Realign this!

No divisions, new teams, teams changing leagues, my plan has it all

The only golden retriever ever to serve as a big league general manager, the always excitable Jim Bowden, writes for The Athletic and last week he put together a column where he predicted what realignment would look like in Major League Baseball when they finally expand to 32 teams.

Baseball Commissioner Tob Manford is on record saying that the World Series trophy is just a hunk of metal…wait, no, I mean he said that, but that’s not the point I was going to make. Let’s try it again.

Baseball Commissioner Tob Manford is on record saying his sport is boring. No, damnit, I mean he said that, too. Third time’s a charm…

Baseball Commissioner Tob Manford is on record saying that the league will look to expand once the stadium issues in Oakland and Tampa Bay are resolved one way or the other.

That’s it. That was the one.

At this point it’s inevitable that the A’s and Rays aren’t super interested in staying put and while they are both discussing plans to build new stadiums in their current home towns, they both have eyes on greener (cash) pastures elsewhere.

If baseball had a real leader, he or she would expedite the inevitable and work to get the A’s to Las Vegas as soon as possible and then flip a coin to decide if Nashville or Charlotte gets the Rays.

With that out of the way, the commissioner would be free to suck even more money out of two other cities for expansion fees.

It seems like Portland and the loser of the Nashville/Charlotte coin flip will end up with those expansion teams. For those of us who would like see the Montreal Expos return in some fashion, well, we’ll always have the franchise creation mode on MLB The Show.

Bowden’s reimagining of a 32 team MLB was…haphazard and kind of dumb.

I promise mine to be only one of those things. You decide which.