So we're adding 2 teams to Major League Baseball. For sake of argument, I'll say one is Montreal and the other is Salt Lake City.

Here's my proposal for realigning MLB and feeding into the postseason structure to make things a little more interesting.

AL East: Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees, Baltimore Orioles, Toronto Blue Jays, Detroit Tigers, Chicago White Sox, Cleveland Guardians, Tampa Bay Rays

AL West: Los Angeles Angels, Las Vegas Athletics, Seattle Mariners, *Salt Lake City Arches*, Texas Rangers, Houston Astros, Kansas City Royals, Minneapolis Twins

--------------------

NL East: New York Mets, *Montreal Expos*, Philadelphia Phillies, Washington Nationals, Pittsburgh Pirates, Miami Marlins, Atlanta Braves, Cincinnati Reds

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

---------------------

Regular season consists of 150 games.

Since the divisions are now 8 team setups, you play the other 7 teams in your division a total of 10 times each. That's 70 games.

You play the teams in the other division within your league a total of 4 times each. That's 32 games.

That's a total of 102 games within your league, AL or NL.

You play everyone in the other league a total of 3 times. That's a total of 48 games that count as Interleague competition. This is important because home field advantage in the World Series will go to the league that had the most wins against the other. In the event of a tie between the leagues, the team with the best record during Interleague play will gain home field advantage.

Now, here's where it gets tricky.

The division winners all advance to the "Division" round of the playoffs. They get a 1st round bye basically.

But we need 2 other entrants from each league into the Division round. How do we get them? For the first time in MLB history, we're going to select neutral sites for competition. At these neutral sites(one for each league), we're going to have a 6 team regional.

Yes, that's correct. We're going to construct a college style regional for 6 teams in each league.

For each division, the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th place teams will get the opportunity to play in the regional. We will play double elimination until there are only 2 teams remaining and these teams will advance to the Division round.

The Division rounds are traditional 7 games series between the Division winners and the survivors of the regional.

LCS is next, traditional 7 game series.

World Series if next, traditional 7 game series. Remember, the home field advantage is based not on club record, but Interleague play results.

Before opening this thread, I thought I was gonna barf, but you actually did the right thing and made each League just two Divisions.


And again, when I held my breath to see how you were gonna treat the playoffs, at first I thought I was gonna barf 'cause too many teams. But after I thought about it, I kinda liked your division regional solution to the whole Wild Card problem.

I mean, I thought the best Wild Card solution was two Wild card teams in a 1-game winner take all for a spot in the regular playoffs, but I think I like your Divisional regional solution better, because it does a more honest job of balancing the argument to include non-division winners in the playoffs by making them compete against eachother first and not penalizing any Division winners like the current Wild Card system does.

Seriously, have you thought of forwarding your post idea here to MLB Owners and MLBPA? I think you've come up with a winner here, sir.

Now, can you settle the upcoming Labor dispute with a similarly brilliant idea we hadn't thought of before? I'll hang up and listen to your answer....

I would rather not have byes for the first round. If the season is cut back to 154 games, let 4 teams from each division qualify, and have each series be 7 games.