One problem is the expansion teams. Right know folks are already complaing about too many teams in MLB which is diluting the pitching talent.

Interesting idear you have there though.

Cubs and Cardinals will veto having to go to a Mountain timezone that often and they have a lot of leverage.

Nice try though.

If they insist on keeping wild cards, I’d rather see em go back to 2 divisions per league with 2 wild-cards.

There won’t be a team in New Orleans or Louisville anytime soon. New Orleans can’t even keep their basketball team (who’d rather play in Oklahoma of all places.) It was a fairly small market before Katrina, and even smaller now.

Louisville isn’t big enough on it’s own and is fairly close to Cincinnati, another fairly small market.

Portland is a possibility. Maybe Indy, but it would probably be elsewhere.

South Florida is the 7th largest market in the US. Somehow they will find a way to keep a team. Eventually, a ballpark will be built in the area.

I don’t see the Devil Rays moving anytime soon either. They are stuck in that bad stadium deal for a while. I doubt they’d move further than Orlando, when they do.

Sacramento, Las Vegas , South Virginia, Charlotte, San Antonio are possiblities for expansion as well. I expect they’d look to foreign cities as well, San Juan, and Monterrey, most likely.

Here’s how I’d do it, assuming no major moves and expansion in Portland and Indianapolis.

AL East – BOS, NYY, BAL, TBR
AL North – CLE, DET, TOR, IND
AL Central – TEX, CWS, MIN, KCR
AL West – OAK, LAA, SEA, POR

NL East – NYM, PHI, WAS, PIT
NL South – MIA, ATL, HOU, CIN
NL Midwest – CHC, STL, MIL, COL
NL West – LAD, SFG, SDP, ARI

At first, it seems Colorado is somewhat out of place, but in fact by air, Denver is closer to St. Louis and Chicago than to LA, and closer to Milwaukee than San Diego and San Francisco. Since they are the only team in their time zone during the season, they have to go one way or the other.

Cincinnati isn’t very southern, but being on the Kentucky border, it’s not that far out of place.

If say, Charlotte got a team instead of Indy, which is probably more likely, I’d put them in the NL South and move Milwaukee back to the AL in the North, with Cincy in the midwest.

I’d have 18 games against division foes (3 home/away series each) 6 games agains other league foes (1 home/away series each), and 6 games against alternating 2 divisions in opposite league, alternating home and away each time. e.g. NL West and Midwest would play AL West and Central in odd years and AL East and North in even years, playing half of the teams at home, half on the road then switching sites the next time the divisions are matched. That way in every park you can see 3 series against division rivals every year, 1 series against every team in the same league every year, and 1 series against every team in the opposite league every four years.

Only division winners make the playoffs, seeding them by record, and expanding the first round to 7 games, and probably reducing the number of days off.

None of this will ever happen, of course, but that’s just how I’d do it.