The 30 Major League Baseball (MLB) teams are in 28 cities. New York has two teams. Chicago has two teams.
Each team plays 162 games in the regular season. Then several teams qualify for a tournament and play more games for some reason. This 2023 season MLB will have all 30 teams play all of the other 29 teams in the regular season.
MLB continues to pretend that there are two leagues: American and National. Each of the two leagues has three divisions of five teams each. The divisions are named East, Central, West. Geographically, these divisions are a mess.
Here's a link to a map with the 30 teams. You can play with the map to see how absurd MLB divisions are.
Tampa, Florida is in the same division as Toronto, Canada. They are 1,100 air miles apart. Seattle, Washington and Denver, Colorado are each extremely isolated. Seattle to current AL West division rivals:
Houston: 1,889 air miles
Dallas: 1,670 air miles.
In 2022 Tampa played each of its four division rivals 19 times (an odd number that means an unequal number of home/road games):
https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/TBR/2022-schedule-scores.shtml
4*19=76
That's 47% of the 162 games, less than half in division. All the teams played something at least comparable. That's ridiculous. Teams should play at least 66% of its games in division. Otherwise, the divisions have no meaning and are arbitrary.
If you want to learn just how meaningless MLB has made the divisions in 2023, read on. MLB presents it as a balanced schedule.
Read the following excerpt from the MLB website but be aware it will make your teeth hurt (my comments):
https://www.mlb.com/news/2023-mlb-schedule
No longer is each team’s slate significantly skewed toward division opponents. Instead, the schedules will feature more variety. For the first time in modern MLB history, every team will play every other team at some point...
Teams will still play more series against individual division opponents than any individual opponent from another division. But the schedule is nowhere near as weighted toward division play as it was previously...
Each team will play 52 games (32%) against division opponents, decreased from 76 under the previous schedule structure.
This will include 13 games (odd number) (across four total series) against each division opponent, decreased from 19 (across six series)...
... against non-division league opponents?
Each team will play 64 intraleague games (32 home games and 32 away games), decreased from 66.
Teams will play six games against six league opponents and seven games against four other league opponents...
46 (28%) total Interleague games for each team (AL vs. NL and vice versa), an increase from 20.
Teams will play a home-and-home series (four games total) against their natural Interleague rivals (Yankees vs. Mets, Dodgers vs. Angels, Cubs vs. White Sox, etc.) and another 42 games against other Interleague opponents, including seven series (21 games) at home and seven series (21 games) on the road.
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OK, do your teeth hurt?
If intraCITY natural rivals (New York and Chicago) get more games, why not put them into the same division? Geez, come on!
And this mess is presented as more balanced. But the most fundamental question is:
Why have divisions that are so meaningless? In the current standings (5/1/2023), all five AL East teams are over .500. Only two AL Central teams are over .500. The 2 & 3 AL East teams have much higher W/L averages than AL Central #1, which is assured of making the tournament if the season ended now.
OK, let's not beat that dead horse too much. It's obviously dumb.
Air travel is going to be worse than ever and may contribute to more player injuries.
Finally, most fans who don't otherwise see their team play the Yankees, Dodgers, etc., get to see them. But Yankee fans will be stuck watching games against non division teams like Colorado, Cincinnati, ... and fewer games (13 down from 19) against the division rival Boston Red Sox.
There's an easy and obvious fix. Look at a damn map: link!
In addition to the two intra-city interleague pairs, here are intra-state teams:
California:
NL: San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego
AL: Oakland, Anaheim; 367 miles apart.
Missouri: AL: Kansas City, NL: St. Louis; 237 miles apart.
Florida: AL: Tampa, NL: Miami; 204 miles apart.
Ohio: AL: Cleveland, NL: Cincinnati; 221 miles apart.
Texas: Houston, Dallas (Rangers) (both AL); 225 miles apart.
Pennsylvania: Pittsburgh, Philadelphia (both NL but currently in different divisions); 268 miles apart.
Forget the old AL and NL. Nobody really cares anymore.
Below are my suggested four divisions realigned geographically. Two divisions have 8 teams, two divisions have 7 teams. We're stuck with that because MLB has 30 teams.
I decided to keep teams in the same state together. With the possible exception of Pennsylvania, it pretty much makes sense. The only big "traditional" rivalry that gets divided: St. Louis Cardinals v. Chicago Cubs. Get over it. I think Cubs fans, especially, will much prefer playing the White Sox as a division rival. And it's one fewer road trip.
Teams identified as states have their city (italics) used in the tables. Dallas is used for the Texas Rangers even though they are actually in Arlington Texas.
Air miles are used except for Yankees/Mets and White Sox/Cubs. The maximum air miles are bold and the minimum red.
Unsurprisingly, the Northeast division has the shortest distances because 5 of 7 are original teams from 1903-1960 condensed geographically; Mets and Washington (Montreal Expos 1969-2004) are expansion teams.
West division has 3 of 8 traditional teams:
San Francisco Giants from New York 1883-1957
Los Angeles Dodgers from Brooklyn 1890-1957
Oakland As from Philadelphia (1901-1954), then Kansas City (1955-1967)
Midwest division has only 2 of 8 expansion teams (Twins are the original Washington Senators who moved to Minnesota in 1961): Toronto Blue Jays and Milwaukee Brewers, who started as the Seattle Pilots (don't ask).
South division has 2 of 7 traditional teams:
St. Louis Cardinals
Atlanta Braves from Boston (1876-1952), then Milwaukee (1953-1965)
Current teams that switched leagues since 1903:
Milwaukee Brewers (originally Seattle Pilots):
AL: 1969-1997
NL: 1998-2023
Houston Astros (originally Colt 45s):
NL: 1962-2012 (West, then Central division)
AL: 2013-2023 (West)
So, teams have already moved around, both geographically and organizationally.
The new alignment would put most teams in a division in the same time zone and at most only one hour away in a different time zone. This would be a big boost for fans. Now, east coast fans can be faced with their team starting a game at 11:00 PM on the west coast.
The number of trips and the air miles would be reduced.
Without going into scheduling detail, here is a simple but practical suggestion. Teams play a very high percentage of games in division. Outside division, play only one other division in a season, rotating the opposing division annually. That way, teams would play exactly the same schedule as their division rivals. Here is a table for an 8 team division playing another 8 team division in a season.
18 games against the 7 other division teams, same number home/road. This would work much better with all four divisions having 8 teams. Let's get reorganization and realignment done. That's the big thing.
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