Latest news with #radicalrealignment
New York Times
2 days ago
- Sport
- New York Times
If MLB realignment is looming, here's what Giants fans should hope for
For baseball fans of a certain age, the term 'radical realignment' can still trigger flashbacks. Back when Bud Selig ran the place, he was the first commissioner of Major League Baseball to work exclusively on behalf of the owners, and in 1997 he proposed a few teams switching divisions and leagues, along with six divisions getting squashed into four. Also, I'm sure there were other horrors that I'm not remembering, like the 27th and 28th wild-card spots, but let's focus on what we know. It was a ghastly proposal. Remember that this was before interleague play had actually started, and it was also when the greatest barroom baseball debate was 'DH or no DH?' National League fans had very, very, very strong opinions on this for some reason. I was one of them. Turns out you really do get used to it, and that the thrill of a pitcher getting a hit 10 percent of the time wasn't worth the other 90 percent of unwatchable baseball. My bad. Back then, though, this kind of idea was sacrilege. Advertisement Since then there have been other ideas to get used to, like that there would be at least one interleague series on any given game day. Also sacrilege and something that we got used to in a hurry. It's an absolute delight to see the Giants play all 29 teams every year. If you'll allow me to borrow a quote from Master Yoda, 'Variety is the spice of life, and the spice must flow.' He was spot on, and it turns out that new experiences allow us all to 'live long and prosper.' Maybe that radical realignment wasn't so bad, after all. But then you get to the teams that had to switch leagues, and several of them were part of the original 16 MLB teams. Convenience was coming at the expense of something that appalled fans of the Reds, Pirates, White Sox, Phillies, Cardinals and all of the other league-switchers. Then you get to the extreme geographical imbalance. It seemed shortsighted to divide the country down the middle and give the NL to one side and the AL to another. Shortsighted and icky. This comes up now because realignment is back on the table. Current MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said that one of his main goals before leaving office was to add two expansion teams, shuffle the divisions around to fit them in, limiting the travel for all 30 teams. The original radical realignment is a look at how dumb these proposals can get. But it isn't the only way realignment could be unpalatable. Our own Stephen Nesbitt took a stab at his version of realignment here, following in the footsteps of our own Jim Bowden, who did it a few years before. In the interest of collegial spirit, I will not evaluate the merits of either of these proposals, even though only one of them contained ideas that gave me Havana Syndrome-like symptoms. I will simply lay out what Giants fans can hope for from realignment. Everything else is doable. Advertisement Does this read like I'm arguing on behalf of two of baseball's special li'l teams, and that they deserve special treatment for being so special? Good. It's supposed to. These franchises needed moving trucks to keep the rivalry alive. It's been a thing for over a century. It's hard to imagine what would be important enough to discard that kind of built-in excitement and fan interest, but saving a few millions on travel isn't it. No, this would be done by someone looking at a line graph with '2027-2030' in the legend, with the line going straight up. Just because the graph doesn't cover other years, that doesn't mean they won't exist. They probably will! My prediction is that after Dec. 31 of each year (approximately), it will become an entirely new year, and the further the Giants and Dodgers get from their divisional rivalry, the further away the fan interest will move. It's possible for teams like the Royals and Yankees to become blood rivals for a short while, but it never sticks. You dislike the Cardinals more than the Brewers, most likely, but the Giants-Cards rivalry never compared to Giants-Dodgers, even at its peak. (Same goes for Giants-Phillies, even though we'll always have the Eli Whiteside hop.) Actually, all of the franchises are in the same league as they are now, except for maybe one or two of the ones that haven't been around for longer than 50 years. There's no functional difference between the leagues now, so this is an aesthetic complaint more than a logistical one. And it's hard to explain why this is so distasteful, other than, 'It is contrary to what I'm used to,' which is one of the least effective arguments that humanity has ever developed. At the same time, if there's no functional difference … maybe don't mess with the leagues? Nesbitt's proposal has one team switching leagues, and it's the Rockies. That's why Stephen is The Athletic's ace: He gets it. The Rockies won't mind. About once or twice a month, they probably forget they're in the National League at all. They'll get used to it. Ask Astros and Brewers fans (under the age of 40). Advertisement This would have much more to do with the Padres and Dodgers sticking together, which has developed finally into the kind of rivalry that should have existed all along. The Padres were just too incompetent, historically speaking, to get anything going between the two teams. Now it's hard to see it going away over the next century, especially since San Diego doesn't have an NFL, NBA or NHL team. San Diego FC and Surf will continue to grow and grow, but it's a baseball town now. There's a Giants-Padres rivalry, too. Kind of. They share an enemy-of-my-enemy bond, but they also have direct history together, from the 1987, 1998 and 2010 races (among others) to the individual accomplishments (Barry Bonds regularly putting the Padres on a leash and making them run an obstacle course for the amusement of those in attendance, promising them only one biscuit for finishing the course, but never actually giving them the biscuit). More importantly, San Diego is a great city with a great ballpark that's a long drive or a short flight away. Keep as many of those teams together as possible. Encouraging these kinds of relatively easy destination games should be a priority for the league, as it almost certainly retains more fans and creates new ones. Giving that up because there was nowhere else to fit in the Salt Lake City Salt Licks would be shortsighted. And … that's about it? With the DH and interleague bogeymen already here, these are the only real sticking points. Dodgers. Padres. National League. Almost everything else can be haggled with. Two divisions per league appeals to me personally, but I'm fine with three or four. The location of the expansion teams will also create strong opinions, with the Salt Lake City idea being extremely limited in vision. The city itself is a quarter the size of Oakland, and before anyone chimes in with 'consider the entire metropolitan area,' note that it's about four Fremonts. Also the defined metropolitan area is spread out over almost a quarter of the entire state, with almost a 10th of the population density of the Bay Area. All it would take is one crappy owner, one failson who inherits the team without spending a single day of his life in the real world, and the problem would be 10 times worse than the A's issues. That'll be something for future Manfreds to deal with, though. He'd watch the line go up until he retires. The Portland expansion efforts make far more sense, but interest in bringing a team to Portland will need to be kept in place as leverage for the naughty teams that won't build a publicly financed new ballpark. Portland will continue be the best way to threaten cities now that Las Vegas is out of play, and that's the only reason the league would seriously consider putting a team in Utah. Sacramento has thrown its hat in the ring as a potential expansion site too, and the two cities are the only remaining places on the West Coast to keep the threat active, assuming that Oakland will continue to be ignored. Do you like how baseball is played in Colorado? Would you like another team in the league that has to face the same kind of double jeopardy (having to defeat their opponents and physics when building a baseball team)? Boy, that sounds fun. Advertisement Actually, let me add one more. Far away from the Giants. Maybe even in a different league or sport. One Coors Field is already unpalatable enough, thank you. One three-game series every other year sounds like the perfect amount. These are my list of demands, and the penalty for not meeting them would be EXTREME disgruntlement from me personally while continuing to consume MLB goods and services as voraciously and irresponsibly as ever. You've been warned. (Top photo from the 2021 NLDS: Ezra Shaw / Getty Images) Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Play today's puzzle
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Sport
- Yahoo
How MLB's regional realignment could end historic rivalries
The American League and National League have been institutions in baseball for more than 120 years. If MLB has expansion in the coming years, it's expected those leagues could be totally reimagined to break up baseball's league and division infrastructure as we know it going forward. The New York Yankees and Mets could be in the same division. Same goes for the Chicago Cubs and White Sox. With the universal DH now well-established, radical realignment is likely coming to MLB over the next decade. Baseball insiders have whispered about the possibility of regional-based realignment for a few years. MLB commissioner Rob Mandred was asked directly about it on Sunday night during an ESPN broadcast, and didn't shy away from his next bold rules change. Manfred said expansion and realignment are intertwined, and offered the biggest insight yet into what baseball could look like in the future. 'I think if we expand, it provides us with an opportunity to geographically realign. I think we could save a lot of wear and tear on our players in terms of travel. And I think our postseason format would be even more appealing for entities like ESPN because you'd be playing out of the east and out of the west. And now that 10 o'clock time slot, where we sometimes get Boston-Anaheim, it would be two West Coast teams in that 10 o'clock slot.' 'I think the owners realize that there is demand for Major League Baseball in a lot of great cities, and we have an opportunity to do something good around that expansion process.' Nashville and North Carolina have been the hottest candidates for expansion, but it's not rumored to happen until 2028 or 2029. Expansion still seems pretty far away at this point with nothing concrete about potential new markets, but if MLB has it their way, it will trigger widespread divisional realignment. Imagine MLB's divisions look something like this: East: Yankees, Mets, Red Sox, Phillies North: Blue Jays, Tigers, Guardians, Pirates Mid-Atlantic: Orioles, Nationals, Braves, North Carolina team South: Rangers, Astros, Rays, Marlins Great Lakes: Cubs, White Sox, Brewers, Twins Midwest: Royals, Cardinals, Reds, Nashville Southwest: Dodgers, Angels, Padres, Diamondbacks West: Rockies, A's, Giants Mariners This isn't exactly perfect and is more of a rough draft. Manfred has already instituted a couple radical ideas in his time as commissioner. The pitch clock has been an unmitigated success, and feels like one of the best sports rule changes in a while. Opinions may very on baseball's decision to put a runner at second base in extra innings, make the bases bigger (and easier to steal), and expand the playoffs. At first blush, I don't like the look of realignment at all. It would be wrong to break up the Cubs and Cardinals from the same division, for example. Maybe the AL and NL don't really mean anything anymore now that everyone plays with the DH, but this change still feels too radical for my taste. Still, the pitch clock was such a good idea that it proves big changes can work in baseball. Change is likely coming to baseball again, like it or not. This really feels like Manfred's boldest plan yet.
