In an interview during the broadcast of ESPN “Sunday Night Baseball” at the Little League Classic in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Sunday evening, the MLB commissioner, Rob Manfred, reiterated his perspective on the possibility of extending the league to 32 teams and the probability of reorganizing the different divisions according to the location.
“I think that if we develop, it offers us an opportunity to realign geographically,” said Manfred during the broadcast, which featured the Seattle Mariners and the New York dishes. “I think we could save a lot of wear on our players in terms of travel. I think that our post-season format would be even more attractive for entities like ESPN because you play the east, outside the west and at 10 am when we sometimes get Boston-Anaheim should be a real opportunity for our audience of the western coast.
Rob Manfred says MLB could realign geographically if the league is developing
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Manfred said he wanted to have the location of two new teams cooked by time He retired in 2029Although clubs are not yet playing. But Manfred said for a long time that the expansion of the league would follow after the Rays and athletics end their long -standing quests for new stadiums.
Sunday evening, the commissioner’s comments echoed a long -standing discussion concerning the discussion of the expansion. Go as far as Interview 2018 with AthleticsManfred used the same example of Boston and Anaheim when he answered a question about the structure of a league at 32 teams.
“The most difficult thing for us in the playoffs is still Anaheim against Boston (in a hypothetical match) in these four days of match in the division series. You play too early for the residents of Anaheim or too late for the residents of Boston,” said Manfred at the time. “Realignment has always been a difficult problem in baseball. You can argue that the disappearance of at least one commissioner (Fay Vincent in 1992) began with the question of realignment. The reality of the media environment today is that if you have gone to 32 teams and that you could arrive at a more geographically geographically geographically alignment, you could help your series season.
While many of the other subjects discussed in this interview – the rules of rules intended to improve the pace of the game, the legalized sports betting, the technology of the strike zone – have all been implemented in recent years, any movement concerning expansion and realignment continues to move at a glacial rate.
While a recent USA today Story noted that MLB considers Nashville and Salt Lake City as the two strongest potential expansion markets, Manfred refused to identify all potential cities during the subject’s discussion Last month on CNBC.
“The cities that are almost exclusively have been cities that have declared themselves. They come to tell us that we would like to have (a team),” said Manfred to the network, noting that the two cities would likely include a market founded in an oriental time zone and one in the mountain or the time zone of the Pacific. “There are a whole list of them and I don’t like to differentiate them because we are not yet at that time in the process.”
While Manfred refused during this appearance to discuss the specific costs that a new expansion franchise should pay to join the League, he suggested that this would be a number that begins with a “B” “.
The MLB extended for the last time in 1998, when Arizona Diamondbacks and Tampa Bay Rays entered the League.
(Photo: Daniel Shirey / MLB photos via Getty Images)
