Daily Dirt for Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026

The Cardinals and Cubs in the “NL North?” … Welcome to today’s three thoughts that make up Vol. 1,519 of The Daily Dirt.

1. The world of Major League Baseball will likely be undergoing some big-time changes in the not-too-distant future.

MLB Commissioner Ron Manfred, in a series of recent interviews, has made a few things perfectly clear.

Among those are how he hopes to have two more cities added to the big-league lineup (growing the total to 32), which would then be followed by creating eight four-team groups. Those new divisions would be dispersed among Eastern and Western divisions, effectively ending the longstanding American and National league setups.

Manfred would like to have the wheels in motion for at least some (and hopefully all) of his ideas by the time he retires in January 2029, although the expansion teams might not begin play until the early 2030s.

There are also other items on his to-do list, such as a possible split-season format and maybe even an in-season tournament like pro basketball has adopted with the NBA Cup.

Realistically, those are longshots at best, but you can take the two expansion teams the eight four-team alignments to the bank. Whether or not we see an East/West format or are somehow able to save the familiar American/National tag lines remain to be seen.

For me, the most intriguing part of all this are the eight four-team divisions, because Manfred is adamant that he wants to keep the cities with two teams (New York, Chicago, etc.) in separate “leagues” (or whatever the new terminology becomes).

Theoretically, here’s how those new alignments would likely look (we’ll label the divisions under the current NL and AL monikers):

NL East: Phillies, Mets, Nationals, Pirates

NL North: Cubs, Cardinals, Reds, Brewers

NL South: Braves, Marlins, Rays, (Nashville)

NL West: Dodgers, Giants, Padres, Diamondbacks

AL East: Red Sox, Yankees, Orioles, Blue Jays

AL North: Tigers, Guardians, White Sox, Twins

AL South: Royals, Astros, Rangers, Rockies

AL West: Angels, Mariners, A’s, (Salt Lake City)

Nashville and Salt Lake City are currently the two leading contenders to land the expansion teams, with Portland also in the mix.

Under this type of setup, many of the existing rivalries will be preserved, and that’s a good thing. There are several plans for the numbers of potential regular-season games to be played, but it seems the most popular is to revert back to the old 154-game format.

It’s a lot to think about, but the good thing is we have a few years to work out any potential kinks.

What do you think?

2. Did you know (Part 606)

— That if a large group of killer whales was headed your way, would it be called an Orca-stra?

— That the hardest thing about learning to roller skate is the floor.

— That the fear of kissing is called philemaphobia.

— That the place most astronauts go to workout would likely be Planet Fitness.

— That if you had your grandma on speed dial, would that make her an Instagram?

3. Appalachian Word of the Day: Isolate. 

“Isolate to work they fired me by lunchtime.”

Steve Thought O’ The Day — Did you hear the sad news about the Italian chef? He pasta way.

Steve Eighinger writes daily for Muddy River News. Maybe someone should tell the idiot commissioner that until he establishes hard spending caps and floors for all teams, all this other shit is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.