It isn’t new news to suggest that Major League Baseball would like to expand to 32 teams, and, with it, proceed to a more geographically-aligned, eight-division setup. That’s been discussed for several years now, with only the stadium situations in Oakland and Tampa putting it on the back-burner.
But with the A’s moving to Las Vegas (by way of Sacramento), and the Rays getting sold to a new owner committed to building in the Tampa/St. Petersburg area, it’s natural that the expansion/realignment talk is going to pick up.
Still, I don’t know that folks were expecting MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred to speak so openly about it on a national broadcast:
Rob Manfred says that MLB could geographically re-align if the league expands(via @ESPN) pic.twitter.com/w1g510LIUS
— SNY (@SNYtv) August 18, 2025“If we expand,” Manfred said on the ESPN broadcast, “it provides us with an opportunity to geographically realign. I think we could save a lot of wear and tear on our players in terms of travel. I think our postseason format would be even more appealing for entities like ESPN, because you’d be playing out of the East [or] out of the West, and that 10 o’clock time slot where we sometimes get Boston-Anaheim would be two West Coast teams.”
That’s a very specific point about a very specific element of expansion and realignment to be dropping on a broadcast if there wasn’t some confidence that it was going to happen.
Again, we’ve known this was a goal for MLB for a very long time, and Manfred probably isn’t being too presumptuous. There are good reasons for the owners to want it (expansion fees, broadcast rights, improved postseason broadcasts (apparently)), and there are good reasons for the players to want it (larger player pool equals more jobs, reduced travel). I assume it’ll be discussed in the upcoming Collective Bargaining Agreement talks, but it isn’t strictly necessary to come to an agreement at that time. The fight about a salary cap/floor setup, as well as revenue sharing among owners, is going to be a much, much thornier battle. The expansion/realignment stuff can be dealt with at its own time, I think, unless it is somehow used as a carrot in the broader CBA fight.
As for the impact, well, it could be among the biggest changes in our lifetimes, depending on how far back yours goes. With eight four-team divisions, you would see a complete overhaul of the early rounds of the postseason, as well as the cut-offs for making it in the first place. And, of course, you’d see entirely new divisions, with more geographic alignment. We’ve seen these hypotheticals bounced around before, and we know that the Cubs’ prospective division is one of the tougher discussions. Do you have the Cubs and White Sox in the same division? Is it possible to have the Cubs, Cardinals, and Brewers all in the same division without mucking up another division’s geography? Would MLB actually split up the Cubs and Cardinals? So on and so forth.
I don’t want to get too in the weeds because it’s still all so speculative, but I will say that my number one beef would be about the Cubs and Cardinals. I understand that there might be geographic iterations that are slightly better, but you absolutely cannot split up these two historic rivals. I would scream.
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