Rob Manfred dropped a major hint about MLB realignment on ESPN

One thing Rob Manfred has done well in his tenure as commissioner of Major League Baseball is release ideas for the public to dissect before proposing them formally to the MLB Players' Association.

Sometimes Manfred's idea-floating passes through the court of public opinion with little pushback. Other times — most of the time, really — the criticism from all corners is swift and exhaustive.

Sunday, Manfred extemporaneously dropped a radical idea during ESPN's broadcast of the "Little League Classic," a regular season game between the Seattle Mariners and New York Mets in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.

"In my mind, I think if we expand it allows us the opportunity to geographically realign," Manfred said during an in-game interview. "I think we could save a lot of wear and tear on our players, in terms of travel, and I think our postseason format would be more appealing for entities like ESPN because you'd be playing up out of the East, out of the West, and that 10 o'clock time slot where we sometimes get lost in Anaheim, would be two West Coast teams.

"And that 10 o'clock slot that's a problem for us sometimes becomes a real opportunity for our West Coast audience," Manfred continued. "I think the owners realize there's a demand for Major League Baseball in a lot of great cities, and we have an opportunity to do something around that expansion process."

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As the taxidermist said upon checking in to his hotel room, there's a lot to unpack here.

First, leave it to Manfred to speak directly to a broad swath of casual fans — ESPN's "Sunday Night Baseball" audience, some of whom might have been drawn in because of the event's connection to Little League Baseball — by getting straight to what they care about most: the core economic issues affecting the professional baseball industry.

In the aggregate, that's what player health amounts to in the eyes of MLB owners. Any game in which the sport's brightest stars are unavailable because of injuries diminishes the value of the product.

Sure, the occasional John Middleton or Mark Attanasio might get enough face time around the field long enough to form a relationship with a veteran player. But they are the exception, not the rule. When injuries start to hurt an owner in his wallet, that's when it becomes an issue that rises to the commissioner's attention.

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Injuries have turned starting pitchers from the stars of the game into the hidden figures of baseball's growing M*A*S*H unit. They have thrown 58.8 percent of all innings through Sunday, down from 66.5 percent in 2000 (via FanGraphs.com). Relievers are as anonymous as they were in the era before closers were indispensable role players capable of reaching the Hall of Fame. The wear and tear of travel is likely a relatively small contributor to this phenomenon, but Manfred is at least smart to mention it.

Second, Manfred floated a solution to this problem that was sure to elicit opinions from the moment it left his lips: radical realignment in concert with expansion.

MLB divides its 30 teams into six divisions of five teams each. The traditional American and National Leagues exist as they almost always have, at least since the six-division format was adopted in 1994. Only the Milwaukee Brewers and Houston Astros have left one league for the other in the last 31 years.

That degree of tranquility is exceptional. It's more than an asset; it's allowed entire generations of baseball fans to grow up expecting certain truths to be as fixed as the constellations: the Mets play in the National League, the Yankees in the American. A team in Arlington, Texas hates a team from Seattle because they routinely play each other at a critical juncture late in the regular season. It doesn't have to be geographically convenient to be true.

Manfred has proposed to upend these truths in one fell swoop. If the league expands — presumably from 30 to 32 teams — it would make more sense to realign along the lines of four eight-team divisions or eight four-team divisions.

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Ah, but how? Without going into specifics, Manfred suggested we do away with the traditional American/National League structure and align strictly along geographical lines.

Four teams in California? You get a division! (Probably.)

Two teams in the Mountain Time Zone? You get a division and, while you're at it, take the teams in Seattle and Las Vegas with you! (Possibly.)

Two teams in Chicago? Get used to visiting Minnesota and Milwaukee ... more! (Maybe.)

We shouldn't bury Manfred's note about expansion. After all, it's the condition upon which all of the realignment rests in his mind. It also means two new teams for two new markets, in all likelihood. That's fun, and it's as inevitable as it is arduous.

Doing away with the traditional AL/NL team associations was never seen as inevitable — until Sunday. That's in part why it really ruffled feathers on social media.

In other corners, the idea was well-received.

"There are aspects of the AL/NL that are genuinely silly," Scott Bush, the CEO of the Society for American Baseball Research, wrote on Twitter/X. "Prior to interleague play, the Dodgers and Angels didn't play one another. An 8 year old could tell you those teams should play each other regularly, but that won't stop people from getting mad online."

Manfred even left out the best reason to realign the divisions along geographical lines: the current system is horrible for the environment. As I wrote in 2022:

"Climate researcher Seth Wynes found that the NBA, NHL and MLB collectively reduced their carbon footprint by 22% per game during their COVID-shortened 2020 seasons, when smaller traveling parties and reduced travel distances became standard. An unbalanced schedule effectively ignores that lesson. It’s a backward-thinking move."

- Orange County Register

That opinion is certainly the minority view among those in favor of realignment. Whether Manfred shares it or not ignores the broader point. His reasons are ultimately the ones that matter most. That's why hearing them, particularly in such a public forum, was noteworthy.

Perhaps radical realignment is only radical if it does not affect your business' bottom line. That might not be the message baseball fans want to hear, but it's the one they got from the commissioner on Sunday.

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