IMO,

MLB should move down to four divisions, 2 East and West Divisions for both the AL and NL.

AL East

Baltimore Orioles
Boston Red Sox
Cleveland Guardians
Detroit Tigers
New York Yankees
Tampa Bay Rays
Toronto Blue Jays

AL West

Athletics
Chicago White Sox
Houston Astros
Kansas City Royals
Los Angeles Angels
Minnesota Twins
Seattle Mariners
Texas Rangers

NL East

Atlanta Braves
Cincinnati Reds
Miami Marlins
New York Mets
Philadelphia Phillies
Pittsburgh Pirates
Washington Nationals

NL West

Arizona Diamondbacks
Chicago Cubs
Colorado Rockies
Los Angeles Dodgers
Milwaukee Brewers
San Diego Padres
San Francisco Giants
St. Louis Cardinals

There will need to be a realignment of the divisions if and or when MLB decides to expand to 32 teams. However, should Charlotte and Nashville be the expansion city choices, it works out perfectly with the two new teams going to each of the East Divisions.

Midwestern teams don’t want to be forced into playing a bunch of games in the west coast in timeslots that aren’t conducive to going to work the next morning.

Baseball needs to work towards getting a division alignment where no one on Central Time is sharing a division with a Pacific time club. (And no eastern time clubs playing the tiny handful on Mountain.

(12-24-2025 12:48 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  Midwestern teams don’t want to be forced into playing a bunch of games in the west coast in timeslots that aren’t conducive to going to work the next morning.

Baseball needs to work towards getting a division alignment where no one on Central Time is sharing a division with a Pacific time club. (And no eastern time clubs playing the tiny handful on Mountain.

This is the real reason the AL and NL are going to die.

Pacific - Seattle, San Francisco, LA Dodgers, LA Angels, San Diego, Athletics, Arizona, Colorado

Central - Houston, Texas, Kansas City, St. Louis, Minnesota, Milwaukee, Cubs, White Sox

East - Miami, Atlanta, Tampa Bay, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Pittsburgh

Atlantic - Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore, NY Mets, NY Yankees, Boston, Toronto


If Utah and Portland wind up being the expansion teams, move Houston and Texas to the East, and Pittsburgh to the Atlantic. If it's Charlotte and Nashville, they go the Atlantic and East (at least initially). One form each half of the country will be a bit problematic in terms of alignment.

(12-26-2025 11:43 PM)chargeradio Wrote:  

(12-24-2025 12:48 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  Midwestern teams don’t want to be forced into playing a bunch of games in the west coast in timeslots that aren’t conducive to going to work the next morning.

Baseball needs to work towards getting a division alignment where no one on Central Time is sharing a division with a Pacific time club. (And no eastern time clubs playing the tiny handful on Mountain.

This is the real reason the AL and NL are going to die.

Pacific - Seattle, San Francisco, LA Dodgers, LA Angels, San Diego, Athletics, Arizona, Colorado

Central - Houston, Texas, Kansas City, St. Louis, Minnesota, Milwaukee, Cubs, White Sox

East - Miami, Atlanta, Tampa Bay, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Pittsburgh

Atlantic - Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore, NY Mets, NY Yankees, Boston, Toronto


If Utah and Portland wind up being the expansion teams, move Houston and Texas to the East, and Pittsburgh to the Atlantic. If it's Charlotte and Nashville, they go the Atlantic and East (at least initially). One form each half of the country will be a bit problematic in terms of alignment.

Yes, the way to go for geographic balance is Charlotte/Raleigh and Nashville, or two other expansion sites in or near the Eastern TZ. But the traditional AL and NL names need not be discarded.

AL East: Boston, Miami, New York, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Tampa Bay, Toronto
AL West: Atlanta, Baltimore, Carolina*, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Nashville*, Washington

NL East: Chicago, Chicago, Houston, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Minnesota, St. Louis, Texas
NL West: Arizona, Colorado, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle

And there's no real need for the NL East teams to play the NL West teams any more than they have to play teams in either of the two AL divisions.

12 G x 7 division opponents = 84 G
6 G x 2 other opponents = 12 G
3 G x 22 other opponents = 66 G
TOTAL = 162 G

The thing is, baseball doesn’t need AL and NL to die—they need the AL West to die—or at least get its 3 west coast teams into the NL West so that the “new” AL West is really more of a Central Time Zone division.

It seems MLB likes more divisions rather than less divisions so I can’t imagine they abandon the 6x5 unless they go to 8x4 post-expansion. It also seems like we’re headed toward geographical alignment. My expansion choice would would Carolina and Nashville but I’d bet on Nashville and Utah.

Eastern Conference
Atlantic: Boston, New York, New York, Philadelphia
Metro: Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Toronto, Washington
North: Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee
Southeast: Atlanta, Miami, Nashville, Tampa Bay

Western Conference
Central: Colorado, Houston, Kansas City, Texas
Midwest: Chicago, Chicago, Minnesota, St. Louis
Pacific: Los Angeles, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle
Souhwest: Arizona, Las Vegas, San Diego, Utah

(12-30-2025 05:37 AM)BePcr07 Wrote:  It seems MLB likes more divisions rather than less divisions so I can’t imagine they abandon the 6x5 unless they go to 8x4 post-expansion. It also seems like we’re headed toward geographical alignment. My expansion choice would would Carolina and Nashville but I’d bet on Nashville and Utah.

Eastern Conference
Atlantic: Boston, New York, New York, Philadelphia
Metro: Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Toronto, Washington
North: Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee
Southeast: Atlanta, Miami, Nashville, Tampa Bay

Western Conference
Central: Colorado, Houston, Kansas City, Texas
Midwest: Chicago, Chicago, Minnesota, St. Louis
Pacific: Los Angeles, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle
Souhwest: Arizona, Las Vegas, San Diego, Utah

If MLB is at 32, they'd be remiss in not moving to an 8x4 or 4x8 division setup. But on the off chance they do a full geographic realignment, having 8 divisions of 4 sort of defeats the purpose, as they'd be breaking up too many existing rivalries and preventing many potential regional intradivisional rivalries from forming. In your setup above, you're missing out on pairings such as:

Chicago Cubs/Milwaukee
Chicago White Sox/Milwaukee
Colorado/Utah
Kansas City/St. Louis
LA Angels/San Diego
LA Dodgers/San Diego
Milwaukee/Minnesota
Philadelphia/Pittsburgh

All of these and others could be formed/retained via an alignment of 4 divisions of 8 (and 2 Eastern expansion teams).

(12-30-2025 05:16 PM)Nerdlinger Wrote:  If MLB is at 32, they'd be remiss in not moving to an 8x4 or 4x8 division setup. But on the off chance they do a full geographic realignment, having 8 divisions of 4 sort of defeats the purpose, as they'd be breaking up too many existing rivalries and preventing many potential regional intradivisional rivalries from forming. In your setup above, you're missing out on pairings such as:

Chicago Cubs/Milwaukee
Chicago White Sox/Milwaukee
Colorado/Utah
Kansas City/St. Louis
LA Angels/San Diego
LA Dodgers/San Diego
Milwaukee/Minnesota
Philadelphia/Pittsburgh

All of these and others could be formed/retained via an alignment of 4 divisions of 8 (and 2 Eastern expansion teams).

Teams do not have to be in the same division to be rivals. One downside to larger leagues is the same teams will play each other less often unless if the schedule is expanded as well. Since there seems to be no appetite to go beyond 162 games, the first question is do you want all 32 teams to play each other? If the answer is yes, this greatly limits how often teams can play each other. For example, with eight divisions:

Division 3 x 14 = 42
Conference/League 12 x 6 = 72
Non-conference 16 × 3 = 48
Total = 162

With four divisions:

Division 7 × 9 = 63
Conference/League 8 × 6 = 48
Non-confernece 16 × 3 = 48
Total = 159 games, which you pad to 162 by playing an extra division series.