In a fascinating report for Baseball America, Tracy Ringolsby describes, in great specifics, a radical realignment plan proposed for Major League Baseball which includes expanding the league with two more teams. The post suggests the league could target Montreal and Portland for new clubs, and the entire thing is well worth reading.

An excerpt:

There seems to be a building consensus that baseball will soon be headed to a 32-team configuration. It will lead to major realignment and adjustments in schedule, which will allow MLB to address the growing concerns of the union about travel demands and off days. One proposal would be to geographically restructure into four divisions, which would create a major reduction in travel, particularly for teams on the East Coast and West Coast, and add to the natural rivalries by not just having them as interleague attractions, but rather a part of the regular divisional battles…. A 156-game schedule would include 24 total games against the eight teams in each of the three other divisions—three games against each opponent. The schedule would include 12 games—six home and six road—against each of the seven divisional opponents.

The proposal Ringolsby describes is in many ways similar to one I suggested in the bottom five paragraphs here: Four eight-team divisions with eight total wild-card spots, meaning four wild-card games to decide which clubs go on to face the division winners in the LDS. But the plan outlined in Baseball America seems even a bit more radical than that, scrapping the American and National Leagues entirely and reshuffling teams into divisions based purely on geography.

There’s a lot to recommend it from business and logistical standpoints, since obviously the league would reap the benefits of two extra single-elimination postseason matchups to kick off October, and it’d mean a lot less travel time for big-league teams and their players across the course of a long season.

But would it be cool?

Expansion would certainly be cool. It’s fun as heck, for one thing: The populations of two cities that currently lack access to Major League Baseball get to have that, plus the rest of us get to learn the new nicknames and see what they come up with for colors and logos. Maybe one of them would be a brown team, to show the Padres how it’s done! Maybe one of them would go with any other good color scheme ignored to date by MLB, like maroon and silver, or sky blue and yellow, or grey and white, or lavender and gold. Probably they’d both just be blue because basically every baseball team is blue, but hey, we can dream.

Also, if the expansion really does mean teams in Portland and Montreal, that would be especially cool, as those are both awesome places to visit and would make good destinations for curious baseball fans eager to check out new teams and new ballparks. Great cities for eating, too.

The rest of it might take some getting used to.

Since the addition of two teams, the reduced travel schedule, and, presumably, the implementation of the designated hitter for every game would all be big wins for the MLBPA, the league would certainly use them as negotiating leverage for concessions elsewhere. That likely means pace-of-play stuff, specifically the long-rumored pitch clock.

That, in and of itself, is a fairly contentious issue: Where many hardcore baseball fans relish the notion that the sport features no clock, it would likely be more appealing to more people if it packed a little more action into a little less time. Also, you can absolutely love baseball, as I do, but still admit that this year’s postseason games have dragged a lot at times. Four-hour games are palatable when they’re back-and-forth slugfests, but not when they’re long because the pitcher and catcher needed to conference 30 times to get on the same page about calls.

And the inclusion of designated hitters in all games, too, would bother plenty of traditionalists — including a bunch of current big-league pitchers who love trying to swat dingers. DH preference seems largely determined by which league your favorite team plays in, though, and it seems like the AL’s adoption of the DH in 1973 hasn’t really cost its teams many fans since. It means a bit less in-game strategizing, but it also means significantly less in-game bunting, so it’s sort of a wash.

Plus, there’s a case to be made that Major League Baseball, currently dominated by home runs and strikeouts, might benefit a bit by thinning out its talent pool. More and more countries produce Major League players these days, yet the league is in its longest stretch without expansion since it first expanded in 1962. I don’t have data to back this up, but I wonder if the homers and whiffs — the best thing hitters can do in any scenario, and (pretty much) the best thing pitchers can do in any scenario, respectively — reflect in part just how extraordinarily strong the talent pool is right now. It seems counterintuitive, since you’d assume better pitching facing better hitting should balance one another out. But maybe it also just renders everything a little more extreme? I don’t know. This is a half-baked theory I’m ironing out.

This site is prepared to call the specifics of the plan Ringolsby outlined pretty cool, but the redrawing of the divisions coinciding with the elimination of the leagues and the use of the universal DH might be a lot for fans to swallow in one swoop. And though presumably baseball fans would continue watching baseball even if the American and National Leagues didn’t exist anymore, and new divisional rivalries would develop organically for clubs wrested from their former foes, the plan discussed here, I think, would keep purists happier while still adding the elimination games and potentially reducing travel time.