While he’s at it, MLB Commissioner Bud Selig should take this opportunity to realign all six divisions and allow National League teams to use the DH (allowing for traditionalists, at a competitive disadvantage, to continue allowing pitchers to hit).  The discrepancy between the AL and the NL would essentially disappear and bouncing a few teams from league to league would not be such a big deal.

Geographically, the MLB is heavily weighted by teams on the East Coast and in the MidWest.  There is another nice cluster of teams out on the West Coast, but Between Kansas City and California there is pretty much a baseball wasteland.* I know there are a lot of reasons why there are no teams out there, but it seems like a missed opportunity to add two more teams and have two 16 team Super Conferences, but I digress.

  *If a metro area of at least 1.5 million people is what’s needed to support a MLB franchise (That’s what they have in the Milwaukee area, the smallest metro area that is home to a team), then you should add a team in Portland, Oregon and Las Vegas, Nevada; maybe even stretch to get a team in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; and Salt Lake City, Utah; if you were really trying to expand to “western markets.”  

In the unlikely event that Bud Selig and the owners adopt such a strategy, here are the 6 new divisions they should adopt.  (more…)

In case you haven’t heard, MLB announced this week that starting in 2013 the Houston Astros would move to the American League in order to balance out the divisions. Each league will now have three, five team divisions. Because there’s an odd number in each league, there will be interleague games all year long. And starting next year, there will be an extra Wild Card team in each league. The two Wild Cards will face each other in a one game playoff, with the winners going on to the ALDS and NLDS.

If you want to read my observations and how I think this will effect the Twins, you can do so after the jump…

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