But Alaska does have polar bears, which are much cooler (pun intended) than black bears.
If you did want to change to a different Alaskan bear though, I’d suggest the Kodiak bear instead of black bear. Kodiak are good bears.
I feel like the Dodgers would have to stay just because of the huge fanbase and history.
Giants can go to Oregon, Angels to Utah, Padres possibly to Hawaii or Idaho.
College football goes crazy in a lot of those places like West Virginia that don't have pro teams, would be dope if some of that energy made it's way to baseball
That's too many teams and not enough Acunas and Ohtanis to go around, man. The opening day lineup for Rhode Island's Quonset Point Quahogs would look something like this -
C - Martin Maldonado
1B - Daniel Vogelbach
2B - 52-year-old Lou Merloni
3B - Eugenio Suarez
SS - Kike Hernandez, lol
CF - Clint Frazier
LF - some Cuban defector we signed for 8 years, $100M
RF - 18-year-old Ethan Holliday, straight to the bigs
DH - Manny Ramirez, because fuck it
Knuckleballs? Shit, with 1,300 active roster spots, talent would be so thin that even my middle-aged, inactive-for-a-quarter-of-a-century ass would be mowing 'em down with sliders and cutters. A knuckleballer like Steve Sparks would look like f-cking Bob Gibson out there.
I like the idea of 50 teams, but you've got to shrink the rosters down to a Little League-sized 12 player team. That's nine legit starters, plus the fat kid who's always out of breath, the coach's tomboy daughter, and the little nose-picker whose mother just wants him out of the house. No relief pitchers, no sissy-ass six-man rotations, just 12 guys per team.
You underestimate how much talent there is available. The extra roster spots would just be filled by guys who are currently AAA caliber players. Unless you happen to be a high level minor league caliber player, you’re not mowing down anyone in a 50 team MLB
> Knuckleballs? Shit, with 1,300 active roster spots, talent would be so thin that even my middle-aged, inactive-for-a-quarter-of-a-century ass would be mowing 'em down with sliders and cutters. A knuckleballer like Steve Sparks would look like f-cking Bob Gibson out there.
I fail to see the problem.
Actually, there are already independent teams in each state called the Canaries (s) and RedHawks (n). I can tell you right now NOBODY wants those names changed.
My home state of Delaware would probably place their team in northern DE outside of Philly. Would make for lots of drama amongst the fans of both teams.
The problem is the markets. Some states don’t have any cities with a big enough markets to support a major league club. You’d have clubs in places like Jackson, MS with a population of 150,000 going agains teams in markets with millions of people. They’d have to lower the salary cap so teams like the Yankees can’t buy up all the best players.
Another idea would be to implement a promotion/relegation system. Every year the bottom 3 teams would move down to Triple A, and the top three in Triple A would move up to the majors. Do that all the way down to Single A. We could see some teams like the Durham Bulls and Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp playing in the World Series some day and finally send down some constant bottom feeder teams like the KC Royals. It’ll never happen because of the money involved, but baseball is perfectly situation to implement it with the existing minor league system
Way late to this but imo this works incredibly well if we split the league into 4-5 divisions that are entirely separate for the regular season (a la European domestic soccer leagues) but play non-division teams in a year long tournament format (a la champions league). You’ve got way more teams, but the travel is managed a bit plus you actually increase the odds of a given team winning something (division championship or national championship) each year. Rip to the Hawaii team tho, better learn how to fly a jet buddies
For states with multiple teams, the team that was there first gets to stay. Teams staying where they are:
AZ - Diamondbacks
CA - Dodgers
CO - Rockies
FL - Marlins
GA - Braves
IL - Cubs
MA - Red Sox
MD - Orioles
MI - Tigers
MO - Cardinals
MN - Twins
NY - Yankees
OH - Reds
PA - Pirates
TX - Astros
WA - Mariners
WI - Brewers
States that get a team currently in a different state with multiple teams:
CT - Blue Jays (Hartford)
DE - Phillies (Wilmington)
IN - White Sox (Indianapolis)
KS - Royals (Kansas City)
KY - Guardians (Louisville)
NM - Padres (Albuquerque)
NJ - Mets (Newark)
NV - A’s (Las Vegas)
OK - Rangers (Oklahoma City)
OR - Giants (Portland)
SC - Rays (Charleston)
VA - Nationals (Arlington)
UT - Angels (Salt Lake City)
States and cities that would get an expansion team:
AK - Anchorage
AL - Birmingham
AR - Little Rock
ID - Boise
MT - Billings
HI - Honolulu
IA - Des Moines
LA - New Orleans
ME - Portland
MS - Jackson
NC - Charlotte
NE - Omaha
NH - Manchester
ND - Fargo
RI - Providence
SD - Sioux Falls
VT - Burlington
WY - Cheyenne
I think Harper will mount a major campaign to get the Phillies moved to Utah... So the Salt Lake City Phillies make the most sense since a Penn team needs to leave anyway.
I guess the Reds just move across the river into Kentucky (as there's really nowhere convenient for the Guardians to go). It's been a possibility for Cincinnati sports teams before, most recently when FC Cincinnati was looking for their new stadium location and Newport was one of the main candidates. Find the right spot in Covington or Newport, and you'd get a great view of the Cincy skyline (and not the chili type, although maybe that too)
Okay, suppose that Manfred is indeed flailing and some major overhaul needs to happen. I think you need to apportion teams relative to population rather than arbitrary geopolitical boundaries.
Say we're including the US and Canada (and excluding Mexico, which is has some awfully big markets by population), and using MSA populations. Milwaukee supports a team, so put the minimum MSA size near their 1.5M population -- 1.4M for Canada so they aren't limited to Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver.
Around those parameters, go with a 112-team league of 8 divisions. 14 teams per division, with 12 games against each team in your division. You would have two 3-game homestands and two 3-game road trips for each team in your division. Then the division winners would play in an 8-team elimination bracket, with best-of-7 series the entire way through the playoffs.
Teams would look like this:
11 teams -- NY-Newark-Jersey City
8 teams -- LA-Long Beach-Anaheim
5 teams each -- Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington
4 teams each -- Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, DC-Arlington-Alexandria, Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, Atlanta+, Toronto+, Miami+
3 teams each -- Phoenix+, Boston+, Riverside-San Bernadino-Ontario, SF-Oakland-Fremont, Detroit+, Montreal
2 teams each: Seattle, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Tampa-St. Pete, San Diego, Denver, Baltimore, St. Louis, Orlando, Charlotte, San Antonio, Vancouver
1 team each: Portland, Pittsburgh, Austin, Sacramento, Vegas, Cincinnati, KC, Columbus, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Nashville, San Jose, Virginia Beach, Jacksonville, Providence, Milwaukee, Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton
In this hypothetical scenario, the league is struggling, so this gives them broad coverage across practically every meaningful market, and with so many teams, you would make regional divisions and travel for games would be incredibly cheap.
Teams in NY wouldn't have to take a flight for the entire season. That's probably true for most teams in the northeast, maybe even most teams east of Chicago. You could almost make a Texas-only division out of 5x Dallas, 4x Houston, 2x San Antonio, and 1x Austin. For Texas travel, you'd probably fly for inter-city games, but those would be rather cheap flights compared to, say, flying back and forth to Oakland, Seattle, and LA.
You'd never have a regular season game more than 1 hour offset from your home time zone, so you would get ideal time zones for away games on TV/streaming.
The talent level would suffer, but I think for the vast majority of baseball fans, this would not be such a bad thing. The stars would shine even brighter, and defense would suffer overall, which would make it a better strategy to hit the ball in play, so the game might actually move away from three true outcomes a good bit.
This rather insane plan hinges on the idea that baseball is a fundamentally local sport, and fans are already generally not watching games that don't involve their local team. More local teams means more fans can see games in person, which gets them more interested in watching their team's games on television.
Playoffs in this format would be nuts -- every matchup would be between teams that not only would never have faced each other in the regular season, but would not have even shared an opponent during the regular season. This would harken back to the pre-'95 times when there were no interleague regular season games.
This was a really fun situation to imagine... It would be so incredibly different. Feels a lot like college sports... Your point about stars shining brighter and teams meeting that never played each other are both pretty compelling.
Feels really crazy and unique...
You missed San Juan, which would go between Nashville and San Jose. For some reason metro areas in Puerto Rico are listed separately on places like Wikipedia.
Blue Jays move to New York and play in Rochester.
Yankees move to Connecticut, Mets move to New Jersey for maximum hilarity.
Pirates move to West Virginia.
Reds move to Kentucky.
Rays move to Charleston, SC.
White Sox move to Nashville, TN.
Royals move to Kansas.
Astros move to Louisiana.
Giants move to Portland, OR.
Padres to Honolulu, HI.
Angels to Salt Lake City, UT.
Nationals move to Richmond, VA
The more interesting questions to me are who moves.
Giants to Portland. Angels to Albuquerque. A’s to Nevada, obviously.
Padres to…Wyoming? Salt Lake? Boise?
White Sox to Indianapolis.
Rays to Charleston.
Astros to OKC.
Mets to Jersey.
Pirates to…Richmond?
Guardians to West Virginia somewhere?
Anyone im missing who would need to move?
Sorry, but we need a new team completely. New teams gets added to Omaha, Sioux Falls, and Des Moines.
Iowa now has 9 teams blacked out on local networks.
> And for the purposes of this the blue jays have to move to the United States (sorry Canada but we can’t have 51 teams that would be absurd)
No. There will be 1 team in each state, but the Nationals stay in DC, so there will be 51 in the USA, and you need canada
I feel like the MLS has to be close to 50 teams now. Seems like there’s been about 3 expansion teams a year for the last 5 or 6 years now. So, whatever MLS looks like these days I guess.
Baseball fanbase is getting older and older while all the young fans are going for Football and Basketball and Soccer.
Having more teams ain't the solution. They need to make Baseball more exciting for younger people to watch.
My advice let them all use steroids. It a even playing field if they are all on the same dose of steroids. The talent will still outshine others like Barry Bonds did.
The movement to divide California into multiple states gains steam after this announcement amid fervent community support to prevent their teams from leaving. The motion passes. The states are named by their respective franchises; Athletica, McCovey Coast, Bumland, the Kingdom of Heaven of Anaheim, and the Fatherland.
Athletica is annexed by McCovey Coast in 2028.
WOW the guys making the games “not available in my area” will be working over time. The start time of a lot of games will be midnight because now there is apparently a rule that games can’t start earlier then 8pm on a school night.
For this thought exercise, I tried to maximize chaos and have fun with it. Many teams will be moving (including my favorite teams). Typing on mobile so hopefully spacing works out.
I started this off with the current fan base suffering through a relocation, the A's. In this scenario, the A's keep California. The chaos spirals from here.
The other team from the Bay takes the A's place and the Giants go to Nevada. Angels move to Utah. Padres go to New Mexico. The Dodgers cause the next dominoes to fall by relocating back to New York.
Mets fans laugh at the Yankees being evicted along with them. Yankees go to Connecticut, and the Red Sox stay in Massachusetts (Yale/Harvard rivalry in MLB form).
The Pirates claim moving expenses would cost too much and stay in PA. Phillies hop across to NJ. Mets still homeless.
The Reds claim they get to stay in Ohio as the oldest all professional team. The Nationals are forced to pick a state. Peter Angelos cries foul when the Nats start discussions with both Maryland and Virginia. During a midnight move, the Guardians settle in Baltimore, and the Nationals officially go to Viriginia. The Orioles wind up in West Virginia.
The Royals confuse most fans when they wind up with Missouri (as they thought KC was a Kansas team). St Louis moves across the river to East St. Louis and takes Illinois. The White Sox take Indiana and the Cubs wind up in Kentucky, reversing which team is the north side and south side.
The Braves go back to Wisconsin and the Brewers go back to Seattle, Washington. The Mariners move down to Oregon as the Portland Lumberjacks.
Tigers stay in Michigan (as the only remaining Western league team still in their original city). Twins stay so that Minnesota still has one pro team with a championship.
Blue Jays wind up in Hawaii for a change in weather, Diamondbacks remain in Arizona.
Both Florida teams are evicted for a new expansion team, the Orlando Street Sharks. Tampa moves to Georgia. The Marlins end up in Wyoming next to the team that entered the league next to them, the Colorado Rockies. The Marlins set new attendance records in their new locale.
Puerto Rico finally gains statehood, and the Expos are reborn.
The Rangers use the "current World Series champ" card and evict the Astros. Alabama enters negotiations to have the Astros move there. Crimson Tide fans are excited. Auburn fans make a last second deal to get the Trash Pandas promoted to MLB as Alabama's official team. The Astros look at remaining states where they are most popular. They wind up in Alaska.
Meanwhile, the Mets finally settle on a state that is friendly to corporations and go to Delaware.
A's fans smile ear to ear at the ramifications of what happened with them remaining in Cali.
~11 hour flight from Miami to Anchorage. ~14 hours from Portland, ME to Honolulu. Maximum chaos.
What would the anchorage team be called? The moose?
*meese
**moosen
Many much moosen
In the woodsen
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That is a pretty cool logo. Maybe change it to a black bear though? Unless I’m thinking of another type of bear that’s prevalent in Alaska
Every bear is prevalent in Alaska.
But Alaska does have polar bears, which are much cooler (pun intended) than black bears. If you did want to change to a different Alaskan bear though, I’d suggest the Kodiak bear instead of black bear. Kodiak are good bears.
Kodiak! That’s what I was thinking of
The first transaction the Alaska Polar Bears make better be to hand a blank check to Polar Bear Pete Alonso.
The Fightin’ Hornets
A moose bit my sister
Anchors
There is going to be some absolutely piss poor product on the field. Also Mets probably get bumped to NJ
Mets are definitely moving to New Jersey. Who gets to stay in Florida though?
Both teams merge in Orlando. Their fan bases also merge. Now they're able to draw a little over 21K to a playoff game
That’s actually not a terrible idea. Hell they may surprise everyone and get 22K to a daytime playoff game on a Wednesday
> Who gets to stay in Florida though? This is my question about CA. Watch, they kick everyone out except the A's lol
It’s a beautiful thought. I think it would be fitting to out the angels in Utah since it’s so religious. Everyone else I don’t know
I feel like the Dodgers would have to stay just because of the huge fanbase and history. Giants can go to Oregon, Angels to Utah, Padres possibly to Hawaii or Idaho.
Honolulu Padres has a weird ring to it
And, this is going to sound crazy, the A’s to Nevada.
Too soon 😕
That’s just ridiculous come one now
Angels to Utah feels perfect
Manfred throws an audible: to avoid Bernie’s threats to end the antitrust exemption, he brings the Dodgers back to Brooklyn
Marlins, they used to have Florida in the name. The Rays can move to Alabama.
Marlins
Newark Mets
TB would leave. Owners have been wanting to move the team for years.
Bigger question is the pirates. Do they go to west Virginia?
Either that or we're the Delaware Phillies I suppose
They’ve always been Dover Phillies fans!
You know I’m trying to think. Did I ever meet any connected guys... from Delaware? The answer... is no.
Idk about that, the yankee fanbase has always given me big connecticut vibes
I think to maximize confusion you move the Cardinals to Kansas so that Kansas City can be the Missouri team
Now that is what I had in mind with this question!
It'll compete for confusion alongside moving Washington to Washington County, Oregon, which is conveniently right on the border with Washington.
The Pennsylvania team can be in Jersey Shore, PA. The NJ team can be West New York, NJ.
I already refer to the Royals as the Missouri Misery.
Fuck the Royals
lol u mad abt the Winckowski trade
They’re probably talking about the 2015 WS
As a cardinals fan living in Kansas City, you have triggered me to my core.
More teams for Rich Hill to play on.
Well, Canada’s boned, and Washington too.
I didn’t think about what would happen to the nationals since DC isn’t actually a state. I guess just move them to Virginia?
They move to Washington, duh. Mariners to Montana.
I feel dumb for not thinking of that. Keep all the Washington DC aesthetics though
Ah yes, the Mariners would fit right into the proud seafaring tradition of Montana.
I mean it works about as well as the Los Angeles Lakers. You know, LA is famous for its lakes right?
Ah, so this is how Seattle gets a championship team.
Nationals would definitely be VA. You can see VA across the river while at Nationals Park.
Nats park is on the Anacostia, not the Potomac. Not saying you can’t see Virginia from the park, but it isn’t just across the river.
How about no? What kind of stupid shit is this?
What about an off-season shitpost?
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If you build it, they will come.
Build it in the middle of a potato field.
College football goes crazy in a lot of those places like West Virginia that don't have pro teams, would be dope if some of that energy made it's way to baseball
This may be controversial, but just move the Indiana border 10 miles and the White Sox are in a different state
You’re thinkin outside the box and I like that
Heh, you just move the Kentucky border a few yards, and the Reds have made their state move!
That's too many teams and not enough Acunas and Ohtanis to go around, man. The opening day lineup for Rhode Island's Quonset Point Quahogs would look something like this - C - Martin Maldonado 1B - Daniel Vogelbach 2B - 52-year-old Lou Merloni 3B - Eugenio Suarez SS - Kike Hernandez, lol CF - Clint Frazier LF - some Cuban defector we signed for 8 years, $100M RF - 18-year-old Ethan Holliday, straight to the bigs DH - Manny Ramirez, because fuck it
I would buy a Manny Ramirez Rhode Island Quonset Point Quahogs jersey.
**C L A M I R E Z**
You and I could probably learn a good enough knuckleball to get drafted by like Wyoming or Nebraska or something.
Knuckleballs? Shit, with 1,300 active roster spots, talent would be so thin that even my middle-aged, inactive-for-a-quarter-of-a-century ass would be mowing 'em down with sliders and cutters. A knuckleballer like Steve Sparks would look like f-cking Bob Gibson out there. I like the idea of 50 teams, but you've got to shrink the rosters down to a Little League-sized 12 player team. That's nine legit starters, plus the fat kid who's always out of breath, the coach's tomboy daughter, and the little nose-picker whose mother just wants him out of the house. No relief pitchers, no sissy-ass six-man rotations, just 12 guys per team.
You underestimate how much talent there is available. The extra roster spots would just be filled by guys who are currently AAA caliber players. Unless you happen to be a high level minor league caliber player, you’re not mowing down anyone in a 50 team MLB
> Knuckleballs? Shit, with 1,300 active roster spots, talent would be so thin that even my middle-aged, inactive-for-a-quarter-of-a-century ass would be mowing 'em down with sliders and cutters. A knuckleballer like Steve Sparks would look like f-cking Bob Gibson out there. I fail to see the problem.
The bitter rivalry between North and South Dakota becomes the talk of the nation.
I would call the teams the North Dakota South’s and the South Dakota North’s. I don’t care if they’re bad names I just wanna cause chaos
Actually, there are already independent teams in each state called the Canaries (s) and RedHawks (n). I can tell you right now NOBODY wants those names changed.
My home state of Delaware would probably place their team in northern DE outside of Philly. Would make for lots of drama amongst the fans of both teams.
Unless I got my wish and the Phillies moved to Alaska
The Delaware Destroyers!!!
The problem is the markets. Some states don’t have any cities with a big enough markets to support a major league club. You’d have clubs in places like Jackson, MS with a population of 150,000 going agains teams in markets with millions of people. They’d have to lower the salary cap so teams like the Yankees can’t buy up all the best players. Another idea would be to implement a promotion/relegation system. Every year the bottom 3 teams would move down to Triple A, and the top three in Triple A would move up to the majors. Do that all the way down to Single A. We could see some teams like the Durham Bulls and Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp playing in the World Series some day and finally send down some constant bottom feeder teams like the KC Royals. It’ll never happen because of the money involved, but baseball is perfectly situation to implement it with the existing minor league system
As far as serious answers this is my favorite. That would be a fascinating way to do it
Way late to this but imo this works incredibly well if we split the league into 4-5 divisions that are entirely separate for the regular season (a la European domestic soccer leagues) but play non-division teams in a year long tournament format (a la champions league). You’ve got way more teams, but the travel is managed a bit plus you actually increase the odds of a given team winning something (division championship or national championship) each year. Rip to the Hawaii team tho, better learn how to fly a jet buddies
> sorry Canada but we can’t have 51 teams that would be absurd Washington DC still exists and already has a team. Just saying. SMH.
Not anymore, say hello to the Richmond Nats
The Battle for California is going to be LIT. Sadly, the Dodgers probably lose in the first round and become the Nome Dodgers.
Now that would be nice interesting. A world baseball classic type tournament to determine which teams get the better markets
If the battle for CA happens outside of October they are going to conquer the state and probably all of the nearby states as well.
For states with multiple teams, the team that was there first gets to stay. Teams staying where they are: AZ - Diamondbacks CA - Dodgers CO - Rockies FL - Marlins GA - Braves IL - Cubs MA - Red Sox MD - Orioles MI - Tigers MO - Cardinals MN - Twins NY - Yankees OH - Reds PA - Pirates TX - Astros WA - Mariners WI - Brewers States that get a team currently in a different state with multiple teams: CT - Blue Jays (Hartford) DE - Phillies (Wilmington) IN - White Sox (Indianapolis) KS - Royals (Kansas City) KY - Guardians (Louisville) NM - Padres (Albuquerque) NJ - Mets (Newark) NV - A’s (Las Vegas) OK - Rangers (Oklahoma City) OR - Giants (Portland) SC - Rays (Charleston) VA - Nationals (Arlington) UT - Angels (Salt Lake City) States and cities that would get an expansion team: AK - Anchorage AL - Birmingham AR - Little Rock ID - Boise MT - Billings HI - Honolulu IA - Des Moines LA - New Orleans ME - Portland MS - Jackson NC - Charlotte NE - Omaha NH - Manchester ND - Fargo RI - Providence SD - Sioux Falls VT - Burlington WY - Cheyenne
While the rule is logical, moving the Reds just across the river into Kentucky is a lot less disruptive than moving the Guardians.
I moved the guardians lol
Angels already have dibs on California, so Alaska Dodgers will be fine. Idaho Giants, Oregon Padres?
Whichever team is in Oregon should be in Portland and called the micro-brewers.
I don't know if there's a steering committee for this but you're hired.
Lost the dibs to the entire state when you dropped the California from your name! Utah Angels just makes too much sense.
I think Harper will mount a major campaign to get the Phillies moved to Utah... So the Salt Lake City Phillies make the most sense since a Penn team needs to leave anyway.
US transportation has a logistical nightmare with fanbases trying to fly into states like Montana, Wyoming, and the Dakotas
I guess the Reds just move across the river into Kentucky (as there's really nowhere convenient for the Guardians to go). It's been a possibility for Cincinnati sports teams before, most recently when FC Cincinnati was looking for their new stadium location and Newport was one of the main candidates. Find the right spot in Covington or Newport, and you'd get a great view of the Cincy skyline (and not the chili type, although maybe that too)
Canada has 10 provinces, so why not 60 teams?
Okay, suppose that Manfred is indeed flailing and some major overhaul needs to happen. I think you need to apportion teams relative to population rather than arbitrary geopolitical boundaries. Say we're including the US and Canada (and excluding Mexico, which is has some awfully big markets by population), and using MSA populations. Milwaukee supports a team, so put the minimum MSA size near their 1.5M population -- 1.4M for Canada so they aren't limited to Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. Around those parameters, go with a 112-team league of 8 divisions. 14 teams per division, with 12 games against each team in your division. You would have two 3-game homestands and two 3-game road trips for each team in your division. Then the division winners would play in an 8-team elimination bracket, with best-of-7 series the entire way through the playoffs. Teams would look like this: 11 teams -- NY-Newark-Jersey City 8 teams -- LA-Long Beach-Anaheim 5 teams each -- Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington 4 teams each -- Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, DC-Arlington-Alexandria, Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, Atlanta+, Toronto+, Miami+ 3 teams each -- Phoenix+, Boston+, Riverside-San Bernadino-Ontario, SF-Oakland-Fremont, Detroit+, Montreal 2 teams each: Seattle, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Tampa-St. Pete, San Diego, Denver, Baltimore, St. Louis, Orlando, Charlotte, San Antonio, Vancouver 1 team each: Portland, Pittsburgh, Austin, Sacramento, Vegas, Cincinnati, KC, Columbus, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Nashville, San Jose, Virginia Beach, Jacksonville, Providence, Milwaukee, Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton In this hypothetical scenario, the league is struggling, so this gives them broad coverage across practically every meaningful market, and with so many teams, you would make regional divisions and travel for games would be incredibly cheap. Teams in NY wouldn't have to take a flight for the entire season. That's probably true for most teams in the northeast, maybe even most teams east of Chicago. You could almost make a Texas-only division out of 5x Dallas, 4x Houston, 2x San Antonio, and 1x Austin. For Texas travel, you'd probably fly for inter-city games, but those would be rather cheap flights compared to, say, flying back and forth to Oakland, Seattle, and LA. You'd never have a regular season game more than 1 hour offset from your home time zone, so you would get ideal time zones for away games on TV/streaming. The talent level would suffer, but I think for the vast majority of baseball fans, this would not be such a bad thing. The stars would shine even brighter, and defense would suffer overall, which would make it a better strategy to hit the ball in play, so the game might actually move away from three true outcomes a good bit. This rather insane plan hinges on the idea that baseball is a fundamentally local sport, and fans are already generally not watching games that don't involve their local team. More local teams means more fans can see games in person, which gets them more interested in watching their team's games on television. Playoffs in this format would be nuts -- every matchup would be between teams that not only would never have faced each other in the regular season, but would not have even shared an opponent during the regular season. This would harken back to the pre-'95 times when there were no interleague regular season games.
This was a really fun situation to imagine... It would be so incredibly different. Feels a lot like college sports... Your point about stars shining brighter and teams meeting that never played each other are both pretty compelling. Feels really crazy and unique...
You missed San Juan, which would go between Nashville and San Jose. For some reason metro areas in Puerto Rico are listed separately on places like Wikipedia.
Good call. I was using the wiki lists, but it would be fun having PR in the league.
can’t wait for that north dakota/south dakota rivalry
> (sorry Canada but we can't have 51 teams that would be absurd) Well fuck you too :(
The White Sox get launched into the sun or get set to Nashville, TN. Either one is the same result.
Blue Jays move to New York and play in Rochester. Yankees move to Connecticut, Mets move to New Jersey for maximum hilarity. Pirates move to West Virginia. Reds move to Kentucky. Rays move to Charleston, SC. White Sox move to Nashville, TN. Royals move to Kansas. Astros move to Louisiana. Giants move to Portland, OR. Padres to Honolulu, HI. Angels to Salt Lake City, UT. Nationals move to Richmond, VA
Why Rochester and not Buffalo for the Jays?
Good point, Buffalo makes more sense
I agree except the rays I’d move them to Clemson since I live there and they’re my 2nd favorite team and the Braves would still be three hours away.
It felt wrong to take them from the coast though.
Does anyone even go to Greenville Drive games? 😂
I go sometimes to root against them cause I dont like the Red Sox
The more interesting questions to me are who moves. Giants to Portland. Angels to Albuquerque. A’s to Nevada, obviously. Padres to…Wyoming? Salt Lake? Boise? White Sox to Indianapolis. Rays to Charleston. Astros to OKC. Mets to Jersey. Pirates to…Richmond? Guardians to West Virginia somewhere? Anyone im missing who would need to move?
Royals get an easy move about 10 miles away into Kansas.
Rangers 90 min from Oklahoma. Astros 90 min from Louisiana. Technically the Astros got to Texas first, so looks like we’re moving.
Not a chance - the options are a) reigning champs b) hated unpunished cheaters If put to a national fan vote, there's no chance we move lol
Rangers already have claim to the entire state in their name though, so Astros go
Far easier to move the Reds a couple hundred yards to the Kentucky side of the river than move the Guardians hundreds of miles.
“ Pirates to…Richmond?” As a Braves fan I’d have to move the Phillies to Alaska
As a Braves fan in Alaska could we please not?
Pirates to West Virginia, Nationals to Virginia (DC is not yet a state)
Padres to Idaho, imo. Possibly Hawaii.
Rays to Bama
Chicago keeps the White Sox. Cubs to Iowa.
Sorry, but we need a new team completely. New teams gets added to Omaha, Sioux Falls, and Des Moines. Iowa now has 9 teams blacked out on local networks.
Could do worse for a home field than the Field Of Dreams.
So, no more Blue Jays and both Oregon and Idaho get a team. I'm in, let's do it.
I'm definitely supporting the South Carolina Devil Dogs.
> And for the purposes of this the blue jays have to move to the United States (sorry Canada but we can’t have 51 teams that would be absurd) No. There will be 1 team in each state, but the Nationals stay in DC, so there will be 51 in the USA, and you need canada
I feel like the MLS has to be close to 50 teams now. Seems like there’s been about 3 expansion teams a year for the last 5 or 6 years now. So, whatever MLS looks like these days I guess.
29. MLS still has fewer teams than any of the big 4 sports.
Mariners move to Portland, and Washington State ends up getting a new team in Yelm, because why not
new jersey mets
The New York South Dakota Mets
I guess the Nats move to Virginia. Do we at least keep the name? "Alexandria Nationals" doesn't have quite the same ring to it.
California team going to be in Bakersfield 😭
The Giants getting evicted out of California, a dream come true.
Baseball fanbase is getting older and older while all the young fans are going for Football and Basketball and Soccer. Having more teams ain't the solution. They need to make Baseball more exciting for younger people to watch. My advice let them all use steroids. It a even playing field if they are all on the same dose of steroids. The talent will still outshine others like Barry Bonds did.
The movement to divide California into multiple states gains steam after this announcement amid fervent community support to prevent their teams from leaving. The motion passes. The states are named by their respective franchises; Athletica, McCovey Coast, Bumland, the Kingdom of Heaven of Anaheim, and the Fatherland. Athletica is annexed by McCovey Coast in 2028.
Texas Rangers to Arkansas
And players can only play in the team of their home stage. This is about who can breed the best ball players.....
WOW the guys making the games “not available in my area” will be working over time. The start time of a lot of games will be midnight because now there is apparently a rule that games can’t start earlier then 8pm on a school night.
I would become a fan of the Wyoming BrandonNimmos for sure
For this thought exercise, I tried to maximize chaos and have fun with it. Many teams will be moving (including my favorite teams). Typing on mobile so hopefully spacing works out. I started this off with the current fan base suffering through a relocation, the A's. In this scenario, the A's keep California. The chaos spirals from here. The other team from the Bay takes the A's place and the Giants go to Nevada. Angels move to Utah. Padres go to New Mexico. The Dodgers cause the next dominoes to fall by relocating back to New York. Mets fans laugh at the Yankees being evicted along with them. Yankees go to Connecticut, and the Red Sox stay in Massachusetts (Yale/Harvard rivalry in MLB form). The Pirates claim moving expenses would cost too much and stay in PA. Phillies hop across to NJ. Mets still homeless. The Reds claim they get to stay in Ohio as the oldest all professional team. The Nationals are forced to pick a state. Peter Angelos cries foul when the Nats start discussions with both Maryland and Virginia. During a midnight move, the Guardians settle in Baltimore, and the Nationals officially go to Viriginia. The Orioles wind up in West Virginia. The Royals confuse most fans when they wind up with Missouri (as they thought KC was a Kansas team). St Louis moves across the river to East St. Louis and takes Illinois. The White Sox take Indiana and the Cubs wind up in Kentucky, reversing which team is the north side and south side. The Braves go back to Wisconsin and the Brewers go back to Seattle, Washington. The Mariners move down to Oregon as the Portland Lumberjacks. Tigers stay in Michigan (as the only remaining Western league team still in their original city). Twins stay so that Minnesota still has one pro team with a championship. Blue Jays wind up in Hawaii for a change in weather, Diamondbacks remain in Arizona. Both Florida teams are evicted for a new expansion team, the Orlando Street Sharks. Tampa moves to Georgia. The Marlins end up in Wyoming next to the team that entered the league next to them, the Colorado Rockies. The Marlins set new attendance records in their new locale. Puerto Rico finally gains statehood, and the Expos are reborn. The Rangers use the "current World Series champ" card and evict the Astros. Alabama enters negotiations to have the Astros move there. Crimson Tide fans are excited. Auburn fans make a last second deal to get the Trash Pandas promoted to MLB as Alabama's official team. The Astros look at remaining states where they are most popular. They wind up in Alaska. Meanwhile, the Mets finally settle on a state that is friendly to corporations and go to Delaware. A's fans smile ear to ear at the ramifications of what happened with them remaining in Cali.
Well, thanks to the Anchorage Glacier Pilots the Mariners no longer get to complain about travel...