reported by Evan Drellich in The Athletic<\/a>:<\/p>\n\u201cWe\u2019ve talked about split seasons. We\u2019ve talked about in-season tournaments,\u201d Manfred said Thursday in a radio interview with WFAN\u2019s Craig Carton and Chris McMonigle. \u201cWe do understand that 162 (games) is a long pull. I think the difficulty to accomplish those sort of in-season events, you almost inevitably start talking about fewer regular-season games.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a much more complicated thing in our sport than it is in other sports. Because of all of our season-long records, you\u2019re playing around with something that people care a lot about.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whether players would go for such a format change would also be a key factor. The MLB Players Association declined comment.<\/p>\n
The \u201cin-season tournament\u201d would presumably be similar to the \u201cNBA Cup\u201d that the pro basketball league currently has. The thing is \u2014 does anyone really care about that? Manfred\u2019s right about logistics and \u201cplaying around with something people care about.\u201d Many baseball fans like the history of the sport and the way the schedule is currently set up, though it should be said that if you were creating something called \u201cMajor League Baseball\u201d from scratch in the year 2026, there\u2019s no way you would have a 162-game schedule. Somewhere around 140 games would likely be the sweet spot, with a schedule beginning in late April and ending in late September. That would help avoid the worst of the worst weather in northern cities like Chcago. Manfred is correct: Changing these sorts of things would be \u201ccomplicated.\u201d<\/p>\n
One thing is for sure. If MLB ever did go to a split season, they need to avoid the mistake that was made after the 1981 strike was settled. When they simply declared the division leaders when the strike happened as \u201cchampions,\u201d then had the second-half winners also as champions, that wound up having the NL teams with the best records in each division \u2014 the Reds and Cardinals \u2014 sit home in October. What they should have done was to have the second-half winner play the overall winner. If that happened to be the same team, then go to the first-half \u201cchampion.\u201d<\/p>\n
That said, a split season would likely be a non-starter for a number of reasons.<\/p>\n
Also having said that, I do think that after expansion comes \u2014 and it will come, it\u2019s just a matter of timing \u2014 the regular-season schedule will be reduced. This is because in a 32-team league, we will likely have 16 teams make the postseason. Is that too many? Absolutely yes. It is going to happen because the league can make more money selling postseason games to TV rightsholders than regular-season games.<\/p>\n
What would a schedule reduction look like? The number \u201c154\u201d has been floated, largely for historical reasons, as MLB had a 154-game schedule from 1904 to 1960 (AL) and 1961 (NL). But any number between 150 and 156 would be workable. Now try to convince players that they should take a small reduction in salary because the schedule is shorter. Good luck with that.<\/p>\n
Manfred talked about realignment on geographic lines, for the following reason that actually makes sense:<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have those four-window days that I love,\u201d Manfred said of the early rounds of MLB\u2019s playoffs. \u201cYou get four baseball games in a day, it\u2019s awesome. But when you think about the fans in the individual markets, you always end up with \u2014 because of the way we\u2019re set up \u2014 you get Boston versus Anaheim in one of the early rounds. So you\u2019re either going to be too late (in the day) for the fans in Boston or too early.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you realign geographically, you would look more like other sports, where you play up east into the World Series, and west into the World Series, and that 10 o\u2019clock game on the (East) Coast that sometimes is a problem for us becomes a primetime game on the West Coast for the two teams that are playing. So there\u2019s a lot of advantages to it.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019m going out on a limb here by saying Manfred\u2019s point actually makes sense. If a 32-team MLB realigned along geographic lines into eight divisions of four teams each, the first round could be true \u201cdivisional playoffs,\u201d where you\u2019d have the first- and second-place teams in each division play (say) a three-game series, then move on to what would be the equivalent of the current Division Series round, with eight teams remaining playing four five-game series. At that point geographical separation doesn\u2019t matter that much.<\/p>\n
So how would such a split look? Let\u2019s assume for the time being that Nashville and Salt Lake City are the two expansion teams (and even if it\u2019s not those two, it\u2019s likely one eastern city and one western city). That could result in divisions aligned like this:<\/p>\n
NL East: Phillies, Mets, Nationals, Pirates
NL North: Cubs, Cardinals, Reds, Brewers
NL South: Braves, Marlins, Rays, Nashville
NL West: Dodgers, Giants, Padres, Diamondbacks<\/p>\n
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\u2019s, Salt Lake City<\/p>\n
This would actually be pretty elegant. No division would span more than two time zones and all are geographically compact. Also, Manfred said something in his radio interview that I was very happy to hear:<\/p>\n
Manfred said on Thursday that markets that have multiple major-league teams \u2014 Chicago, New York, Los Angeles \u2014 should not have both teams in the same division.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think you would try to keep the two-team cities separate,\u201d Manfred said. \u201cThat would be my thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a relief. Personally, I would not want the Cubs and White Sox in the same division and the alignment above would accomplish that while still keeping the divisions geographically sensible. Also, only two teams (Rays and Rockies, both expansion teams) would have to switch leagues in the setup above, which would maintain most of 150 years of league history. Further, two geographic divisional rivalries would be created (Phillies\/Pirates and Marlins\/Rays).<\/p>\n
To have this alignment and \u201cdivisional playoff\u201d make sense, you\u2019d also have to have a schedule more intradivisional.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s one possibility:<\/p>\n
15 games vs. every team in your division: 45 games
6 games vs. every other team in your league: 72 games
3 games vs. 12 of the 16 teams in the other league: 36 games<\/p>\n
That\u2019s 153 games. Add one more random game each year among the 12 teams in the other league and you\u2019d have 154. In a schedule like this you\u2019d rotate the divisions each team would play in the other league, so you\u2019d play every team in three of every four seasons. I think this would be workable, it would still allow fans to see 25 of the 29 other teams against their favorite team every year, and it would make divisional play more important. I think that matters because in my view, baseball is a regional sport. Rivalries like Cubs\/Cardinals, Red Sox\/Yankees and Dodgers\/Giants, among others, matter to fans.<\/p>\n
No doubt, Manfred and the owners will make a schedule not like this and it won\u2019t make anyone happy.<\/p>\n
This, though, should make you happy. From Drellich\u2019s article:<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m done at the end of this contract,\u201d Manfred said. \u201cI\u2019ve told them (the owners) that, and I\u2019m gonna stick to it. I\u2019ll be 70. It is enough. \u2026 You have a certain period of time when you have things that you want to accomplish, you take your best shot, you try to get as much done as possible. And then it\u2019s sort of time for the next guy with his set of things. And I think that\u2019s healthy and good for this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Three more years. Try not to mess things up too much in the meantime, Rob.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred has had many ideas to shake up the game in his 11-year tenure leading…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":461172,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2288],"tags":[5,2328,2304,4,51548,2305,2303],"class_list":{"0":"post-512958","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb-postseason","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-major-league-baseball-playoffs","10":"tag-major-league-baseball-postseason","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-mlb-commentary-and-analysis","13":"tag-mlb-playoffs","14":"tag-mlb-postseason"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115870614372985773","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=512958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512958\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/461172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=512958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=512958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=512958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}