Note: Some of the history in this article comes from a prior blog piece “Balanced Schedule” published in April 2023.

While there are AL division races still to be settled and wild card spots in both leagues up for grabs, all eyes after this week will turn to October playoff baseball. The current NL and AL teams, scheduling, and playoff formats are understood by baseball fans, but times may be changing soon. In an interview on Sunday Night Baseball on August 17, 2025, Commissioner Rob Manfred discussed the possibility of a revamped landscape in terms of league structure, scheduling, and playoff formats. The long tradition of storied franchises in the National and American Leagues playing in the World Series might even be in play.

Why is realignment an issue at all? Currently, MLB has 30 teams, 15 in the NL and 15 in the AL. MLB is looking at expansion by adding two more teams and making it a perfect rounding of 32. The possible expansion cities most talked about today include Nashville, Portland, Salt Lake City, and Montreal. What this would do is create for each league two divisions of eight teams or four divisions of four teams. Manfred has maintained that realignment should focus on grouping teams geographically to minimize travel distances. He has stated: “We could save a lot of wear and tear on our players in terms of travel.” That’s a hard take for me given the chartered jets teams travel in nowadays. The pessimist says that Manfred is looking at ways to revive baseball if there is a work stoppage in 2026.

There’s a lot to sort out here, but let’s first look at the history. For me, the history of MLB scheduling starts with the early 1960s – two leagues (AL and NL) and no interleague games. The World Series was just that, a time that the AL and NL pennant winners would face each other for the first time in the season. In 1969 MLB introduced divisional play, two divisional winners playing in league championship series with the winners meeting up in the Series. The first MLB regular season interleague games did not take place until 1997. For the next fifteen years, interleague play consisted of one division in each league playing a division in the other league.

Up until 2012, baseball attempted to keep interleague play from deciding pennant races. All interleague games were played prior to the All-Star Game. What happened though is that interleague play reduced the number of games played by each team against non-divisional league opponents. Indeed, each team was playing between 16 to 20 games annually against each divisional opponent, making up nearly half of each team’s regular season calendar. As the playoff format introduced additional wild card entrants in each league, the better teams in divisions that were top-heavy had a greater chance in making the playoffs since they could beat up on the also rans. Something had to change.

Enter the 2023 balanced schedule. The schedule now in place reduces the number of games against division rivals to 13, totaling 52 games; adds more same league games, given that each team will play six games against six opponents and seven games against four opponents in the same league, a total of 64; and 46 interleague games. It’s the same 162, except spread out more evenly. The playoff impact, of course, is that strength of schedule within one team’s division becomes less of a factor.

The biggest change has been the number of interleague games, where teams have gone from 20 annually to 46. The spirit of the balanced schedule was to make the game more fan-friendly, providing fans with the opportunity to see more opponent matchups. Natural interleague rivals, such as the Angels-Dodgers, Guardians-Reds, Yankees-Mets, and White Sox-Cubs, include home and away series, while the other interleague games are at the respective teams’ home ballparks on alternating seasons. Of course, the concern has been that the storied, long-time rivalries have been reduced from 19 games to 13, such as the Cubs vs. Cardinals NL rivalry.

All of this may take an abrupt right turn if Manfred’s vision of realignment becomes reality. In terms of geographic realignment. I’ve seen many proposals, most of which have the two teams in the three cities with crosstown rivlaries, NYC, Chicago, and LA, facing off in the same divisions. The crazy piece is that the city rivals will land in divisions in either the AL or NL, upending a longstanding tradition for one of the city rivals. Most of the proposals find the natural rivalries, Red Sox vs. Yankees and Cubs vs. Cardinals, maintained in the same division, but more than one proposal breaks up the Dodgers vs. Giants rivalry if there are eight, 4-team divisions. One proposal has the Mets, Yankees, Red Sox, and Phillies all in one division, kind of a top heavy, big spending grouping in today’s game. Even crazier is a proposed structure which lands both the Pirates and Reds, two of the longest tenured NL franchises, in the “AL South”.

Scheduling, including the length of the season, will be in play. If there is indeed an eight division format, a 156-game season might make most sense since each team might have 12 games against division rivals (36 games), six games against the other intraleague teams (72 games), and three games against teams in the other league (48 games). Sounds easy right, but nothing has ever been easy in MLB scheduling. It’s difficult to imagine the owners and MLB Players Association agreeing to a reduction in games.

As to playoff action, I would be a proponent of just four division winners in an eight team per division format or eight division winners in a four team per division format getting into October action. We could return to the days of having teams competing for the division titles on an in or out basis. Owners though are not going to let that happen with all of the revenue on the table in the playoffs. We will see at least 12 teams get in just like the MLB today and hope that 16 teams, like the NBA and NHL, do not. Maybe the landing spot will be 14 teams in the playoffs, and similar to the NFL, the NL and AL teams with best records getting a bye. Your head begins to spin just thinking about all of the possibilities.

So here’s to the 2030 World Series where the AL Reds face the NL White Sox!

Until next Monday,

your Baseball Bench Coach