One thing that is now seeming like a future baseball event is the long awaited expansion to 32 teams. With it seeming more and more likely that the Athletics will end up in Vegas, I’m not going to lay my bets on that until a stadium is actually built and that could still face legal challenges from Nevada voters, but at some point in the next five to eight years, I think it is clear that the league will finally expand. MLB had gone through an expansion boom, in part set off by controversial relocations. When the Giants and Dodgers left for the west coast, the expansion Mets were granted to put the National League back in the New York metro, since at that time the two leagues were two completely separate organizations who only faced one another in spring training exhibitions, the All Star Game and in the World Series. To keep the NL balanced, it gave the other franchise to Houston. The AL had a quickly arranged expansion that actually took place the prior year, one team becoming the Angels because the AL wanted a share of Los Angeles and the west coast, the other was the team that went to DC, literally replacing the team that relocated from DC that same season to become the Twins. It would be like the Athletics going to Vegas and the year they started playing in Sin City, the new expansion team began play back in Oakland.
The move to Oakland actually helped jump start the 1969 expansion that saw four teams come into MLB, two per league. The league originally aimed to expand in 1971, but threats against the antitrust protection baseball enjoyed from a powerful Missouri Senator jumped that timeline, so that one year after the Athletics left Kansas City for Oakland, they too would have an expansion replacement ready to go known as the Royals. KC would be joined in Seattle for the 1969 AL season, while San Diego and Montreal came on board for the NL. A year later, the Seattle team was gone, now to be known as the Milwaukee Brewers, who replaced the Braves in Milwaukee five years after they left for Atlanta which would lead to legal suits file by Seattle. That would in some way help as the spring board for yet another expansion in 1977 adding Seattle back into the fold, but the league needed another market. It was thought briefly that the other team would end up in the NL creating a 13-13 alignment, but after the Giants threatened move to Toronto went for not, the Toronto market would be the second team joining Seattle in the AL for 1977 creating a 14-12 alignment that fans growing up like me in the 1980’s would come to know. After adding ten franchises in 16 years from 1961 to 1977, with the Mariners, Royals, and Mets all as replacement teams for franchises that had picked up and moved on, things finally had settled down. The league saw one more relocation during this period as those replacement Senators who took DC after the original team became the Twins, 11 years later they too were gone and now known as the Texas Rangers.
While the league added ten teams in a period of less than two decades from 1961 to 1977, it would be just as long before the league expanded again, adding the Rockies and marlins in 1993. That expansion at the time was rightfully viewed as such a success, that the league began looking to add two more teams in the spring of 1994, but months later the strike would happen. The then Devil Rays and Diamondbacks would be awarded in 1995 to begin play in 1998. Both franchises have had periods of on field success, Arizona winning the 2001 World Series and Tampa Bay appearing in the 2008 and 2020 Fall Classics, results have been less robust at the gate, especially for the Rays. Early gate success could not be maintained by the Marlins, largely due to ownership decisions and despite a new ballpark opened in 2012 and two championships won in 1997 and 2003, there is genuine doubt about how Miami works long term, many have similar concerns and rightfully so about Las Vegas.
In terms of how the league aligned, it first split into a pair of six team divisions in each league in 1969. The AL took a purely geography oriented approach, the Angels, Oakland, Minnesota, Seattle, Kansas city and the White Sox out west, with Cleveland, Detroit, Baltimore, Washington, Boston and the Yankees in the east. The NL was more complicated, the Cubs and Cardinals did not want to play in a western division, so they were put in the east with the Mets, Montreal, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, Cincinnati and Atlanta would be shipped west to join Houston, the Dodgers, San Francisco and the new San Diego franchise.
IN 1970 when the Seattle Pilots went to Milwaukee, they would stay in the west, but they would be shifted to the east in 1972 when the Washington franchise moved to Texas, putting that team in the west. Fortunately unlike the NFL, baseball did not decide to keep its Dallas Fort Worth based franchise in an eastern division, something now seemed forever locked in stone for the Cowboys because of historic rivals with the New York, Philadelphia and Washington franchises.
When Toronto and Seattle were added in 1977, they simply joined their corresponding divisions in the AL. it would be the 1993 NL expansion that again sparked controversy. When the first expansion resulting in new divisions happened in 1969, both leagues went to an unbalanced schedule. But after the AL expanded to 14 teams in 1977, it switched to a truly balanced slate in 1979 which resulted in 78 division games, 13×6 and 84 against the other division, 12×7. The NL considered both an extreme unbalanced schedule and a balanced one for 1993 when it grew to 14 teams, ultimately deciding on taking the same approach used by the AL. So division assignment didn’t impact the amount of play you would have against any franchise. Nonetheless, there was a desire to try and create a regional rivalry between Atlanta and the new Miami franchise. The only problem of course, if you put the Braves in the east with the Marlins, the Cubs or Cardinals would have to go west and those two would never play in different divisions and both were still opposed, even though now with the balanced schedule, you would have had the same amount of trips out west no matter your division assignment. So when 1993 opened, Atlanta and Miami were in different divisions.
Then on September 9, 1993, there was a surprise announcement at least to me, as I did not have a sense that this was coming. Realignment in MLB unlike any other sport always seemed to spark great debate and boy did it when the league shared it’s new format that would go into effect for 1994. A balanced schedule would remain, but now the league would have three divisions and those division winners would be joined by a single wild card in each league to create an added round of playoffs. Both league’s would have a four-team western division and five-teams in the central and eastern groupings. Since the AL was geographically oriented already, what it ended up with was very reasonable, Seattle, Oakland, the Angels and Texas out west, Kansas city, Minnesota, the White Sox, Milwaukee and Cleveland in the central, Toronto, Detroit, Boston, Baltimore and the Yankees in the east. Cleveland is actually further east than Detroit, but since Cleveland was always viewed as the smaller market, I suspect that was why the league chose to put it in the grouping with other Midwest markets.
The NL would see Colorado remain out west with the Dodgers, San Francisco and San Diego. The Cubs and Cardinals would now move to a new central division, joined by Houston, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh. Geographically speaking, Atlanta would have made more since, because Pittsburg valued its rivalry with Philadelphia. But Atlanta, not Pittsburgh would be sent east with Montreal, the Mets, Philadelphia and the Marlins.
When baseball announced it was adding two teams for 1998, the realignment fuse was immediately lit. would both teams go to one league or the other, would baseball go to 15-15 since interleague play was now becoming more and more of a possibility? The debate only grew when the league confirmed that in deed, interleague play would begin starting with the 1997 season. Teams would face the interleague opponents from their corresponding geographic division from the other circuit. But then a firestorm blew up in early August, when reporting on the 6th of that month indicated that the league would continue interleague play but wanted to move to a NBA style conference alignment for 1998. The AL would stay at 14 teams, but now would be home to all of the clubs in the eastern time zone, so while Boston, the Yankees, Baltimore, Detroit, Toronto and Cleveland would remain, all other teams would be switched to the NL, while the expansion Tampa Bay team and the NL franchises from Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Montreal, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Miami and the Mets would come to the AL. The NL would be all teams outside the eastern zone and would become a 16 team circuit, the existing Dodgers, San Francisco, San Diego, Colorado, Houston, St. Louis and Cubs franchises would be joined by the new Arizona team and the eight AL franchises coming over, the Angels, Oakland, Seattle, Texas, Milwaukee, the White Sox, Minnesota and Kansas City would complete the arrangement.
This approach was universally panned by media and fans alike and never really seemed to gain much support inside baseball. What was made clear, each league wanted one of the two new franchises and the owners were not big on the idea of interleague play all the time, which a 15-15 arrangement would require. So this meant that that the AL would get Tampa Bay, the NL Arizona and someone from one of the two leagues would have to switch. Kansas city was offered the chance to do so and declined, so ultimately the team that did so, the Brewers, who were after all owned by the man that had taken over by force the leadership of MLB as acting and later confirmed Commissioner. Many viewed Milwaukee switching as the obvious choice, while the Brewers had a run of some success years earlier as an AL team, the best years of Milwaukee baseball were associated with the Braves and the NL.
When the league finally did decide to go to 15-15 interleague play, they didn’t move the Brewers back to the AL, instead moving Houston, a move widely hated by Astros fans at the time. The idea was to boost a rivalry with the Rangers, but then if that was the argument baseball was going to make, what about Pennsylvania with the split between the Pirates and Phillies?
In 2012, MLB would add a second wild card to the playoffs in each league, the division winners got a bye and the two wild cards played a single elimination game to decide who would advance into the main playoff rounds with the division winners. Then in 2022, the format changed to three wild card teams per league, but now this meant the weakest of the division winners also had to play in what was now a best of three wild card round, only the top two teams in terms of division winners went to the main draw of the playoff tournament.
When MLB expands to 32, I am sure there are some who will want to keep three wild cards and go to four divisions of eight, creating a system where only the best division winner advanced and everyone else has to play it off. I’m personally very much against this idea. Sending 6 of 16 teams to the playoff in each league is more than enough, otherwise why play a 162 game regular season? Baseball does not need to be the NBA or NHL. Baseball like hockey already has a degree of more random outcomes that will happen in playoffs because of how the sport is played. Assuming the current system was kept, this would mean two division winners in each league got a bye and two more would join two wild card teams with the division winners hosting all those games. But is that fair, do you want a 91 win wild card playing on the road at an 80 win division champion? This is almost certain to happen at some point if the league goes to four divisions of four teams in each league. So what I would propose, is that the league go back to two divisions, have eight teams in each division. The two division winners then have the reward of finishing first and getting a bye, the next four teams in each league get wild cards. Since the league is wanting to have a more balanced schedule and have everyone play everyone, it would make since to have a schedule that was a bit like what we now have this year. To make that work, you would play 16×3 for 48 interleague games, that leaves 114 league games to schedule. I would propose scheduling 58 games against the opposite division, 6×7 and 2×8, which leaves 56 games to play within the same division, 7×8. This would also almost assure you that a team with a losing division record would not make it to post season. What I fear though is that MLB will want more division champions and more playoffs, so I see a situation where they will have four divisions in each league and only the best team would avoid the wild card, but while the union would be all about creating two new franchises, I hope they stand firm on no more post season expansion beyond 12 teams.
If we do have an eight division four team setup, the scheduling would work similar to what we have now. The interleague portion would again be 16×3 for 48 total games, with play against the other divisions within the same league now adjusted to 4×6 per division, which totals out to 12×6 for 72 games, leaving 42 division games and 3×14 gets you to that number.
How the league might align when we go to 32, we can’t anticipate that yet because the answer is not known on where those two new expansion teams will play, much less the final resolution of what becomes of the future homes for both the Athletics and Rays. You can be confident in this, what ever realignment proposals gain public knowledge, they will be debated with great passion by fans, players and the media alike. Remember this kind of talk when the NFL realigned by going to 32 in 2002 and flipping Seattle from the AFC to the NFC? I didn’t think so.
Blind Baseball Perspective 