Atlanta Braves Morning Chop: what could be the benefits of expansion and realignment?

Geography Lessons

The BA bracketing put Atlanta into the ‘East’ Division with Baltimore, Cincinnati, Miami, Philly, Pittsburgh, Tampa Bay, and Washington.

They also put both Chicago teams in the ‘Midwest’ and both New York teams in the ‘North’.  I don’t know that fans would go for that on a consistent basis, but they might have to.

I am certain that the Orioles – while Peter Angelos is still alive (he’s 88) – would never consent to having his team in the same division as the Nationals.

But including the assumptions above, much of the same travel benefits can still be had.  As such, I have a slightly different proposal:

• EAST/SOUTHEAST:  Atlanta, Miami, Charlotte (once Rays move), Cincy, Baltimore, St. Louis, Houston, Texas
• NORTHEAST:  Toronto, New York Yankees and Mets, Boston, Washington, Montreal, Philadelphia, Chicago White Sox
• MIDWEST:  Chicago Cubs, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Minnesota, Colorado
• WEST:  Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Oakland, LA Angels and Dodgers, San Diego, Arizona

If the Chicago teams could live with one another, then swap the ChiSox with Pittsburgh.

I could imagine road trips in which teams might play both LA/NY/Chicago teams for a week and then head straight back home.  Or other combinations like Astros and the Rangers, Montreal and Toronto, Seattle and Portland, Atlanta and Charlotte, Baltimore/Washington.

On top of the better travel arrangements your intra-divisional travel is also much better, with significantly better-compacted geographical ranges.

Benefits?

Typically in an major league expansion draft (the last one for MLB happened in 1997), a team is allowed to protect a certain number of players.  In 1997, the rules were as follows (with 28 teams at the time):

• Round 1: each expansion team selected 14 players.  Each team protected 15 from their entire organization and could only lose 1 player.  Some with limited minor league service time were exempted (generally speaking, they were those not eligible for the Rule 5 draft).
• Round 2:  each team could protect 3 more players and lose only 1.
• Round 3:  same as Round 2, though only 7 picks were made by Arizona and Tampa Bay, for 35 total players.

That now gets to the part I wanted to talk about:  the dilution of talent.

Each level of a major league team and its affiliates has roughly 25 players.  So that’s close to 200 players (+/-) associated with each club overall.

Adding 2 teams means 400 new baseball jobs – 50 of them being major league roles (not counting injuries).

So given the current level of talent around the league, are there 50 more players you’d like to see on the field?  26 more pitchers?

Now ask yourself what teams might be better able to withstand an expansion draft.  There are a couple of answers:

• The ‘richer’ clubs with their better players on extended contracts at high rates (expansion clubs would be reticent to draft these players
• The savvy clubs with deep farm systems that could afford to lose a prospect or two.

If this were happening today, this latter group is where the Braves would be – and those 15 protected players would likely be dominated by the up-and-coming best prospects since Atlanta would certainly be a target of these projected Portland and Montreal franchises.

But with this farm system, not all could be protected.  Some really good players would be lost.  That’s why I wouldn’t want to see an expansion draft today… but maybe by 2025 or so.

But while 7 years is a long way off for projecting future players, it’s certainly not a long way off when considering organizational preparation.

Next: The Trading Game, Featuring Nick

Will it happen?  I think there’s a good chance.  Could the Braves ultimately benefit?  Gut feel is ‘maybe a bit better than most clubs’.  But it’s all food for thought at this point.