We get the shortest straw on fanbases in this division realignment…. The rivalries would be extremely 1 sided. Marlins fans don’t exist. Tampa fans aren’t the liveliest bunch and I get the impression the Rays are everyone’s second favorite team in Tampa. Nashville is an expansion wildcard. MLB really needs a Vegas Golden Knights instant success story to guarantee a fanbase establishment. Otherwise, they run the risk of Braves fans outnumbering Nashville fans when we come to town because Nashville has been a part of Braves country for a very long time. They aren’t just TBS fans, Nashville was straight up our market region for decades.
I hate the Mets and Phillies but I respect the following they have and their fans help keep games between us lively and intense.
I live in Chattanooga, about half way between Atlanta and Nashville. I’ve always loved traveling to Nashville more than Atlanta (sorry Atlanta) and am also a Predators fan…but if Nashville gets an MLB team, I’ll support, watch and be a fan of them. But, I’m too emotionally invested in my Braves for Nashville to be my number 1 baseball team.
Nashvillian here…Braves fan all my life. If we got an expansion team, it’d be very difficult for me to switch.
Especially given how bad our professional teams are. That effect is magnified in the MLB, b/c big market teams will always outspend the small market teams.
They realigned MiLB during COVID to reduce travel and now the Sounds play the Stripers. When Stripers come to town, the stadium is full of Braves fans.
Raleigh Replants? Lol For real what would a Raleigh team be called? I think they'd do a more Carolina based thing like the Hurricanes. Watch them name it something like the Carolina Blue socks.
Yeah, I hate this. I love our rivalries with the Mets, Nats, and Phils. I don’t really care about the Rays or Marlins and obviously the expansion team is new.
The Rays and Marlins combined don’t have enough (active) fans for us to have a rivalry. The most I’ve hated the fish is when Mattingly was their manager and Ronnie kept getting hit…
I’m old enough to have seen him play for the Nashville Sounds, though to young to remember it. I always loved following him for that reason and saw his # retired in 1999 while I was in college.
Ever since he let some scrub plunk Acuña b/c they couldn’t get him out, I’ve HATED him!
Unfortunately no. With all the discussion of geographically based realignment, people (myself included) keep trying to come up with realignments and this is frankly the one that makes the most sense by a wide margin (if we assume the new NL team is going to be anywhere near the Southeast, which is what has generally been indicated)
Can they make a jersey for me to wear to the park that’s half Braves/Nashville team? I live in Chattanooga, and would love to wear something like that to a game they play each other on.
I have seen someone wearing a half Bama/half Auburn football jersey before. So if that affront to God is allowed to exist, I see no reason you wouldn’t be able to find yours!
Of course RDC is going to get a MLB team now, now that I moved out of the state. I lived there for 20 years had to go to Atlanta or Baltimore for AL and NL games. 😫
Same here. I feel like a team in Nashville will get a lot of support but it is part of Braves country and a lot of people are going to have a dilemma in who to root for. If Nashville gets a team, they really need to put them in the AL. This would let them keep the Rockies in the NL too.
They have the same model as the Marlins but are better at execution. Every few years dump/trade the high price guys right when their value is highest and wait for payoff in a few years. Tread water and hope they hit.
They just can’t compete with the Braves payroll so most of the time they will not have the better club. That doesn’t mean they won’t finish higher some years but the odds are definitely stacked against them. The Marlins finishing higher than the Braves this year is not the rule.
Just from a numbers standpoint the Braves will be favored to win this purposed division almost every year unless Nashville has some billionaires willing to spend in the top half of the league every year. I suppose we don’t know that they won’t but we can make a pretty good guess that they won’t considering their first 30 plus years they won’t even be the most followed or preferred team in their area. Baseball is not like hockey. The Braves are already established and have generations of fans in that area.
I actually will hate Nashville- i was there during the last WBC and had to beg a sports bar to put the quarterfinal /trea Turner grand slam game on one of their 25 TVs. Itll be the same as their hockey team, nobody really gives a shit or knows what’s going on but they’ll do well attendance/ money wise because of the location
I still think having a Nashville/Raleigh team in the same division as us would be a dumb move on MLB’s part. Already a lot of Braves fans across the south, having a southern expansion team in the American League would probably make it easier for them to grab fans rather than switch allegiance to a new division rival.
It's a little different because of the length of the season, but watching Steelers/Commanders/Cowboys fans pack out Bank of America every time they play the Panthers sucks for everyone involved. Newer franchises should be given a little space to breathe and putting the Braves in the same division as a team that is currently solidly inside their footprint isn't ideal in my opinion.
I state this as a Falcons fan who switched sides when Carolina came into the league (I was 8, don't crucify me)
I think you just made the argument as to why it would be BETTER for MLB and an expansion team trying to sell seats.
The football bit is a totally different story. That’s hometown fans price gauging Steelers/Cowboys fans that one week of the year. I used to know a few Falcons season ticket holders and every season they would look to unload 1-2 games to subsidize the cost of the package. They always sold the Cowboys, Packers, Steelers tickets because they would get top dollar every time.
That’s irrelevant to the distance between Nashville/Raleigh and Atlanta, and why they would be an NL team and not an AL team, which is the topic of conversation here.
But I also said it has to do with travel distances for the teams as well. What division are you going to put the Florida teams in if you want to cut down on player travel if they aren’t in the division with Atlanta?
You just get more people following baseball that were never going to be Braves fans anyways. They just didn’t watch or care about the sport. Now they have a team so they watch.
I feel like Nashville metro historically has been where Cardinals country and Braves country meet. More Braves the further east and south you go. More Cardinals the further west you go.
And then if you go north of Nashville, that's all Reds territory.
Braves probably have the biggest share of the pot thanks to decades of TBS, 750 AM, and their 90s/early 00s dominance.
There's so many transplants that have come to Nashville in last 10 - 15 years, so who really knows what it's like these days...
A lot of people that will immediately switch over to Nashville and stop following the Braves were never going to buy season tickets or go to more than one or two games a year anyways. The distance is just too far.
Also it helps drum up interest in the sport for the people that can now actully go to games and be active supporters. The people that were never going to be fans of a team they couldn’t go see regularly now have a team and start following the sport. That helps baseball but doesn’t hurt the Braves at all because they went from not caring to buying tickets and watching games.
Yeah I hate this shit. It’s like manufacturing consent. No one asked for this. I want to play the Phillies and the Mets and beat up on the nationals as always. Honestly the marlins would be the first I drop!
Personally I’m locked in anytime we play the Mets or Phillies and I think most fans are too. I have no beef with other southern teams aside from the Marlins primarily because the Braves are essentially the southeast’s team. Why would I say fuck Nashville or fuck Raleigh when the majority of baseball fans in those towns are Braves fans currently?
I get you man, I’d still hate the NE team more. But it would be a lot of fun to have a rival next door over a plane flight. I’m in Portland currently and pulling for a PDX expansion so I can drop the M’s as my AL team and start to antagonize my old college friends (i went to UW.)
The old rivalry is better, I’m not trying to act like thats not the cold hard truth. But it would also be fun to be on the ground floor of a new and budding rivalry
Agreed. The Nashville v Atlanta rivalry would eventually be a MUCH bigger rivalry than anything we have had with the Mets, who don’t even consider us their biggest rival.
Right. Not arguing that’s a flex but it’s irrefutable that the Mets consider their biggest rival to be Yankees, even though they aren’t in the same league. They are competing to own the eyeballs and headlines in that market in a “sibling rivalry” of sorts. Their next biggest rival is easily Philly, which is a 2 hour drive and 3 hour train ride down the road.
Braves are a distant 3rd in the eyes of Mets fans, unquestionably.
Sort of like how the Bulldogs are GT’s biggest rival but Georgia souls say their biggest rival is one of Bama/UT/UF.
As others have said, putting a potential Nashville/Raleigh team in the same division as the Braves is going cut into Braves country & maybe limit fan growth.
I think it would be best to put the Nashville/Raleigh team in the AL, which doesn’t fit into their East/West realignment plan. As a Tennessee resident, I’m extremely excited at the prospect of Nashville getting a team & would’ve happily followed them & made them my B Team if they were put in the AL (or even the NL in a different division). If they are in the same division as the Braves, then it’s going to be tough to care.
I live near Durham so it would be cool to see Raleigh get an expansion team. This realignment sucks though because I would hate to be in the same division as both the new Raleigh team and the Rays. The Rays have been my AL team for a while now thanks to the Durham Bulls. I’m all for expanding though.
1) since the 2023 schedule-balancing initiative, we really don't play the division that much more than other league teams anyway (one more home series, one more away series), so you really aren't losing that much in the way of "rivalries." Put another way--the rivalries were already killed, no need to mewl over killing them again.
2) If you're realigning, and you've already added the DH in the NL, I don't see any reason to be precious about keeping NL teams NL and AL teams AL. Just make it "West" and "East" and really lean into the geography-based divisions.
In continuing to think about this, if they really did it, they should go hard on it and also expand the playoffs and balance the schedules even more. 7 games against every team in your "league," alternating year over year between who gets the 4 game home series, and a 4 game series against 9 of the teams in the other league/3 game series against the other 7, again alternating location year over year.
Geographically I get it, and as much as I hate Philly and NYM, that’s our lifelong rivals and the marlins have always kinda just been “there”. It would absolutely suck to lose our toughest/longest rivals.
We’d have a tough time with Tampa every year given how strong they’ve been but like…I don’t care about them.
Also some of these entire divisions are dogshit. Specifically AL West followed by AL South.
I feel like the Rays and Astros should switch here. Get the Texas teams out of the same division/league like all the other multi state teams sans Cali. Also Astros have a history in the NL unlike the Rays.
Just move the Marlins franchise to either Nashville or Raleigh. They have like 120 fans. Keep the NL east rivalries intact and drop the dead weight of Miami.
Please god no on expanding the playoffs. There is already too many teams. Why not just let everyone in the playoffs. Problem is they are adding 2 teams and if you drop one now there is an odd number teams in the league.
Being that I live in Nashville it would suck to be in the same division as the Nashville team. I would really like to be able to cheer for both teams. 1 in AL and 1 in NL would be ideal. Honestly I think it would be bad for both teams markets if they get put in the same division. But Manfred probably doesn’t give 2 shits about that and more likely probably hasn’t even thought about that.
I'm a Braves fan that lives in Nashville and I don't really want an MLB team if for anything because we'll lose the Sounds, the minor league team that's been here since like the 70's.
I’ve been saying this in multiple realignment threads, because they all have the same division, but it’s such a damned boring division. Every other division has at least one good rivalry, and then there’s us. Rivalries take time to build, and aren’t guaranteed.
I have a hard time thinking Tampa won’t be in a division with Yankees and Red Sox. Home games against those two teams is the only thing keeping that franchise alive afaik. I would think it’d be Marlins/Braves/Reds plus whatever southern expansion.
Leaving half the league out from playing each other is preposterous. Might as well have two literal separate leagues. If MLB did go back to keeping them separate, each team would play 15 unique teams each season. Each team in the NFL plays 14 unique teams each season which would be one fewer than MLB who plays 162 games vs. the NFL who only plays 17.
This would also kill ticket sales for the division. Having the Marlins and Rays be 2/3 of our division games and a new team without an established fan base being the rest would be terrible.
They’d be handing us the division on a silver platter for at least a decade straight if they put us in there with the marlins, rays and an expansion team lmao
Tampa/Miami in the same division and Houston/Texas together. It would be better to swap them out. Houston back in the NL and leave Tampa makes more sense.
I really don't see the point in divisions with the scheduling the way it is now. Just do NL and AL with the top however many teams in each getting bracketed for playoffs. It just seems pointless when you don't see the amount of divisional matchups anymore. Am I missing something?
Late to the thread. One oddity that I immediately noticed is Rockies being in a "south" division and the Cardinals in a "north" division. Denver is further north than St. Louis, and conversely, St. Louis is further south than Denver.
They need to keep us in the NL East no matter what. That's like removing the Cowboys from the NFC East, it destroys history and great rivalries in the name of geographic correctness. This isn't the 1920's anymore, we don't need geographically tight divisions to accommodate rail travel, airplane travel goes brrrr
We get the shortest straw on fanbases in this division realignment…. The rivalries would be extremely 1 sided. Marlins fans don’t exist. Tampa fans aren’t the liveliest bunch and I get the impression the Rays are everyone’s second favorite team in Tampa. Nashville is an expansion wildcard. MLB really needs a Vegas Golden Knights instant success story to guarantee a fanbase establishment. Otherwise, they run the risk of Braves fans outnumbering Nashville fans when we come to town because Nashville has been a part of Braves country for a very long time. They aren’t just TBS fans, Nashville was straight up our market region for decades.
I hate the Mets and Phillies but I respect the following they have and their fans help keep games between us lively and intense.
I live in Chattanooga, about half way between Atlanta and Nashville. I’ve always loved traveling to Nashville more than Atlanta (sorry Atlanta) and am also a Predators fan…but if Nashville gets an MLB team, I’ll support, watch and be a fan of them. But, I’m too emotionally invested in my Braves for Nashville to be my number 1 baseball team.
I'm also in Chattanooga, but I feel the opposite of you concerning traveling to Nashville and Atlanta. (Monteagle really bugs me, I guess.)
All that to say is that I've felt like MLB is making a mistake if they don't put a potential Nashville team in the American League.
Sounds like me and the Rays. They’re cool and all, and I watch all other central Florida sports, but I’m a Braves fan through and through.
Nashvillian here…Braves fan all my life. If we got an expansion team, it’d be very difficult for me to switch.
Especially given how bad our professional teams are. That effect is magnified in the MLB, b/c big market teams will always outspend the small market teams.
They realigned MiLB during COVID to reduce travel and now the Sounds play the Stripers. When Stripers come to town, the stadium is full of Braves fans.
I imagine for at least the first generation or so, there will be a lot of "I'm a Nashville/Raleigh fan except when the Braves are in town"
Good thing the team is going to Raleigh instead of Nashville
Raleigh Replants? Lol For real what would a Raleigh team be called? I think they'd do a more Carolina based thing like the Hurricanes. Watch them name it something like the Carolina Blue socks.
Hopeful for Carolina Copperheads but yes most likely they'd go with Carolina not Raleigh.
You think they'd do copperheads when they have the Dbacks?
I mean theres Cardinals and Blue Jays and Orioles... and then theres White & Red Sox...
Yeah, good point, I basically was disproving that thought in my own prior comment.
I think "Carolina Copperheads" goes pretty fuckin hard TBH
Bring back the Carolina Mudcats. Instant contender for best mascot in MLB.
Word!
I get an "NL South" makes sense geographically, but I'm not fan. I prefer to stay in the East.
Yeah, I hate this. I love our rivalries with the Mets, Nats, and Phils. I don’t really care about the Rays or Marlins and obviously the expansion team is new.
The Rays and Marlins combined don’t have enough (active) fans for us to have a rivalry. The most I’ve hated the fish is when Mattingly was their manager and Ronnie kept getting hit…
Mattingly was such a little bitch when he ran the Fish.
Completely tarnished what shine he had carried over as “Donnie Baseball”
I’m old enough to have seen him play for the Nashville Sounds, though to young to remember it. I always loved following him for that reason and saw his # retired in 1999 while I was in college.
Ever since he let some scrub plunk Acuña b/c they couldn’t get him out, I’ve HATED him!
I have a feeling this was created to piss off everyone. Lol
Unfortunately no. With all the discussion of geographically based realignment, people (myself included) keep trying to come up with realignments and this is frankly the one that makes the most sense by a wide margin (if we assume the new NL team is going to be anywhere near the Southeast, which is what has generally been indicated)
As a Tennessean i'd absolutely hate for my new home team to be in a division with my favorite team
Sounds like you have to move.
We already have the Sounds here…😁
Nah. Atlanta’s full. Lmao
Are you kidding? It would be great. Whenever the Braves come here we can easily watch them play and not have to travel to Atlanta. I'd love it!
Can they make a jersey for me to wear to the park that’s half Braves/Nashville team? I live in Chattanooga, and would love to wear something like that to a game they play each other on.
I have seen someone wearing a half Bama/half Auburn football jersey before. So if that affront to God is allowed to exist, I see no reason you wouldn’t be able to find yours!
As a North Carolinian, I'm right there with you. If Raleigh ends up getting a team I pray they end up in the AL.
Of course RDC is going to get a MLB team now, now that I moved out of the state. I lived there for 20 years had to go to Atlanta or Baltimore for AL and NL games. 😫
It’s great, you can see your favorite team play way more than if they weren’t in your division
I feel the same way. I think a Nashville expansion that basically puts them in the current AL Central sounds great though.
Agreed. Need to be nl and al. Too close
As a North Carolinian I think Nashville and Raleigh should just stay hockey cities.
Booooooo. Bring MLB to Raleigh
Would they be the Bulls?
It's kind of nice. I live in South Florida so I can watch the Braves a lot when they play the Marlins.
Same here. I feel like a team in Nashville will get a lot of support but it is part of Braves country and a lot of people are going to have a dilemma in who to root for. If Nashville gets a team, they really need to put them in the AL. This would let them keep the Rockies in the NL too.
I don’t think money is available for a stadium in Nashville
This is me as a Raleigh resident. I would hate my home town team. At least I’d get to see the Braves easily a decent number of times a year.
We might beat our prior divisional winning streak if this happens
Yeah. We would cake walk the division.
I told someone that today too
Mighty confident when the Rays are very capable of being as good as us any given year
So are the Phillies and the Mets and yet we won 14 straight in the 90s/2000s and won another 6 in a row more recently.
They have the same model as the Marlins but are better at execution. Every few years dump/trade the high price guys right when their value is highest and wait for payoff in a few years. Tread water and hope they hit.
They just can’t compete with the Braves payroll so most of the time they will not have the better club. That doesn’t mean they won’t finish higher some years but the odds are definitely stacked against them. The Marlins finishing higher than the Braves this year is not the rule.
Just from a numbers standpoint the Braves will be favored to win this purposed division almost every year unless Nashville has some billionaires willing to spend in the top half of the league every year. I suppose we don’t know that they won’t but we can make a pretty good guess that they won’t considering their first 30 plus years they won’t even be the most followed or preferred team in their area. Baseball is not like hockey. The Braves are already established and have generations of fans in that area.
AL South and AL West would be super unbalanced too. Astros and Mariners would dominate
These divisions are terrible
I'd like to see the Astros and Brewers swapped back to their original leagues in any realignment scenario.
:::checks notes:::
We finished behind Miami last season
An aberration my friend, clearly the exception and not the rule
Our roster is most assuredly better than theirs, but baseball gets more than a little funky
Oof.
I hate Nashville/Raleigh. Pack of cheaters, they are.
Can’t even pick a city!
They win half their home games via forfeit just because the opponents show up to the wrong place!
It'll be Charlotte ...... Knights stadium is MLB ready
It's a nice MILB field but absolutely not the capacity needed for MLB, highly doubt Charlotte gets a team but if so they couldn't play there long term
Except that it's small as hell.
The third baseline has a gorgeous view but unfortunately the current capacity is no where close to adequate.
Worst fans in the Southeast. A bunch of hooligans.
I actually will hate Nashville- i was there during the last WBC and had to beg a sports bar to put the quarterfinal /trea Turner grand slam game on one of their 25 TVs. Itll be the same as their hockey team, nobody really gives a shit or knows what’s going on but they’ll do well attendance/ money wise because of the location
Nashville loves the preds and baseball is huge in Tennessee. I wouldn't let that one bar color your judgement on the city.
I hate Nashville because they think they’re better than East TN.
As someone that lives between Nashville and East TN... they are better. lol
Manchester is my favorite, but I only visit once a year
Knoxville and the surrounding mountains are the best places in TN imo.
I still think having a Nashville/Raleigh team in the same division as us would be a dumb move on MLB’s part. Already a lot of Braves fans across the south, having a southern expansion team in the American League would probably make it easier for them to grab fans rather than switch allegiance to a new division rival.
One of the main goals is to have nearby divisional opponents not only for travel by the teams but encouraging fan travel as well.
It's a little different because of the length of the season, but watching Steelers/Commanders/Cowboys fans pack out Bank of America every time they play the Panthers sucks for everyone involved. Newer franchises should be given a little space to breathe and putting the Braves in the same division as a team that is currently solidly inside their footprint isn't ideal in my opinion.
I state this as a Falcons fan who switched sides when Carolina came into the league (I was 8, don't crucify me)
I think you just made the argument as to why it would be BETTER for MLB and an expansion team trying to sell seats.
The football bit is a totally different story. That’s hometown fans price gauging Steelers/Cowboys fans that one week of the year. I used to know a few Falcons season ticket holders and every season they would look to unload 1-2 games to subsidize the cost of the package. They always sold the Cowboys, Packers, Steelers tickets because they would get top dollar every time.
Marlins and Rays dont show up to Truist park anyways. And the Rays are actually good most the time.
That’s irrelevant to the distance between Nashville/Raleigh and Atlanta, and why they would be an NL team and not an AL team, which is the topic of conversation here.
But I also said it has to do with travel distances for the teams as well. What division are you going to put the Florida teams in if you want to cut down on player travel if they aren’t in the division with Atlanta?
I was just making an observation that unfortunately it wouldnt matter for those 2.
This would be the most lopsided division and just a Braves southeast roadshow. Again, just an observation.
Make one swap that makes sense.
A Nashville MLB team would cut into Braves country. Not a fan.
We draw fans from like 6 states. We'll be fine.
But why would we want to lose fans. Sure will be fine, but still not a great thing in any manner.
Nothing we can do about it. I have a feeling unless that team is successful those people will still be Braves fans.
You just get more people following baseball that were never going to be Braves fans anyways. They just didn’t watch or care about the sport. Now they have a team so they watch.
I think the Braves ownership will fight very hard to make sure an expansion team doesn’t land in NC or Tenn
I feel like Nashville metro historically has been where Cardinals country and Braves country meet. More Braves the further east and south you go. More Cardinals the further west you go.
And then if you go north of Nashville, that's all Reds territory.
Braves probably have the biggest share of the pot thanks to decades of TBS, 750 AM, and their 90s/early 00s dominance.
There's so many transplants that have come to Nashville in last 10 - 15 years, so who really knows what it's like these days...
As a Braves fan in Nashville, I really would rather them not be in the same division if it happened
I think any expansion team really needs to be AL because of how many Braves fans are in the area.
A lot of people that will immediately switch over to Nashville and stop following the Braves were never going to buy season tickets or go to more than one or two games a year anyways. The distance is just too far.
Also it helps drum up interest in the sport for the people that can now actully go to games and be active supporters. The people that were never going to be fans of a team they couldn’t go see regularly now have a team and start following the sport. That helps baseball but doesn’t hurt the Braves at all because they went from not caring to buying tickets and watching games.
The East v. West instead of NL/AL realignment is more intriguing than this
So Braves fan in Florida will be blacked out for about a quarter of the season? Oof.
Like you needed another reason to move?
Pirates still have more NL East titles than the Mets and haven’t been in the division since 1994.
Fuck the Mets.
Yeah I hate this shit. It’s like manufacturing consent. No one asked for this. I want to play the Phillies and the Mets and beat up on the nationals as always. Honestly the marlins would be the first I drop!
We’d still play them but probably only 6 times.
AL 16x3 + 3 vs Red Sox =51 Division 3x13 =39 NL 12x6 =72
The Phils and Mets can have eachother, screw them. Bring on Nashville or Raleigh
Yeah I’m fine with a more natural actual rival in the south. Plus it would make games against the Mets/Phillies even more charged
Personally I’m locked in anytime we play the Mets or Phillies and I think most fans are too. I have no beef with other southern teams aside from the Marlins primarily because the Braves are essentially the southeast’s team. Why would I say fuck Nashville or fuck Raleigh when the majority of baseball fans in those towns are Braves fans currently?
I get you man, I’d still hate the NE team more. But it would be a lot of fun to have a rival next door over a plane flight. I’m in Portland currently and pulling for a PDX expansion so I can drop the M’s as my AL team and start to antagonize my old college friends (i went to UW.)
The old rivalry is better, I’m not trying to act like thats not the cold hard truth. But it would also be fun to be on the ground floor of a new and budding rivalry
Agreed. The Nashville v Atlanta rivalry would eventually be a MUCH bigger rivalry than anything we have had with the Mets, who don’t even consider us their biggest rival.
Shea Jones was/is the ultimate flex.
Right. Not arguing that’s a flex but it’s irrefutable that the Mets consider their biggest rival to be Yankees, even though they aren’t in the same league. They are competing to own the eyeballs and headlines in that market in a “sibling rivalry” of sorts. Their next biggest rival is easily Philly, which is a 2 hour drive and 3 hour train ride down the road.
Braves are a distant 3rd in the eyes of Mets fans, unquestionably.
Sort of like how the Bulldogs are GT’s biggest rival but Georgia souls say their biggest rival is one of Bama/UT/UF.
As others have said, putting a potential Nashville/Raleigh team in the same division as the Braves is going cut into Braves country & maybe limit fan growth.
I think it would be best to put the Nashville/Raleigh team in the AL, which doesn’t fit into their East/West realignment plan. As a Tennessee resident, I’m extremely excited at the prospect of Nashville getting a team & would’ve happily followed them & made them my B Team if they were put in the AL (or even the NL in a different division). If they are in the same division as the Braves, then it’s going to be tough to care.
As someone in the triangle:
Please.
The Nashville/Raleigh team should be in AL. Give me two teams to cheer for.
Ahhhh...regional divisons. Someone alert college football and tell them it can be done.
But why Male Models?
I live near Durham so it would be cool to see Raleigh get an expansion team. This realignment sucks though because I would hate to be in the same division as both the new Raleigh team and the Rays. The Rays have been my AL team for a while now thanks to the Durham Bulls. I’m all for expanding though.
Can't we just do East vs West so I don't have to stay up so late?
Tampa Bay AND the Marlins? No thanks. Put TB in the AL south and bring the Royals over to our division.
This is dumb as shit
Salt Lake City shouldn’t get a team for MLB but could join the Savannah Bananas so we get the (Barn)Stormin Mormons
Also, does this chart mean no Vancouver or Montreal in talks anymore?
2 things:
1) since the 2023 schedule-balancing initiative, we really don't play the division that much more than other league teams anyway (one more home series, one more away series), so you really aren't losing that much in the way of "rivalries." Put another way--the rivalries were already killed, no need to mewl over killing them again.
2) If you're realigning, and you've already added the DH in the NL, I don't see any reason to be precious about keeping NL teams NL and AL teams AL. Just make it "West" and "East" and really lean into the geography-based divisions.
In continuing to think about this, if they really did it, they should go hard on it and also expand the playoffs and balance the schedules even more. 7 games against every team in your "league," alternating year over year between who gets the 4 game home series, and a 4 game series against 9 of the teams in the other league/3 game series against the other 7, again alternating location year over year.
I'd quit watching baseball if we lose Mets/Phillies, Imma be real. Rob Manfred is a fucking terrorist
I’d be ok losing one but both would be kind of terrible.
Double bad for NC Braves fans, would love a Raleigh team but please put them in AL!
Agreed. Raleigh or Nashville should be in the AL and the Braves should stay NL.
It seems like some area might have an easier time seeing the Braves !
Geographically I get it, and as much as I hate Philly and NYM, that’s our lifelong rivals and the marlins have always kinda just been “there”. It would absolutely suck to lose our toughest/longest rivals.
We’d have a tough time with Tampa every year given how strong they’ve been but like…I don’t care about them.
Also some of these entire divisions are dogshit. Specifically AL West followed by AL South.
I feel like the Rays and Astros should switch here. Get the Texas teams out of the same division/league like all the other multi state teams sans Cali. Also Astros have a history in the NL unlike the Rays.
I don’t like it, not one bit honestly.
The NL South would be just an Atlanta Braves show case. Probably strengthing Braves country.
Maybe it would help the Tampa fans be more invovled, but as it stands they never show up to Truist park like if the Bucs were in town for football.
As much as I hate the Phillies and Mets with all of my heart, it would suck to not be in the same division as them :/
Trying to butt us out of the Braves-Mets-Phillies hate triangle is pure heresy.
Just move the Marlins franchise to either Nashville or Raleigh. They have like 120 fans. Keep the NL east rivalries intact and drop the dead weight of Miami.
Please god no on expanding the playoffs. There is already too many teams. Why not just let everyone in the playoffs. Problem is they are adding 2 teams and if you drop one now there is an odd number teams in the league.
To everyone saying we would boat race this division, we would have finished in third behind Miami and Tampa last year.
Second time this would happen in my lifetime. Still hate the Astros, Padres, Reds, Giants, and Dodgers.
Already starting a feud with Nashville in my head
Nashville is Braves country for the most part. Would be really bad if they were in the same division in my opinion.
Being that I live in Nashville it would suck to be in the same division as the Nashville team. I would really like to be able to cheer for both teams. 1 in AL and 1 in NL would be ideal. Honestly I think it would be bad for both teams markets if they get put in the same division. But Manfred probably doesn’t give 2 shits about that and more likely probably hasn’t even thought about that.
I read this and thought... What do you mean? The Phillies and Mets are still NL East and then I saw that Atl wasn't. I don't like it at all.
I get it, but I don’t see them moving Phillies and Mets. The Phillies/Braves rivalry has to stay
Why do we need divisions?
I'm a Braves fan that lives in Nashville and I don't really want an MLB team if for anything because we'll lose the Sounds, the minor league team that's been here since like the 70's.
The best option for realignment is doing four divisions total, two in each league, east and west.
I’d rather have more division winners than WC teams in the playoffs, personally. And hey, we’d never get outspent in that division.
I just really like hating the Mets and Phillies.
Me too. Would be weird not having that 3 team knife fight.
YES PLEASE
I’ve been saying this in multiple realignment threads, because they all have the same division, but it’s such a damned boring division. Every other division has at least one good rivalry, and then there’s us. Rivalries take time to build, and aren’t guaranteed.
Honestly, sure.
🤷♂️
The Nashville/Raleigh team should be in the AL and Portland/SLC added to the NL.
I have a hard time thinking Tampa won’t be in a division with Yankees and Red Sox. Home games against those two teams is the only thing keeping that franchise alive afaik. I would think it’d be Marlins/Braves/Reds plus whatever southern expansion.
NL west would be brutal. Braves would feast in the south.
18 games vs divisional opponents
9 games vs other divisions
No games NL vs AL
Leaving half the league out from playing each other is preposterous. Might as well have two literal separate leagues. If MLB did go back to keeping them separate, each team would play 15 unique teams each season. Each team in the NFL plays 14 unique teams each season which would be one fewer than MLB who plays 162 games vs. the NFL who only plays 17.
Still beats the pre-three division alignment when we were in the NL West
I would love to get 2 of the biggest spending teams out of our division
Tampa Bay would be a serious headache
CLE and PITT and DET are all within a 2-3 hour drive of each other, they should be in the same division.
Some of these divisions look so lopsided.
NL South would be a cakewalk for us outside of the Rays maybe. But they seem to be losing that analytical edge they once had.
This would also kill ticket sales for the division. Having the Marlins and Rays be 2/3 of our division games and a new team without an established fan base being the rest would be terrible.
They’d be handing us the division on a silver platter for at least a decade straight if they put us in there with the marlins, rays and an expansion team lmao
Marlins and Rays both had better records than the Braves last year
what a god awful division that would be, love how Colorado is AL south
We have to play Cal Raleigh in Nashville eighteen times a year?
Huh?
Just a shitty joke about the Nashville/Raleigh slot, is all. Lol.
No what would suck is Nashville or Raleigh getting an MLB team and not Charlotte
Tampa/Miami in the same division and Houston/Texas together. It would be better to swap them out. Houston back in the NL and leave Tampa makes more sense.
I really don't see the point in divisions with the scheduling the way it is now. Just do NL and AL with the top however many teams in each getting bracketed for playoffs. It just seems pointless when you don't see the amount of divisional matchups anymore. Am I missing something?
Really hope MIA continues their sitting rebuild if this happens. Our division is grossly weakened.
Not a chance MLB would put Tampa and Miami in the same division.
My god those are going to be some empty stadiums.
As soon one who lives in Tampa. I support this.
Divisions with only 4 teams seem a bad idea
We'd likely run this division, but I still don't like it
I want the Raleigh team to be in the AL so I can root for both teams and not feel as guilty...
Al south fucking sucks. You had a Missouri-Chicago division set up perfectly but they didn’t want to abolish the AL and NL
Whoever put this proposed alignment together must’ve had a cartograph of some sort. I wonder if the same could be done for the NCAA.
If division titles are important to you well this looks like we drew Aces.
Late to the thread. One oddity that I immediately noticed is Rockies being in a "south" division and the Cardinals in a "north" division. Denver is further north than St. Louis, and conversely, St. Louis is further south than Denver.
They need to keep us in the NL East no matter what. That's like removing the Cowboys from the NFC East, it destroys history and great rivalries in the name of geographic correctness. This isn't the 1920's anymore, we don't need geographically tight divisions to accommodate rail travel, airplane travel goes brrrr
Please let this happen. NL south and AL west stink so bad