An MLB reälignment that serves climate adaptation, competitiveness, and clarity | Baseball Post
Greed will not allow it to happen, that goes without saying. But a geographically balanced 28-team MLB is the way to go. Enjoy the All-Star Game.
This is for the baseball fans who regard Ichiro Suzuki and David Suzuki in the same light, without compartmentalization.
How is that for a too-cute lead-in?
The older I get, the more I count on baseball for emotional regulation. It comes down to desiring clarity over the arbitrariness inherent in TV-friendly, stretched-out playoff formats that reward getting hot at the right time. And then there is the piece of being hot almost all the time: a deep dread of seeing force multipliers caused by the heating Earth, since I am a big, sweaty ginger.
Now, I am not the hero that some serotonin-lensed sport ecology revolution needs to push for gentle reforms that are fan-friendly and might even improve competitive balance. Those last two sentences prove it!
However, one should take their cuts. Swing hard, in case you make contact.
You might have come across the recent interview where Suzuki — David, not Ichiro! —told iPolitics that the fight against climate change is lost.1 Whether that was a fair headline is a side chat that Lloyd Alter at Carbon Upfront! has started.2 The not-so-dynamite drop-in from this one-man peanut gallery comes from a neurodivergent tic that leads one to think it’s never coincidental when numbers sync.
Remember Annie Savoy in Bull Durham saying, “There are 108 beads in a Catholic rosary and there are 108 stitches in a baseball. When I heard that, I gave Jesus a chance.” Whelp, there is a similar coincidence with climate activism and baseball.
Suzuki (David, again) expounded, “I go by science and Johan Rockström, the Swedish scientist who heads the Potsdam Institute, has defined nine planetary boundaries. These are constraints on how we live … we passed the seventh boundary this year, and we’re in the extreme danger zone. Rockström says we have five years to get out of the danger zone. If we pass one boundary, we should be shitting our pants. We’ve passed seven!”3
Nine planetary boundaries, eh? There are also nine innings in a baseball game. Nine batters in the order. In the field, nine players work together to get outs while limiting damage. This means something.
We cannot do sports without breathable air and potable water. On the first point, review the Canadian Football League weather protocol. On the second, consider how much water even spectators, never mind the athletes, need to bear up through a 2½-3-hour sports event — and then wonder at how we ever normalized elected officials opposing a safe drinking water bill.4
Baseball is also a hand-eye coordination-driven game that has proven impossible to play in the rain. As extreme weather becomes more frequent and more intense, it will require simplifying scheduling.
Obviously, in the last round of collective bargaining, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, et al., did the exact opposite action.
Between a Rockström and a hard place.
How many opponents can the fan reasonably be expected to background themself on? Neuroscientists should try to determine the ideal number of teams for a sports league.
The question never comes up, which probably speaks to acquiescent times and élite capture of the sports media. We have accepted a 32-team National Hockey League that wants to expand again as long as no Canadian cities are involved, a 32-team National Football League, and a 30-team MLB and NBA.
The desirable number, though, was probably somewhere between 20 and 24 in any sport that involves multiple games in a week. That was enough. Note that soccer, the best-structured sport in the world, typically has no more than 20 teams competing in the top flight, i.e., the English Premier League, Bundesliga, or Serie A. When the North American leagues’ entry totals surpassed 25, they should have considered promotion and relegation. Expansion fees and stadium subsidies, eh?
During my early fandom, baseball got this, if only by accident. This might read as a desire to hard-reset the divisions to 1993, when there were two leagues of 14 with two subgroupings.
It is not; it is just a reconsideration of the value of having too many opponents and excess air travel. Further, the two-league, four-division structure from 1969 till ’93 was more straightforward. A fan could compartmentalize 11 or 13 opposing teams in their beloveds’ league, and focus a little less on the 12 or 14 in the other league.5
The leagues’ geographical footprints overlapped. Now they are effectively two conferences. And, in 2023, MLB introduced a scheduling format where everybody plays all 29 other teams. There is a positive trade-off if a contender or a big-market team comes through your corner of the world, sure; I’m headed to Giants-Blue Jays on Friday, myself. On any given night, a pore through the schedule reveals matchups that are ahistorical and a-geographical and should never happen outside of a postseason setting.
There is another comet headed toward major pro sports: the coming decline of air travel. There is no replacement for carbon-based jet fuel. There are no EV planes, let alone charters, that can transport the Toronto Blue Jays travel party from Chicago to West Sacramento, California.
An MLB team logs between 39,000 and 77,000 kilometres in the air during the 162-game regular season. That needs to be reduced, and right soon. Exerting themselves in the heat means athletes’ recovery period is lengthened, and it is harder to recover while on a five-hour airplane flight.
One wonders whether MLB executives consider this reality. They have to be more than the image of the profit-motivated businessman looking for the next sponsorship deal or ballpark boondoggle.
Rockström’s planetary boundaries do not care about dealmaking. Presently, MLB solons are salivating over a Las Vegas team — congratulations for being only about a decade behind the famously visionary NHL, Rob! — no matter how much humiliation and embarrassment it takes to place a shell version of the Athletics there. The 125-year-old charter member of the American League is playing, indefinitely, at a minor-league ballpark in the scorching Central Valley of California, where the heat is at 35 Celsius at the start of night games and pitchers cannot pitch.
So, too much travel, too many games — notice that almost no everyday player ever plays all 162? — and too many matchups that fans cannot possibly care about? While MLB attendance is up, and the star power is great — Shohei Ohtani! Aaron Judge! Paul Skenes! Tarik Skubal! Pete Crow-Armstrong! Bobby Witt Jr.! — some franchises have gone Full Enshitification. And some are between the Trop and a hard place.
The conclusion is that a 28-team geographically balanced MLB would be much easier on ballplayers, and the fans as well. And it is a win for ecology.
Total blue-sky thinking — I know!!
The problem franchises
I have not yet had a chance to read the latest prose by Jane Leavy, Make Me Commissioner: I Know What’s Wrong With Baseball And How To Fix It, which is due out on Sept. 9. I am eager to, of course.
The chosen tack here, pure and simple, is that MLB suffers more from a competitive clusterfudge than competitive imbalance. The excessive number of opponents and air travel have been noted. The playoff format that devalues the regular season is another. There is also a mirroring of the Second Gilded Age, where material wealth is concentrated in too few hands, and the incentive is in seeing how much someone will pay for a substandard product.
There are at least half a dozen problem franchises. Let’s meet them before beginning the salvage operation.
Athletics, The
Green(s) and gold forever: the franchise that has been graced by peak-seasons Rickey Henderson, Reggie Jackson, Lefty Grove, Jimmie Foxx, Eddie Collins, Vida Blue, Rollie Fingers, Catfish Hunter, Marcus Semien, and Dennis Eckersley is worth saving.
The Vegas plan, though, and A’s principal, John Fisher, are not worth a damn. They have existed in precarity since… have they ever not existed in precarity?
Diamondbacks, Arizona
“Maricopa County, home to Phoenix, is one of six counties in Arizona at risk of becoming uninhabitable to humans in the next 20 to 40 years.”6 It sounds like it might affect the Diamondbacks’ attendance. The baseball operation is worth saving.
Marlins, Miami
If bloggers can ask, “Can Major League Baseball really work in South Florida?” when the team is older than all but one of its players, then the answer is a hard no.7 Miami becoming uninhabitable would not affect the Marlins’ attendance.
Pirates, Pittsburgh
One should not try to out-Schlasser UrinatingTree by asking if the enshittification comes with an eyepatch and a chance to attend a meet-and-greet with Olivia Dunne.
The one for whom the Bucs toll is Bob Nutting, “pocketing the bounty from taxpayers and Major League Baseball revenue sharing for nearly 25 years … exclusively (making) self-enriching decisions at the expense of what is supposed to be the mission of a baseball team.”8 Great sports city. Breathtaking ballpark. Just the facts: the Pirates will finish with a losing record for the 30th time in 33 seasons. They are the sole team that has not won its division banner or a league pennant since the wild-card era began.
Rays, Tampa Bay
On the same day that baseball followers were learning about the sale of the Rays to a property speculator, part of the Tampa Bay area got about 23 centimetres of rain in three hours. True story. The Rays are rarely underwater in the won-lost ledger — only five sub-.500 seasons in the last 17 — but probably have a competitive ceiling until they get into a real big-kids ballyard.
Rockies, Colorado
You were waiting for this one like Tony Pérez waited for the Leephus in the decider of the 1975 World Series.9 The Rockies, at .229 in the win percentage column at the all-star break, are on pace for the definitive worst record in the AL or NL more than a century. And they still have to move anyone with trade value, such as Jake Bird or Ryan McMahon.
This does not even touch on a few teams that seem to be in their existential phase, hurrying up and waiting to be sold (Minnesota Twins, Washington Nationals) or for a city to over-commit the people’s money to a new stadium (hello, Kansas City). And, given how regional sports networks’ revenues supplied much of sports growth through the Aughts and the 2010s, one wonders when it will collapse.
The levees are going to break. And that is where Jane Leavy can break in with a new book!
What the PA should ‘promote’
The players’ association (MLBPA), of course, should fight any job losses, just as their Japanese counterparts did two decades ago when two teams merged. What if it was in their interest, though? At least one-fifth of the current 30 do not pay the going rate for premier baseball talent and suffer no consequences. For a more internationalist fan, it is abhorrent that the Chicago White Sox set a record for losses in 2024, and then the Colorado Rockies could obliterate it immediately, and neither gets sent packing.
That is why the players’ association should be advocating for a promotion-relegation system. Recall, during the 2020-21 coronavirus pandemic, MLB effected a hostile takeover of Minor League Baseball (MiLB). Of course, it was done for the wrong reasons — top-down corporate control, and hyper-optimization.
A thought-bubble, though, has been in my head ever since hearing the hall-of-fame NFL wide receiver Keyshawn Johnson appear on The Problem With Jon Stewart several years ago. Johnson took their discussion about the lack of Black representation in Big Sport’s C-suites around to generational wealth, or lack thereof; paraphrasing the football great, ‘Black America simply doesn’t have the billions’ to buy a team.’
The tangent off that, though, if not capital-B buh-billions, hundreds of millions is doable. Through MiLB, MLB already has infrastructure and culture in place for a second flight — which would attract media partners, and yes, gambling. This is a total hypothetical, and any league constitution would have to address keeping the price-points that make MiLB game attractive.
Offering the opportunity to buy a baseball team for the ostensibly right reasons (and a tax shelter!) is a way for baseball, the ultimate local game built on local followings, to build depth and width to its fellowship in ways that the NFL, NBA/WNBA, NHL and Major League Soccer are not able or willing to do. So, the hundredsofmillionsaires can get in the game. That is, idealize much, the investor class that still has a scintilla of innovation and openness, or so a daily German investment newsletter would have us believe.
Partners would have to show a culturally aware plan to invest in scaling up a Triple-A-calibre ballpark and reëstablishing baseball as a vernacular sport. Salaries and benefits, plus stable home lives, would improve for the players who are somewhere between the 729th- and 1120th-best in North America. A Quad-A or ‘open class’ league, which was an entity that existed before television, would be a solution for markets such as Oakland or Montréal that MLB has failed.
And, within a few years, one of those teams would win promotion. Blue-sky thinking.
Pares with not sucking
One expansion fee will cover buyouts for four — Fisher with the Athletics, Nutting at Pittsburgh, Dick Monfort at Colorado, and notgonnabotherlookingthemup in Miami.
These are all investors who have failed baseball in their cities. It has created a scenerio where the most just outcome involves giving the city a do-over.
So here is the pitch for pitching the problem teams:
Like the NHL and WNBA, introduce one expansion team. Nashville is the best candidate, since it is a major entertainment capital.
Dissolve the Miami Marlins. Dissolve the Marlins with fire. Reconfigure the stadium as the flagship park for the women’s softball league MLB is sponsoring… or just sell it off some harbinger-of-the-apocalypse ersatz entertainment that is scaling up. We now rise for our corporate anthem.
The Rays baseball operation moves into the Pittsburgh ballpark, retaining some Pirates player contracts. Cannot wait for Paul Skenes to get lifted in the seventh inning of a playoff contest while he’s throwing a perfect game.
Merge the Diamondbacks (good baseball team, bad living situation) and the Rockies (vice versa). Denver is a baseball town; the Rockies’ attendance exceeds four other National League teams.
The hot take for what to do with the Athletics? Forget Las Vegas. They failed in the U.S. Northeast (Philadelphia), failed in fly-over country), and then were undermined on the West Coast. Go back to square one and start over on the East Coast.
Where on the East Coast? How about all of the East Coast? With tongue-in-cheek, there are six MLB parks within a 700-km span, about 6¾ hours apart on Amtrak. Divvy up the Athletics’ home schedule among those six parks until someone takes them home.
Where does that leave it?
To heed tradition, the eastern conference will be the “American League,” or AL, and the western conference will be the “National League,” or NL. The divisions could look like so:
AL South
Atlanta, Baltimore Orioles, Cincinnati Reds, New York Mets, Philadelphia Phillies, Washington Nationals, NASHVILLE
AL East
AMTRAK ATHLETICS, Boston Red Sox, Cleveland Guardians, Detroit Tigers, New York Yankees, ‘Pittsburgh Rays,’ Toronto Blue Jays
NL Central
Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox, Houston Astros, Kansas City Royals, Milwaukee Brewers, Minnesota Twins, St. Louis Cardinals
NL Central
COLORADO, (7) L.A. Angels, L.A. Dodgers, San Diego Padres, San Francisco Giants, Seattle Mariners, Texas Rangers
This allows for each team to play 78 divisional games and 52 interdivisional games. A ‘base’ of 130 games leaves room to add some cross-continental matchups to top up the regular-season grind — pick a number between 144 and 156.
That addresses the sales pitch for interleague play from 30 years ago, that fans deserve a chance to see the stars from the ‘other league.’ Sure, but asking for Blue Jays fans, what did we do to lose a rivalry with the Detroit Tigers and have it replaced by biennial visits from the Marlins and Rockies?
Each team would have a protected rival in the other division. The Mets and Yankees could meet in 13 games each season, but without the weird effect of being grouped.
Perhaps interleague opponents could be decided through a televised draw, like a Cup draw in soccer, or by history, or through parity-based scheduling à la the NFL. In any event, the most opponents the fan of a particular team would see in a season ranges from 15 to 17 instead of the current unwieldy 29.
And, bonus, a division title regains its value. There are only four up for grabs, instead of six.
Making each one a seven-team field, instead of five, significantly reduces the possibility of dubious divisional banners and blurring the lines between division winner and wild card. That gets back to what once set baseball part — the nettle to be reliable on the daily, that belief that the steady way is the only way, to end on the title of a biography of Suzuki — as in Ichiro, but with a primary assist to David.
Find some shade, and enjoy the All-Star Game later today.
A friendly reminder about #Resistance
I post about current affairs in Notes and on Bluesky (n8sager). Hopefully, this is enough for now. Please stay safe and be kind. Cha Gheill, et continue à écrire / fortsätt skriva.
July 2-15, 2025
Hamilton, Ont. : traditional territories of the Erie, Neutral, Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee, and Mississaugas.
David Legree, “ ‘It’s too late’: David Suzuki says the fight against climate change is lost,” iPolitics, July 2. (Paywalled)
Alter, “In defence of the doomer David Suzuki,” Carbon Upfront!, July 9.
Legree, iPolitics, July 2.
Karyn Pugliese, Leanne Sanders, “Chiefs in Ontario and Alberta condemn opposition to reintroducing First Nations safe drinking water bill,” Aboriginal Peoples’ Television Network, July 4.
The American League was a 12-team competition from 1969 to ’76, and the Blue Jays and Mariners bumped it to 14 in 1977. The National League stayed at 12 from 1969-92, and went to 14 in ’93.
See “A complete history of Miami Marlins owners,” Fish on First, Dec. 1, 2024.
Dan Kingerski, “Kingerski: MLB Must End Bob Nutting’s Destruction,” Pittsburgh Baseball Now, Sept. 25, 2024.
MLB/YouTube, “1975 WS Gm7: Perez crushes a two-run blast to left.”