The big conversation topic in the baseball world this week was spawned by comments made by Commissioner Rob Manfred in an interview during the fourth inning of the 2025 MLB Little League Classic this past Sunday. In that segment he discussed his support for expansion and a geographic realignment which has not happened since the strike-shortened 1994 season.
The last time MLB introduced new teams was in 1998 when the Arizona Diamondbacks and Tampa Bay Devil Rays (now Tampa Bay Rays) joined the National and American Leagues, respectively. The next expansion clubs, however, might not even be part of either "league" in the current sense if the realignment reorganizes each circuit into geographical conferences.
The first thing to sort is which cities get teams and I am glad Portland has finally emerged as a frontrunner for one on the West Coast. Their presence brings us closer to my favorite period in baseball history: the heyday of the Pacific Coast League (PCL), which effectively ended in 1958 when the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers relocated to California.
What was once a thriving network of similarly sized cities slowly dissipated, which is hard to admit as a Giants fan. I admire the community spirit of the PCL, but at the same time, I understand baseball is a business. If MLB expanding to Albuquerque or Sacramento had been a sound decision, it would have happened long ago.
Also at the top of the expansion shortlist is Nashville, and that one is bittersweet for me because while Music City Baseball (MCB) has proven to be a convincing collective of Nashville business and community leaders prepared for the task of bringing out the next iteration of the Nashville Stars baseball team, the Nashville Sounds cap logo is not one I'm ready to say farewell to!
A while back, I began retroactively tagging posts of my most loved hats into a "favorites" category. The logo worn by the Nashville Sounds from their inaugural season in 1978 until 1998 is this week's Fresh Fitted Friday selection and certainly is a favorite, and I'm also a fan of the hat introduced in 1994, which I have also written about previously, as well as the 2015-18 Sounds logos.
If the Stars align, I hope the Sounds team can play on in a music town like New Orleans because it is a team name deserving of an encore! It will be stressful deciding which New Orleans Sounds hats to buy however the immediate concern is how will two new teams fit into the existing structure of 2 leagues with both having three divisions with five teams in each?
Baseball fans are (often to a fault) bound to their tradition-based convictions, so accepting change doesn't happen easily. That said, I have a feeling realignment will present new city rivalries, some of which existed previously or perhaps are already prevalent within other sports. Take a look below at some of the scenarios that could become realities someday soon.
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| This mockup from Fox Sports earlier in the week retains both leagues but each is divided into four divisions that are split equitably based on location and market size. |
That is very similar to one I had drafted for years but favorite thing about it is they employed a "Great Lakes" region like I did in my own mockup before having seen theirs!
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| I figured if we could do away with American and National leagues if we are to divy up teams by location but I also see how it makes sense to hold onto those names for historical purposes. |
I was most pleased to combine all the cities in the Eastern time zone into one league, and even though Milwaukee is a Central time city, I think they're better off reigniting their pre-1998 AL East rivalries with Cleveland and Detroit. Nashville is also on Central time, but they don't get much of a say as as a new team, plus they should be looking to pick an immediate fight with their closest neighbors in Atlanta.
I hesitated to lump all the major players in the Northeast megalopolis into my Atlantic division because of smaller markets relying on visits from those teams throughout the season and their attendance potentially suffering if those big teams are busy playing each other all the time. Then again, maybe we continue to let them have a slugfest trying to outspend each other every year.
I may be wrong, but fans in Baltimore, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh are so used to hating each other throughout the football season that they might not miss heckling the Yankees and Cubs as much as one would assume. And most of all, I like how the River Belt name honors the historical significance of the Ohio, Allegheny, and Potomac rivers in those cities.
And I'm most excited about Great Plains as a division name! The animosity between the football teams in Kansas City and Colorado could certainly fuel a newfound rivalry between their baseball teams. Of course, heads would roll in the Heartland if I dared split up the Cardinals and Cubs, plus I was happy to bring the White Sox and Twins into that mix as they have bad blood between them too.
My first draft had the Dodgers and A's flipped, but it would be a shame to omit the Vegas team from the Sand Belt, which to me evokes images of sand at the beach meeting sand in the desert, especially as Anaheim is so close to Palm Springs. And this way, that new kid Portland can join the other "hip" cities in the West for the cool crowd clique known as the Pacific division.
It would also be unthinkable to split up the Giants and Dodgers, even though I blamed their westward move for the demise of the Pacific Coast League earlier. To be fair, looking at the teams in bottom two western divisions closely resembles the 1957 Pacific Coast League standings, so maybe after 60 years, this is what healing looks like!
This next scenario features the path of least resistance by keeping the leagues intact as much as possible without ruffling too many feathers, especially in the National League. Since they love tradition so much, they only have to learn one roster full of new players. It also allows for potential cross-town World Series matchups, which wouldn't happen in my previous layout.
There is symmetry in the location-based division naming conventions, and all the classic rivalries are maintained. The AL North and NL West are the two divisions with zero new rivals, but the NL North is most intriguing because the Mets, Phillies, Pirates, and Reds used to battle it out in the NL East before the introduction of the Central divisions in 1994.
The AL West has the Angels and Athletics melding their hate with the new rivalry between Portland and Seattle. Nashville has an existing football beef with Houston, so the AL South could be spicy. Speaking of beef, all four cities have incredible BBQ, so if we are to bring out divisional nicknames, that one could be Smokey Way! For the record, I'm just really too hungry now thinking about BBQ to care that Kansas City isn't technically in the South. Let’s eat!
As a last-minute fun thing, I remapped the first two formats into this sort of Mad Max Loco Locale situation, which is only viable for scheduling purposes during the regular season. I'm not sure what mayhem that would bring for the postseason, but I imagine some sort of seeded bracket might be needed, which is too complicated for me to understand as a baseball purist!
If you'd like to join in on the fun of creating your own divisions, I recommend checking out this great site where you can even upload your own images for teams, although the ones they use are straight from Sportslogos.net, so you know they're doing something right!
This week's Fresh Fitted Friday selection is not going on the Trading Block however please don't hesitate to reach out if you want any other cap from that list and you are willing to part with any of the hats on my Wish List.
As always, thanks for coming back to read about baseball hat geekery. If you'd like to discuss a trade or simply just chat about hats, please feel free to connect via the following social sites:
Instagram: @baseballmilquetoast
Twitter: @FittedFriday
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