout?

    I am a Pirates fan, so we would have a hard time competing in this model because of how much more money Philadelphia and New York spend relative to Pittsburgh. It would be difficult to compete. Also, Washington is capable of similar types of sprees that smaller markets like Pittsburgh just are not capable of matching.

    However, if baseball doesn’t fix its economic disparity, it doesn’t matter how the divisions are aligned.

    I will tell you that there would be more excitement for baseball in Pittsburgh. If we were playing the Midlantic teams versus mostly Midwestern slate. It’s no disrespect to those teams at all. I’ve been to games in Chicago, Milwaukee, Cincinnati, etc. I like all of those places. The culturally and historically, we probably align a little bit better with the other ones.

  21. The best version of realignment is

    AL East (8), AL West (8), NL East (8), NL West (8)

    This was they way it was until 1993.

    Only, in this version, top two teams in both divisions make it to the playoffs, then the next best 2 are wild card situations.

    12 teams make the playoffs (just like now) and divisions like the AL East don’t happen (where only one, maybe two of the Yankees, Orioles, Red Sox or Blue Jays make the playoffs), while maintaining the history of the AL and NL and keeping the playoffs as difficult as they have always been.

  24. AL South doesn’t really make sense, but everything else is fine. I think it’s more likely to be Charlotte than Raleigh if North Carolina gets a team.

  29. Can we get the Astros back in the NL and send the Brewers back to the AL now that the douche Selig is out of office as commissioner? I don’t get how the state of Texas doesn’t have an NL team let alone how you could take a team out of the league they had been in for 50 years.

  33. As an O’s fan, Nooooooo!

    Give us the Pirates, Nats and Guardians. If anyone should be in the North division it’s the Jays. Red Sox, Yankees, Mets & Phillies for the AL East.

  34. This is about the best version of 4/4 realignment I have seen. I would really be interested for people saying they hate it to explain why rather than just saying it sucks and leaving it at that.

  35. I like it, but if you want to preserve AL/NL, why not keep Tampa in the AL and bring Houston back to the NL?

  38. This remains the best realignment scenario in my opinion, even though I still would rather see the Montreal Expos come back.

  44. I think the way this is set up on this projection is a lot better than what we currently have set up. So many examples of certain teams being improperly placed in a division that does not even align with their geographic location.

  46. I’d swap out the Angels and Diamondbacks: I think an California NL west would be awesome

  47. Keeping the leagues split (which I’m in favor of) really deadens the impact of these geographic pods from a travel perspective. This is basically just the current set up with an extra division sliced out in each league, which is fine, but I think 4 team divisions is a bad idea for baseball.

    I’d rather see them go to 4 divisions of 8, even though that will definitely never happen.

  48. Why would LA Angels and Dodgers be in different leagues but Tampa Bay and Marlins in the NL?

  49. The best solution I’ve heard is two 8-team divisions per league, with the top two teams in each division making the playoffs and the two best remaining teams in each league getting a wild card berth. Each division winner would get a first-round bye.

    I’ve heard proposals wherein we have two division winners, one for each half of the season. While this would give teams something to play for in September even if they had a bad spring, I think the first-half winner would then have no incentive to try in the second half.

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