The season that we feared may not be has finished so lets enjoy the final month of MLB baseball.
ALWC1: SEA at TOR
ALWC2: TB at CLE
NLWC1: SD at NYM
NLWC2: PHI at STL
ALDS1: ALWC1 at HOU
ALDS2: ALWC2 at NYY
NLDS1: NLWC1 at LA
NLDS2: NLWC2 at ATL
ALCS:
NLCS:
World Series:
I will close this at some point Friday.
Winning a division really makes no difference anymore if a team doesn’t have one of the top two records in the league, which basically means there are too many divisions.
Expand to 36 teams with four divisions of nine teams each.
I’d be fine with that, provided there would be at least one new team in both Canada and Mexico.
Where would you put a team in Mexico? Mexico City seems like the potential top choice, but I wonder about the air quality and how difficult it would be for them to ever sign a good FA pitcher.
I like the idea of expanding to Mexico in principle, but in terms of expanding south, I think it’d be a lot easier to expand to Puerto Rico. If MLB moved into Mexico, I would almost want it to be a 3-4-team move so each league had at least one team from Mexico (unless you do a regional league realignment) and it would help with travel distances.
For Canada, I’d love adding Vancouver and Montreal to the schedule.
Mexico City seems logical from a market standpoint, but I think elevation might make it impractical as a first market. Then again, Mexican League teams play in CDMX all the time…
My preference is Monterrey, which is a good size at a reasonable elevation, has the second-largest ballpark in LMB, and has hosted MLB games in the past.
I think the major impediment to expansion into Puerto Rico is travel — that’s a pretty long road trip for any team not based on the East Coast. Most of Mexico is in the Central time zone, including many of the largest population centers.
Vancouver & Montréal are my preferred Canadian expansion sites, too.
Puerto Rico's location is either good or bad, depending on how "round-robin" of a schedule you want in the league. If it means displacing road trips from Miami to Seattle with road trips from Miami to Puerto Rico, it could be good, but if it means adding a lot of California to PR road trips, then yeah, it's a big travel issue.
Monterrey would make a lot of sense, though I am often a "bigger is better" sort of person and if you could add in CDMX, Leon, and Guadalajara with Monterrey, it could be a pretty fun ride.
Personally, I just want it to be 32 teams, two leagues, and 2 divisions per league. 36 with 4 divisions is kind of awkward, IMO, because you can’t end the season with every team playing within the division and I am picky like that.
Although if we are doing expansion, I have more than two places I would want a new team. NY and LA each need to keep adding teams until they start to cannabilize each other’s revenue, and I’d love to see Montreal and Vancouver get teams. Portland, too. Having Portland and Vancouver on the map would dramatically change the Mariners’ travel situation.
But back to 32 teams, I’d be okay with top 2 teams per division in an 8-team format, because #2 may “deserve” to be in the LCS more than the other division winner, owing to differences in strength of division, but at least every division winner would get HFA in the first round.
I also, personally, would prefer a time zone alignment which would get more games on at better times, especially for the western time zones—having two CT teams in the ALW is such a pain. That’s something like 18 games starting too early, before you even get to the teams outside the division. Plus you naturally capture the intracity/regional “rivals” without making bizarre scheduling accommodations for them.
I have hated the 6-division structure forever. One of the worst ideas that Bud Selig allowed or forced on us.
Oh, I hate it. Where the picks were going, that is. So I gave up and changed it.
Your ALDS winners are impossible.
Whoops. Corrected.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha hahahaha
Ouchies.
hey, did you copy me?
Posting the bracket link here.