MLB Expansion and Realignment
chr.iswong.com
Major League Baseball has had 30 teams since 1998. 32 makes much more sense from scheduling, competitive balance, and geographic points of view.
Here’s the current map of teams:
You can see that the divisions are scattered across time zones and geographic areas (why are California teams in the same division as Texas teams?).
Here are two ways to add two teams with divisions that make more sense:
In the first scenario, only two teams would change leagues and most regional rivalries will be maintained.
I like the general idea/plan.
That said, I think you can move Tampa Bay to a different city instead of just relocating them to a different division. The poor location of Tropicana Field is often blamed for their poor attendance figures to where they even considered moving the team to Montreal. Blasphemous, am I right?
It sounds like Oakland is moving to Las Vegas soon, so there's that factor to consider.
And being Canadian, I gotta stick up for my home friez. Ma Canadian bacon. So, instead of an expansion to Portland/Utah, I propose Vancouver, Canada. Because the MLB's all about the moolah. Like any other professional sports league. And every time the Jays visit Seattle, a hoard of Canadians descend upon the city, taking over T-Mobile Park to the chagrin of locals.
It's so wild (and infamous) that the Mariners' official team store started selling Blue Jays merch -> https://www.si.com/extra-mustard/2023/07/18/seattle-mariners-toronto-blue-jays-merchandise-jp-crawford-paul-sewald.
If that doesn't speak to the revenue potential of the entire western part of Canada, I don't know what does.