How to Make Completely Unnecessary Expansion Work in Baseball

Lately there have been some rumors flying around the internet about Seattle Seahawks quarterback, Russell Wilson leading the charge to bring a major league baseball team to Portland, OR. It is unclear if MLB is seriously considering this, or why they would be considering expansion at all (j/k, them old white dudes are all about the Benjamins, baby). Even more unclear is why Portland thinks it deserves a baseball team. Do Russell Wilson and the probably old white guys bankrolling this idea think the folks in Portland can pull themselves away from crafting beers, riding bikes, and loving Fred Armisen long enough to give a shit about baseball? Maybe. My research informs me they still have an NBA team, and they don’t even suck all the time.

Serious venture or classic Russell Wilson mess around, the idea of a team in Portland got me thinking hard about what expansion might look like in baseball. It has been twenty years since Arizona and Tampa joined the league, so they are probably due to kick the tires on some new markets. There is definitely enough cash swirling around the league to support another team or two and there have to be a few cities left out there dumb enough to dump a shitload of taxpayer money into a shiny new ballpark. Let’s have some fun and take a look at how I would realign the leagues and playoffs with two new teams.

First, I added a team in Portland to the American League and a team in Montreal to the National League. Expansion has to happen in even numbers so we don’t have a team sitting around every day with no one to play. It’s easy to get away with odd numbers in hockey when teams have three or four days off a week and don’t play in series. Can you imagine your favorite team not playing at all Memorial Day weekend because they are the odd man out? Fuck that.

I also decided to plop a team down in each league just to keep things clean and because it is the only thing that makes any damn sense. Montreal seems like as good a place as any for our second fictional team. It actually makes more sense than Portland, but Montreal does not have a kind of local NFL quarterback in their corner (I’m looking at you, Doug Flutie). Expansion rumors in the past have always included Montreal and I think it would be beyond awesome to have the Expos back in our lives.

Second, my scenarios does not involve any other teams changing leagues. There are some geographical possibilities for new division that would make more sense if we just threw teams into whatever league we want, but I believe in some semblance of tradition and abhor more change than is absolutely necessary. I also did my best to keep rivalries in mind while realigning the division. New York and Boston get to keep making us all miserable with their bullshit games. The Dodgers and Giants are still in a division to continue a rivalry no one east of the Rockies cares about. The new divisions are as close to geographically perfect as I could make them. Sorry, Colorado, but be closer to other major population centers.

Alright, enough talk about the process, let’s get to it. Below I give you my new divisions in the American League. I’m just going to number them instead of giving them snazzy names like East, West, or Central because I am super lazy.

Division 1

Detroit Tigers

Toronto Blue Jays

Cleveland Indians

Chicago White Sox

Division 2

New York Yankees

Boston Red Sox

Baltimore Orioles

Tampa Bay Rays

Division 3

Minnesota Twins

Kansas City Royals

Houston Astros

Texas Rangers

Division 4

Portland Ironic Mustaches

Oakland Athletics

Seattle Mariners

California Angels of Los Angeles of Anaheim

Pretty good, huh? Houston to Minneapolis is a little trek, but no worse than them going to Seattle a bunch, so it works. This also has the added advantage of rekindling the old Tigers/Blue Jays rivalry, which was lit in the eighties. Now, the new National League.

Division 1

Montreal Expos

New York Mets

Philadelphia Phillies

Washington Expos…shit, I mean Senators…wait, Natinals…Nationals?

Division 2

Atlanta Braves

Florida Marlins of Miami

Cincinnati Reds

Pittsburgh Pirates

Division 3

Milwaukee Brewers

Chicago Cubs

St. Louis Cardinals

Colorado Rockies

Division 4

Arizona Diamondbacks

Los Angeles Dodgers of Los Angeles

San Francisco Giants

San Diego Padres

Again, Colorado kind of gets hosed here, but I don’t really care. Don’t be the home the Avalanche. Other than that, I think we did a pretty good job. I like the idea of Montreal fans getting the chance to boo their former team as much as possible.

Now that we have our new divisions, it’s time to talk playoffs! The easy thing to do in this world would be scrapping the wild card and just have the four division winners in each league make the playoffs. While that is pretty clean, we have seen over the years of wild card games that more teams can equal more fun. We can’t screw our division winners and byes (a la the NFL) are stupid (a la the NFL). So how to do we get more teams involved? Enter what I like to call The Division Series. Wait, that’s already a thing? Okay, how about the Series to Determine the Champion of Each Division? The SDCED?

We take the top two teams from each division and have them play a best of three series to determine who wins the division and advances to the ALDS or NLDS. What makes this play-in series (or SDCED as the cool kids call it) unique? The games will be played on three consecutive days, all at the home park of the team that finished atop the standings during the regular season. This gives teams a real incentive to win the regular season and keeps as many late season races intact as possible. I’m sure The Nationals would not want to go back to the friendly confines of Montreal to get to the next round.

After the SDCED, the playoffs stay the same; best of five DS, best of seven CS and World Series. To keep the season from stretching into early December, we will shave the regular season from 162 games back to 154. This would knock a week off the regular season, giving us plenty of time for our rad, new three game sets. Sure, owners wouldn’t want to give up the gate for a handful of home games, but none of this is really likely to happen anyway so let’s keep the fantasy going.

If this new MLB seems like it was hastily thrown together in the shower by a guy with a bit too much time on his hands, just know that I take long showers, so there was plenty of time to think. Getting the laptop in there was the really tricky part. Still, I think this could actually work if Russell Wilson gets his way and Portland gets the team they have been craving for literally weeks. Or Major League Baseball could do the smart thing and just leave everything the way it is, because right now baseball is pretty fucking perfect.