When MLB expansion comes up, which cities will get new teams is always the first topic. But there's another factor that will impact the entire sport: How will MLB realign its divisions -- and structure its playoffs -- to accommodate those new franchises.
How much could this matter? Look no further than one of the biggest stories of the 2023 season: the emergence of the Arizona Diamondbacks. Given a different context, one in place only a couple of years before, few may have noticed.
The 84-win Diamondbacks squeezed into the playoffs during the final week of the season, landing the National League's No. 6 seed, and parlayed that opportunity into a World Series berth. They were an exciting, emergent team that turned into one of baseball's great Cinderella stories.
Now consider how baseball's current format abetted Arizona's run:
Schedule: One of the teams the Diamondbacks held off for that last slot was division rival San Diego Padres, who they last played on Aug. 19. The Padres wound up two games back of Arizona in the standings. In 2022, under the previous scheduling formula, the teams clashed seven times after that date.
Divisional alignment: Arizona finished second in the NL West and sixth in the NL as a whole. If the D-backs had been in the AL West, they would have finished fourth in their division and eighth in the league standings, out of the running.
Playoff structure: The Diamondbacks became the second straight No. 6 seed to win an NL pennant. Before 2022, there was no such thing as a 6-seed in baseball, save for the ad hoc playoffs after the pandemic-shortened 2020 season.
None of this is to decry Arizona's memorable postseason run. Nevertheless, the reality remains that the choices baseball makes in the way it formats itself is intrinsically tied to the way we experience and remember each campaign.
We've been discussing future expansion lately and when it comes to format, one thing we know for sure is that it will change. Expansion is always accompanied by a structural makeover of some kind, whether it's season length (1961, 1962), divisional structure and/or assignments (1969, 1998), or the schedule formula (all expansions, if only to accommodate the new teams).
So when baseball moves to 32 teams, how will the format change to accommodate the growth? How will the key structural elements -- schedule, league/division assignments, playoff format -- inform baseball's future narratives?
We don't have an ironclad timeline for expansion, and while we've tried to narrow the list of candidate cities to a fairly small pool, we don't know which cities will land teams. We also don't know where the 30 existing franchises will be playing by the time expansion occurs.
With so many moving parts, it's impossible to pinpoint what the future looks like for baseball's format. However, after examining the topic and consulting with industry experts, we can point out some of the factors that will come into play, how we might evaluate those factors through the prism of the seasons to come until expansion becomes a reality and look at one possible way it could all come together.
Alignment
Four divisions? Eight? How about two? Will the traditional league affiliations mostly stay intact, or will long whispered radical realignment become a reality? It's too soon to say, but this topic promises to be the most hotly contested one among baseball fans -- traditionalists and makeover advocates alike.
The obvious missing variable in speculating about this is that we don't know where the expansion teams will be. If baseball opts for a major realignment, geography will be the leading factor. A realignment based on geography seems like a straightforward concept, until you start considering the details.
There are eight franchises that operate in the Pacific and Mountain time zones. That number fits nicely into a 32-team structure, whether you go with four eight-team divisions or eight four-team divisions. And the number remains intact whether the A's stay in Oakland or complete their relocation to Las Vegas.
Things get murkier if one of the expansion teams ends up in the West, which might happen with San Jose, California, Salt Lake City, Portland, Oregon and even Vancouver, British Columbia, having been floated as possibilities. If a ninth franchise is situated out West, some organization is going to end up with an awkward divisional assignment. Given the vast distances in the West, this creates excessive travel headaches, among other things. That's already a problem, but it's one expansion could fix.
Of course, symmetry and travel concerns are unlikely to determine which city gets a team. If a city has the best bid, it will probably get a club. It's also possible that if Oakland shifts to Vegas, MLB will decide that it has the right distribution of markets in that part of the country.
Elsewhere, there are currently eight teams in the Central time zone. Those eight -- the Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox, Minnesota Twins, Milwaukee Brewers, Kansas City Royals, St. Louis Cardinals, Houston Astros and Texas Rangers -- would comprise a nice circuit. But an eight-division setup would force a north-south split among those teams, which means someone is going to see a current or possible key rivalry diminished. Expansion candidates in this time zone include Nashville, Tennessee; San Antonio/Austin, Texas; New Orleans and Mexico City, though the latter is so far south the time zone hardly matters.
In the Eastern Time Zone, you have 14 teams at present. A number of the most-discussed candidate cities are also in the time zone -- Charlotte/Raleigh, North Carolina, Montreal and Orlando, Florida, among them. If two of those markets were to win expansion bids, the whole project of a geographic realignment becomes simpler, provided there aren't any non-Oakland relocations among the other franchises.
A key question: How do we identify, maintain and create the highest number of genuine rivalries?
The importance of rivalries, whether they are based on geography or tradition, will be one of the key elements of baseball's structure to watch in the seasons to come. The importance of some rivalries are obvious and longstanding. Others come to the fore, while others recede. The task for baseball will be to understand the extent to which rivalries help sell the game as in person and broadcast products.
What makes for a great rivalry? One study cites proximity, recent levels of competitiveness and the frequency of competition, among other factors. But big memorable moments and superstar personalities play into it as well. There are only so many of these things that baseball can plan for.
Still, if you look at the leading rivalries by that methodology, the top three would have been easy to predict: Yankees-Red Sox, Giants-Dodgers and Cubs-Cardinals. These have been fierce rivalries for eons, and any pragmatic realignment would hold those competitions as sacrosanct.
More instructive on the list is the Rangers-Astros rivalry, one that has gradually blossomed into one of the best in the game. That reached an apex last season when both teams were elite and clashed in the ALCS. That sets us up for a dramatic reprise in 2024, and so it goes. That's how these things happen, slowly but then all at once. The rivalry was fairly tepid during the years of interleague play, but ramped up once the Astros joined the AL West in 2013.
That tells us something. Proximity matters, to be sure. But just as crucial is that the teams are competing for the same thing. As good a rivalry as the Cubs-White Sox is in Chicago, imagine what it would be like if they were squaring off down the stretch with a division title on the line? That said, good rivalries can and have been created by teams that aren't in the same division.
Another consideration in the four- or eight-team division question is market size. In theory, if you go with an eight-division setup, you can pool teams to some extent by market size. Some smaller-market clubs might be inclined to push for such a dynamic. It's worth mentioning as a factor that comes up when these scenarios are discussed among those who cover the sport, but it's probably not really an issue for baseball's actual decision-makers.
First, the MLBPA isn't going to be too thrilled if an issue that might already be in play (see the Central divisions) becomes exacerbated by this kind of economic realignment. For them, the goal is always going to be a structure that incentivizes teams to build up their rosters as strong as possible. That will fall at least somewhat short in an eight-division setup where small markets are bunched together and the barrier to get into the playoffs might fall near the .500 mark or, in some years, below it.
Before we accept the inevitably of radical realignment, we need many answers. How important are rivalries to the game's brand? What are the real advantages in a schedule and travel with a geographic realignment? To what extent is MLB willing to alienate traditionalists when it comes to longtime league affiliations? How is relative market size attached to the issue of alignment?
These are the debates we will have during the years leading up to the next expansion, and there are a lot of them. Buckle up.
Schedule
All elements of format are intertwined, and the eventual scheduling formula will very much depend on how questions about league alignment are answered. Once that happens, however, this is probably going to be the easiest element to address.
When baseball went to a more balanced schedule in 2023 -- one that features many more interleague games -- the league set itself up as a real-life experiment in scheduling. With fewer divisional games, including those featuring our sacrosanct rivalries, something was lost. But something was also gained: Every team plays every team and, over each two-year span, every fan base gets a chance to see all 30 clubs.
Beginning with 2023, and on through the next few years until expansion occurs, we can start analyzing those trade-offs. What is the effect on attendance and television ratings? What is the effect on competition? As the evidence builds, we will be able to make better decisions when things have to change again.
With 32 teams, there are obvious benefits to scheduling flexibility. For one thing, it will no longer be baked in that every day has to feature at least one interleague game.
If a radical realignment takes place, our very concept of what an interleague game is will change as well. We won't have extra rivalry games like Cubs-White Sox or Yankees-Mets because those will become division games.
The question then doesn't center around how many interleague games should be played, but how many contests need to be played between clubs competing for the same playoff benefits. You always want to maximize the competition and the integrity of the regular season.
The length of the season is going to be another hotly debated issue, especially if MLB seeks to expand the playoff field. Thus, this format pillar is very much tied to the other format pillar, because MLB isn't going to cut games just to cut games. And the players aren't going to favor a shorter season without assurances it won't impact salaries. One oft-cited alternative to the current 162-game slate is 154, which is both a traditional number that preserves the integrity of historical records but also adds some breathing room over the long summer slate. It could also reverse the postseason's incessant slide on the calendar before it overlaps with Thanksgiving.
A 156-game slate with a 32-team setup has a nice balance in an eight-division format. You'd have three games against each team in the other league (48 games), 12 against your division rivals (36 games) and six against the other intraleague opponents (72 games). There are likewise some interesting options with a four-division format that can get you to any season length, be it 154, 156, 160 or 162.
As we watch the seasons play out with the new schedule formula, we should be able to assess empirically how these different dynamics are working out compared to the pre-2023 schedule formula.
Playoff format
When commissioner Rob Manfred said it's too soon to judge the new playoff format, he was right. Two seasons tell us nothing. Yes, 6-seeds have represented the NL in the World Series two years in a row. For all we know, if we held the status quo, such a thing might not happen again for another 20 years. The sample -- two years -- is far too small to assess with any degree of accuracy.
That stated, once we start to move toward the expansion process and these speculations take on more urgency, we'll be looking at those two years and the ones to come with a very powerful microscope. If 100-win teams keep falling in the division round year after year, there will be howls about the playoff setup, the sanctity of first place and the importance of the regular season.
Thus, it's hard to say what the correct format will be when we move to 32 teams. Some will pitch 16-team scenarios, others will call for a reversion to eight, where only eight first-place teams get in. Some will want to stick at 12, while still others will concede a move to 14. One veritable certainty: The field won't shrink. That's just not a thing that happens in American sports. That door only swings one way, for good or ill.
Here's the key point as we consider this area over the next few years: Any of these formats can work if the integrity of the seed structure is sound. If a 1-seed is a meaningful advantage over a 2-seed, that's great. If winning your division gives you a meaningful leg up in the postseason, that's what you want.
During the last round of CBA negotiations, the MLBPA floated the idea of the ghost win, where the higher seed is awarded a victory to start a series. Mathematically, the ploy has merit, enough that it could create the right hierarchy of incentives, along with mechanisms like byes and extra home games, to make the seed structure of any format actually mean something.
But this, as mentioned, is attached to divisional alignment. If you have eight four-team divisions, it will be difficult to create meaningful distinctions between the four first-place teams in each league. And you'll end up with a lot of playoff matchups in which the lower seed is actually the better team.
The MLBPA will be watching this issue closely. Because if there is no clear, meaningful reward in the postseason format for building your team into the best in its circuit, the incentive to spend big on your roster will be reduced.
The bottom line: We will be watching the postseason results with intensity over the next few years, after which, when we get to 32 teams, we will be demanding a playoff setup that enhances, not kneecaps, the glorious six-month slog of the regular season.
As the commissioner said, we're only two years into this format. It's too early to know if it's not working.
One possible glimpse
We've laid out a lot of factors above, so let's finish by trying to pull it all together into one possible outcome, one that is a balance between what is ideal and what is likely.
Alignment
Once you drill down on the issues, there are simply fewer complications with a four-division setup than an eight-division structure. You can still optimize geographically and do so in a way that preserves and creates meaningful rivalries. And with four divisions -- with a real reward for finishing first -- teams will always have an incentive to build their rosters to compete for that prize.
As far as how those divisions are built, let's assume MLB decides the traditional league monikers are preserved as brands, but beyond that, everything is on the table. The balance won't be between tradition and geography, but between geography and rivalry maximization. This will be a bitter pill for many fans to swallow, but the benefits are too powerful to ignore. Focus on the success the Brewers and Astros have had since changing leagues. No, that's not the same as, say, putting the Cincinnati Reds in the American League (which we are about to do) but Houston and Milwaukee were ensconced in their old leagues. They switched, the world didn't end, and they've flourished in their new circuits.
For our expansion cities, we've decided to stay in the East/South and go with Nashville and Montreal, if only because baseball's version of Loki -- the A's -- could end up anywhere in the West. We're going to use win-loss percentages for the past three years, while factoring in inaugural seasons for the new clubs and balancing things out to the new (spoiler alert) 154-game schedule.
We need some faux standings that can illustrate our proposed playoff format:
The asterisks represent those franchises that were in place during baseball's longest age of stability, from 1903 to 1960, that would remain in the same league. So all is not lost: The Yankees-Red Sox, Giants-Dodgers and Cubs-Cardinals rivalries remain intact with their original league affiliations, as does the Guardians-Tigers. New rivalries (Dodgers-Padres, Astros-Rangers, et al.) remain in place, though some of them might fall within a different league.
Most of the matchups we currently experience as key interleague rivalries become intradivision showdowns, raising the stakes. Cubs-White Sox, Dodgers-Angels, Twins-Brewers, Royals-Cardinals, Rays-Marlins, Orioles-Nationals and, of course, Yankees-Mets are among those rivalries.
We have broken a few eggs. The Reds, now an AL club, have been in the NL since the Benjamin Harrison administration. The Pirates go back even further. Because neither Cincinnati nor Pittsburgh has ever been a two-team city, they've never fielded an AL club. The Phillies have been in the NL since 1883, but at least the city hosted an AL club (those vagabond Athletics) for more than a half-century. Going the other way, it would definitely be strange to think of the White Sox as an NL team. There is no perfect way to do this.
One note to mollify the traditionalists: With four eight-team divisions, the terms "first division" and "second division" would once again take on literal meaning.
Schedule
Let's assume 154 games and that MLB will want to preserve the current dynamic of every team playing every other team each season. That being the case, the schedule would feature:
• Ten games against each of your seven division opponents (70 games)
• Six games against the teams in your league's other division (48 games)
• At least two games against each team in the other league, with an extra game against four of them, all subject to some sort of venue rotation from season to season (36 games)
You end up with our 154-game length, of which 118 games are against the teams with which you are competing for playoff positioning. Some might prefer less interleague play, but that is one of many details to be hashed out.
Playoff format
We can assume MLB wants a large stock of playoff games. We can also assume the MLBPA doesn't want to overdo it. The current format features 12 teams, so let's guess the compromise figure lands at 14.
That's actually a pretty good number. First of all, it means the top seed gets a bye, creating a stark incentive for becoming the best team in your league. If we add a ghost win to the mix for that team's first series, then we're getting somewhere.
Because the other division champ doesn't get a bye in this setup -- not ideal -- we need to make sure it is amply rewarded, which isn't really the case now for the division champs that end up with the three seeds and no bye. Perhaps an additional home game plus a ghost win would do the trick. What would be better is sticking with a 12-team structure in which four division champs get a bye and a ghost win.
For now, we are guessing the ideal does not come to pass. Also, we're not reseeding or letting the bye teams choose their opponent, though such topics would clearly be part of the discussion. Also, we broke some ties based on imaginary head-to-head results. However, if we cut back season length, maybe we could return to staging one-game playoffs to break ties in the seeding pecking order. One-game tiebreakers are fun. We would also be able to make the early-round series longer, perhaps going to best-of-seven across the board.
Our faux playoff slate:
That's where we land today as we ponder expansion that, uncertain as it is, does seem to be looming on the horizon. So much of what we know today will change tomorrow, and in each of the tomorrows over the next several years. There are countless permutations of this landscape that could come to pass.
As the seasons play out, we can move these factors and speculations around, debate them and try to steer them in the right direction. Chances are, the transition won't be pretty, and no one can let themselves become too attached to any one notion of format, whether it's the status quo or a setup transmogrified from the one we know.
At least perhaps we can agree on this: When change happens, we want baseball to land on a format that puts the stories about the game we all love in the best light possible. Those narratives have everything to do with the structure baseball puts into place.