Cody Christie

Image courtesy of © Stan Szeto-Imagn Images Not long ago, player development felt like it followed a fairly rigid timeline. Top prospects dominated at every level on the way up and either established themselves in the big leagues by their mid-twenties or were quietly replaced by the next wave of hype. If you were not producing by 25, the odds of ever becoming an impact player dropped dramatically. That is not how things look anymore. Across Major League Baseball, teams are starting to see meaningful production arrive later in a player’s career arc. Development is no longer a straight line, and the traditional prospect window may be expanding beyond what organizations once believed possible. Players like Brent Rooker and Ryan O'Hearn spent years bouncing between organizations before emerging as legitimate contributors in their late twenties. They were not top 100 mainstays at the time of their breakout and, in some cases, had already been designated for assignment. Rooker was drafted by the Twins and spent time in the Padres and Royals organizations before finding a home with the Athletics. He became a first-time All-Star at age 28 while combining for a 138 OPS+ over the last three seasons. O’Hearn made his first All-Star team in 2025, when he was 31 years old. Over the last three seasons, he has an OPS+ of 122, but will be playing for his third different organization during that stretch. Those stories show that the hitters simply were not finished developing yet. Even pitchers are following a similar trajectory as the learning curve for pitch design and sequencing continues to grow more complex. Twins right-hander Joe Ryan is a perfect example. Ryan was not a top-tier national prospect coming out of college and did not reach the majors until his age-25 season after being drafted in the seventh round. His rise came through incremental improvement rather than immediate dominance, and he made his first All-Star appearance at 29. With the help of modern pitch design and a better understanding of how to deploy his fastball shape at the top of the zone, Ryan developed into a frontline starter without ever carrying the label of future ace through the minor leagues. That evolution raises an important question about how teams are handling their best young talent. Over the past several seasons, organizations have aggressively pushed elite prospects to the upper minors. Assignments to the high minors with little success at lower levels have become more common, especially for players with standout tools or advanced plate discipline metrics. The thinking has been that challenging players earlier allows teams to maximize their prime years at the big league level. But if development is stretching deeper into a player’s late twenties, that approach may carry more risk than reward. Not every hitter benefits from facing advanced sequencing before mastering the fundamentals at lower levels. Pitchers who skip steps in their development may struggle to build the command foundation needed to survive a third trip through a major league lineup. In a sport where mechanical adjustments and pitch usage changes can unlock new ceilings well into a player’s professional career, forcing a timeline may ultimately slow long-term growth. The modern development environment is more individualized than ever. Players now have access to biomechanical data, bat-tracking metrics, and pitch-modeling tools that simply did not exist a decade ago. Improvements can happen quickly, but they can also arrive later as players learn how to translate raw ability into game-ready skills. A hitter who struggled to lift the ball at 24 might unlock a swing path adjustment at 27 that completely changes his offensive profile. That reality could push teams toward a more patient model. Instead of viewing prospect status as a ticking clock, organizations may need to think of development as an ongoing process that does not end once a player reaches Triple-A or even the major leagues. The success stories of late bloomers are becoming too frequent to ignore, and they challenge the long-held belief that impact talent must arrive early to matter. In the end, the league may be entering an era in which both timelines coexist. Some prospects will continue to rise quickly and thrive immediately, while others will take a more winding road before finding their footing. The teams that best balance urgency with patience may be the ones that uncover the next wave of contributors hiding just beyond the traditional breakout window. What players will be baseball’s next late bloomers? Leave a comment and start the discussion. View full article

Image courtesy of © Patrick Breen/The Republic / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images One thing is for certain. Team USA is doing whatever it can to improve upon its runner-up finish from 2023. Manager Mark DeRosa has assembled a star-studded roster for next year’s World Baseball Classic, one that looks far more equipped to finish the job after coming up short against Shohei Ohtani and Team Japan three years ago. The 2026 World Baseball Classic will begin on March 5 and run through March 17. While rosters remain subject to change based on injuries and availability, the list of confirmed major leaguers already reads like an All-Star ballot stuffed by an overly enthusiastic fan. This time around, the United States is not just leaning on star power in the lineup. The pitching staff finally matches the ambition. “Building this team was never easy, but it was done with purpose and pride,” said DeRosa. “These players know what it means to wear USA across their chest, and we’re ready to go to work and bring the World Baseball Classic trophy back home.” Team USA’s roster features 30 players combining for 65 All-Star Game selections. Four players on the roster have won at least one MVP award. Judge, a three-time winner (2022, 2024, 2025 AL MVP), is joined by Bryce Harper, a two-time winner (2015, 2021). Besides that dynamic duo, Paul Goldschmidt (2022) and Clayton Kershaw (2014) also bring MVP seasons to the roster. In total, the roster combines for 22 Silver Slugger Awards, 22 All-Stars, 13 Rawlings Gold Glove Awards, six Cy Young Awards, and five Rookies of the Year. Seven players on the roster have won at least one gold medal for the U.S. in international competition, totaling 12. The Captain Sets the Tone Everything starts with Aaron Judge. The Yankees slugger will serve as Team USA’s captain and emotional centerpiece, a role that fits as easily as one of his tape measure home runs lands in the left field seats. Judge skipped the 2023 tournament, and his presence alone changes how opposing managers build their game plan. Judge anchors an outfield group that feels explosive. Byron Buxton, coming off his best big-league season, brings game-changing athleticism and the ability to turn any routine fly ball into an adventure for opposing hitters. Corbin Carroll adds speed, on-base skills, and left-handed thump. Pete Crow-Armstrong rounds out the group with elite defense and energy that plays well in a short tournament setting. It will be interesting to see if the veteran, Buxton, gets more time in center than the younger, better defender (Crow-Armstrong). Catchers and Infielders Everywhere You Look If there is a position where DeRosa will struggle to pick a name for the lineup, it is catcher. Cal Raleigh, the 2025 AL MVP runner-up, provides power from both sides of the plate and has developed into one of the game’s better pitch framers. Will Smith offers postseason experience and a steady offensive profile that should play well against elite international pitching. The infield is a problem in the best possible way. Bobby Witt Jr. and Gunnar Henderson give DeRosa two franchise cornerstones who can play premium positions and do damage in every conceivable way. Harper slides into the mix with postseason scars and an edge that fits October baseball, even if this is March. Alex Bregman and Goldschmidt add veteran credibility and a sense that no moment is too big. Ernie Clement and Brice Turang provide defensive flexibility and speed, the kinds of skills that quietly swing pool play games. Kyle Schwarber rounds out the group as the designated hitter, and yes, the rest of the world still has to deal with Schwarber in a high-leverage environment. Finally, the Arms Show Up The biggest revelation comes on the mound. For years, Team USA struggled to convince top-tier pitchers to interrupt spring training and compete in the WBC. That excuse does not hold this time. Paul Skenes and Tarik Skubal, the reigning Cy Young winners, front the rotation, and that alone changes the entire dynamic of the tournament. Skubal brings precision and dominance from the left side, while Skenes arrives with the kind of raw stuff that turns international lineups into highlight reels for the wrong reasons. Logan Webb provides reliability and ground balls, Joe Ryan adds deception, and Matthew Boyd brings experience to the back of the rotation. Realistically, starters will be on limited pitch counts, so there could be piggy-backing or turning the game over to some exciting relief arms. The bullpen is just as loud. Mason Miller’s triple-digit fastball feels unfair in a one-inning role. David Bednar and Clay Holmes give DeRosa late-inning options with postseason mileage. Griffin Jax adds an extra element of pride as a US Air Force Academy graduate. Garrett Whitlock, Michael Wacha, Garrett Cleavinger, Brad Keller, Nolan McLean, and Gabe Speier deepen the group. While Kershaw, briefly stepping out of retirement for one last ride, adds a layer of sentimentality that feels perfectly on brand for this event. This is not a staff built to survive. It is built to overwhelm. The Path Through Pool Play Team USA will warm up with exhibitions against the Giants on March 3 and the Rockies on March 4 in Scottsdale, Arizona. Pool B play opens on March 6 at Houston’s Daikin Park against Brazil at 8 p.m. ET. Great Britain follows on March 7, Mexico on March 9, and Italy on March 10. If the Americans advance, the quarterfinals will also be held in Houston on March 13 and 14. The semifinals and finals move to Miami’s loanDepot Park from March 15 through March 17, where memories of 2023 still linger. This roster makes one thing clear: Team USA is not interested in moral victories or silver medals. The talent is overwhelming, the depth is real, and the excuses are gone. Redemption is not guaranteed in baseball, but for the first time in a long time, it feels properly within reach. What stands out about Team USA’s roster? How will the team match up against the best international teams? Leave a comment and start the discussion. View full article

Image courtesy of © Lon Horwedel-Imagn Images Tarik Skubal has spent the last two seasons doing everything a pitcher can do to force baseball to pay attention. Back-to-back American League Cy Young Awards tend to do that. What no one expected was that his loudest statement might come in a conference room in Arizona instead of on a mound in Detroit. Skubal is entering his final year of team control through arbitration, the most uncomfortable space in the sport for truly elite players. He is too good to fit neatly into the traditional arbitration box, yet not quite a free agent. That tension finally snapped this week, and the ripple effects are going to be felt far beyond the Tigers' clubhouse. Why This Case Was Different Arbitration usually runs on rails. Players with fewer than five years of service time are compared almost exclusively to others in their same service class, with only limited wiggle room for special accomplishments like an MVP or Cy Young Award. At times, those hearings can seem mostly cut-and-paste. Skubal and his agent, Scott Boras, took advantage of a different set of rules. Players entering their platform year before free agency with five years of service time are allowed a much wider range of comparisons. Instead of being boxed in by his peers, Skubal could argue his value in the broader context of the game’s elite. That distinction had never really been pushed to this extreme. Boras pushed it anyway. Who Skubal Compared Himself To With that wider berth, Skubal was no longer arguing against other arbitration-eligible pitchers. He was placing himself next to Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander at $43.3 million per year, Zack Wheeler at $42 million, Jacob deGrom at $37 million, and Blake Snell at $36.4 million. That is why the filing numbers looked so absurd on paper. MLB Trade Rumors estimated Skubal at $17.8 million using its standard model. The Tigers filed at $19 million. Skubal filed at $32 million. That kind of gap is usually a sign someone is about to lose badly. Elite players and agents often avoid that risk because losing can set a precedent just as easily as winning. Skubal embraced it. The Decision That Changed Everything On Thursday, news broke that Skubal won his case. The ruling shattered the previous arbitration salary record of $31 million set by Juan Soto in 2024. More importantly, it represented a raise of $21.85 million, more than double the previous record increase of $9.6 million set by deGrom in 2019. That alone would have made the decision historic. The real impact goes much further. By validating comparisons to free agent level contracts, the arbitration panel effectively moved the ceiling for what a five-year service player can credibly argue. That is a fundamental shift in how the system works. Long-Term Ramifications for the Game Skubal’s win opens the door for the next wave of young stars to push their arbitration numbers closer to true market value. Paul Skenes, Gunnar Henderson, and Elly De La Cruz are the obvious names, but they will not be the last. If platform year players can credibly argue salaries approaching free agent levels, front offices are going to be forced into harder choices earlier. Extensions become more expensive. Trades become more tempting. Teams that rely on squeezing surplus value out of arbitration years may find that surplus shrinking fast. This is not just about one pitcher and one team. It is about how risk is distributed between clubs and players during the most valuable years of a star’s career. What This Means for the Next CBA All of this is happening with the sport drifting toward another labor fight. The current collective bargaining agreement expires after the 2026 season, and both sides already appear dug in. A lockout feels less like a possibility and more like a planning assumption. Skubal’s case gives owners a fresh incentive to push for changes to the arbitration system. From their perspective, the cost certainty that arbitration once provided just took a serious hit. From the players’ side, this ruling strengthens the argument that elite performance should be paid closer to elite value, even before free agency. That tension will be front and center when negotiations begin. Skubal did more than win an arbitration hearing. He stress-tested a system that has defined player pay for decades and exposed just how elastic it can be when the right player is willing to push it. For years, arbitration has been a place where stars were asked to accept discounts in exchange for future freedom. Skubal just proved that freedom can begin to arrive earlier. Whether baseball chooses to adapt or resist will help define the next era of the sport. How will the Skubal ruling impact MLB for the long term? Leave a comment and start the discussion. View full article

Image courtesy of © Vincent Carchietta-Imagn Images For decades, baseball fans knew precisely where to point when the term Evil Empire came up. It was synonymous with the Bronx, with pinstripes, and with a franchise that could outspend and outlast just about anyone. That label has not gone away. It has simply changed zip codes. The Los Angeles Dodgers have steadily taken over that role, and Kyle Tucker’s recent contract may have been the moment that removed any remaining doubt. Tucker’s four-year, $240 million deal added yet another superstar salary to a roster that already feels excessive by league standards. Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell, Freddie Freeman, Will Smith, and Tyler Glasnow are all locked into nine-figure contracts. Eight players at that level is no longer a coincidence. It is an organizational identity. What separates the Dodgers from past big spenders is that the money extends far beyond the payroll line. SponsorUnited founder and CEO Bob Lynch has pointed to Los Angeles as a financial anomaly, even among baseball’s largest markets. Projections suggest the Dodgers are on pace to become the first North American sports franchise to generate $200 million in sponsorship revenue annually. Their portfolio includes 76 sponsors, with a significant international footprint highlighted by 20 Japanese brands and several new agreements signed during the 2025 season. Those international deals are not accidental. The additions of Ohtani, Yamamoto, and Roki Sasaki did more than upgrade the roster. They transformed the Dodgers into a global brand in a way no other MLB team can currently replicate. That reach shows up in the size of their sponsorship agreements, which average roughly five times more than the league norm. Only a small group of teams clear $100 million in sponsorship revenue each year, and while the Yankees remain on that list, the Dodgers have paired their income with something New York has not delivered in a while. Championships. Los Angeles is fresh off a second consecutive World Series title, built on the largest active payroll in baseball and a creative use of deferred money that pushes more than $1 billion in commitments into the future. To critics, that structure confirms everything they dislike about the Dodgers. The argument is familiar: a system that favors massive markets and leaves smaller revenue teams chasing a moving target. That frustration boiled over again after the Dodgers swept the Brewers in the 2025 National League Championship Series. Manager Dave Roberts did not shy away from the backlash. During the on-field celebration, he leaned into the criticism with a pointed remark: "Before this season started, they said the Dodgers are ruining baseball. Let's get four more wins and really ruin baseball." Rather than pushing back against the villain label, the Dodgers have leaned into it. This is a franchise comfortable playing the role of the antagonist, unbothered by complaints from around the league. They understand how their success looks from the outside, and they are not pretending otherwise. These remarks ring especially true given the ongoing narrative surrounding the Dodgers. Last season, Los Angeles had an estimated $417 million MLB Tax Payroll, $75 million more than the second-highest, the New York Mets. It is also important to note that Los Angeles has operated within the rules. They did not invent deferred contracts or international marketing. They simply used every available lever more effectively than anyone else. By combining financial creativity, elite scouting, player development, and star power, the Dodgers have built a roster that feels unfair and entirely legal at the same time. Meanwhile, the team that once defined the Evil Empire image has faded from that conversation. The Yankees have not won a World Series since 2009. The Dodgers have collected three championships this decade alone. For the other 29 fanbases, resentment tends to follow results, and right now that resentment is firmly aimed at Chavez Ravine. Looking ahead, the Dodgers’ influence may extend beyond the standings. The current Collective Bargaining Agreement expires after the 2026 season, and it is hard to imagine labor talks that do not reference the financial gap Los Angeles has helped expose. Whether their model becomes a focal point in negotiations remains an open question. What is not in doubt is that the Dodgers will enter next season as favorites once again, with the resources to maintain their core and keep adding to it. Are the Dodgers bad for baseball? Reasonable people can disagree. What is clear is that they are setting the standard, collecting titles, and embracing the role of the sport’s new Evil Empire without hesitation. View full article

Image courtesy of © Brad Penner-Imagn Images The collective bargaining agreement between Major League Baseball and the Players Association does not expire until December of this year. Still, the conversations that will define the next deal are already well underway. For the league, the union, and fans caught in the middle, the upcoming season is shaping up to be one dominated by labor discussions and big-picture questions about how the sport is structured. From the league’s side, there is a growing sense that MLB wants to revisit how money is distributed and how teams are allowed, or required, to spend it. Commissioner Rob Manfred has been increasingly open about potential changes, including ideas designed to alter the rhythm of free agency itself. One concept he floated recently was a winter free-agent signing deadline, something that would compress negotiations into a narrower window and potentially create more urgency and attention around the process. The Players Association, however, appears to be coming to the table with a very different set of priorities. Based on comments made by MLBPA president Tony Clark to The Athletic, the union is focused less on cosmetic changes and more on whether the current system actually promotes competition and fairly compensates players. “Free agency thrives when competition thrives — on and off the field,” Clark said in a statement to The Athletic. “If the owners are genuinely interested in improving free agency, there are many ways to get there, and we look forward to having that discussion in the coming months." “But if their true interest is to blow up the very system on which our streak of uninterrupted seasons has been built — with the game reaching record heights and poised to go even higher, no less — that would be a self-defeating miscalculation of massive proportions.” At the core of this looming negotiation is an uncomfortable reality about how the sport currently operates. Over the last decade, teams in the bottom half of the league by revenue have essentially been shut out of the ultimate goal. No bottom-15 revenue club has won a World Series since the Royals in 2015. At the same time, players collectively receive less than half of league revenues, a smaller share than athletes in any other major American sport. For many players, the system is doubly restrictive. Half the league enters each season with little realistic chance of winning a championship, and many players are locked into team control for up to six years before they even have access to free agency. When they finally reach that point, the biggest rewards are concentrated among a small group of star players, while the majority remain underpaid relative to the revenue the game generates. That imbalance is why the MLBPA should be pushing aggressively for structural change. A system that overwhelmingly benefits big-market teams and a handful of superstars while leaving most players with limited earning power and competitive opportunity is difficult to defend. Competitive balance matters not just for fans, but for the health of the union’s membership. The league, for its part, has increasingly framed the issue as one of incentivizing lower spending clubs to invest more in their rosters. That framing quickly leads to the most polarizing concept in baseball labor talks: a salary cap. When asked recently whether a cap would be a nonstarter in the next negotiation, Manfred was quick to deflect responsibility to the union. “That’s a Tony Clark question, I mean, it really is,” Manfred said on the radio. “Until I got elected commissioner, all I did was labor relations. That’s how I made my living. I’ve never been in a negotiation where, before the first piece of paper went across the table, I, or anyone I represented, was out there saying, ‘This, we absolutely will not talk about.’ I just think it’s a hard way to begin a negotiation.” The Players Association has not softened its stance, even if it has not explicitly engaged with every hypothetical. In response to Manfred’s comments, the union emphasized both its priorities and its long memory. “Players and fans want a full season of competitive baseball,” the MLBPA said. “The league and owners say they want to avoid missing games, but at the same time they appear to be dead-set on trying to force players into a system that, the last time they proposed it, led to the most missed games ever and a cancelled World Series.” While Manfred has insisted he is not committed to a cap, many of the ideas he continues to reference resemble the economic structures used in cap leagues like the NFL, NBA, and NHL. That includes not just an upper spending limit, but also a salary floor that would require teams to spend a minimum amount on payroll. When asked directly how to encourage low-spending teams to invest more, Manfred pointed to that exact model. “The question of incentivization is a really important one. Three other sports have dealt with it by having a rule: you got to spend,” Manfred said. “Everybody talks about the cap piece. The cap piece comes with another piece where you have to spend. And I think mandating a certain level of commitment in terms of spending in the right kind of economic system can be a good thing.” From a competitive standpoint, the idea of a salary floor is difficult to argue against. Under the current system, there is little reason for some smaller market owners to push payrolls higher when the gap between them and the biggest spenders can reach hundreds of millions of dollars. This season alone, the Dodgers’ luxury tax bill exceeds the entire payroll of more than half the league. That is not a sustainable definition of competitive balance. Manfred has also tied these labor discussions to broader changes in baseball’s media landscape. With regional sports networks continuing to decline and streaming platforms gaining leverage, the commissioner has openly discussed a future where MLB packages both national and local broadcasting rights together in new ways. That kind of overhaul would almost certainly be linked to changes in revenue sharing and labor economics. “People often say that when you make a (labor) deal bigger, it’s harder to get it done,” Manfred said last summer. “This is one of those areas where a bigger deal, in terms of media, labor, revenue sharing, actually gives you trade-offs to accomplish things.” Despite the tension, Manfred has repeatedly emphasized the importance of maintaining momentum. The rule changes of the last few seasons, particularly the pitch clock, have revitalized fan interest, something he views as a significant asset heading into negotiations. “When you have momentum like we have that you’ve worked as hard as we have to get, you know that is a force that puts people in a frame of mind that they should understand they need to make an agreement, OK?” Manfred said. “Despite that momentum, we have a couple of issues that we hear about from our fans all the time: blackouts and the perception that some teams are not competitive.” Those two issues are deeply intertwined with labor, revenue, and spending rules. How MLB and the MLBPA choose to address them will define the next era of the sport. History suggests that talk of helping small market teams often precedes calls for a cap, but it does not guarantee one. There are paths to reform that stop short of that outcome. Whether ownership pursues those alternatives or pushes for a more dramatic overhaul remains to be seen. For now, one thing is clear. With the CBA clock ticking and both sides openly staking out philosophical ground, baseball’s next labor fight is no longer a distant concern. It is already here. What changes do you envision from the next CBA? Leave a comment and start the discussion. View full article

Image courtesy of © David Banks-Imagn Images Major League Baseball has not exactly stood still under commissioner Rob Manfred. The pitch clock reshaped the pace of play. The shift ban changed how hitters and defenses interact. The ghost runner became a permanent late-inning companion. Next season, the automatic ball strike challenge system arrives. On Thursday, the commissioner floated something that could dwarf all of that. Appearing on WFAN’s The Carton Show, Manfred spoke openly about expanding the league to 32 teams, ending a run of nearly 30 years with 30 franchises. It was not framed as a distant hypothetical either. He made it sound like a natural next step for a sport that still sees demand in multiple markets. “When people want your product, you ought to try to find a way to sell it to them,” Manfred said. “It’s kind of basic.” Expansion itself is not a surprise. Manfred has been comfortable talking about it for years and reiterated recently that he hopes to choose two new cities before his planned retirement in 2029. The new wrinkle is what comes next. Once those teams are added, the commissioner made it clear that the current league structure would be on the table and likely needs to be adjusted. That likely means moving away from the American League-National League framework that has defined the sport for more than a century. Instead, MLB could follow the NBA and NHL's model, with conferences or leagues organized primarily by geography. The driving force behind that idea is travel. Manfred emphasized that reducing the physical grind on players is a major motivation. It is also a way to get the MLBPA on board, as it benefits their clients and creates more jobs. “It does a ton for us from a format perspective. You would realign, you would do it along geographic lines, which could alleviate a ton of the travel burden that’s on players.” “Remember, we ask our players [to play] 162 times in 186 days. So most of the [time] between 162 and 186 [is] travel right? So you can eliminate a lot of that travel, make it less burdensome, which would be a great thing in terms of player health and safety.” While the American League and National League have existed for 125 years, they have not truly operated as separate entities for a long time. Different rulebooks and umpire crews disappeared decades ago, and interleague play has been standard since the late 1990s. From that perspective, the historical barrier is already more symbolic than functional. Manfred also pointed to the postseason and the way games fit into fans’ schedules. Geographic alignment could clean up some of the awkward start times that come with cross-country playoff series. “You know we have those four window days that I love, right? You get four baseball games in a day. It’s awesome. But when you think about the fans in the individual markets, you always end up with, because of the way we’re set up, you know, you get Boston versus Anaheim in one of the early rounds. So you’re either going to be too late for the fans in Boston or too early.” “So if you realign geographically, you would look more like other sports where you play up East into the World Series and West into the World Series. And that 10 o’clock game on the West Coast that sometimes is a problem for us becomes a prime-time game on the West Coast for the two teams that are playing. So there’s a lot of advantages to it.” Manfred described a possible structure of eight divisions, each with four teams, and an effort to keep clubs from the same city out of the same division. If we assume one expansion team lands in the East and one in the West, a rough, very unofficial sketch could look like this. NL East: Phillies, Mets, Nationals, Pirates NL North: Cubs, Cardinals, Reds, Brewers NL South: Braves, Marlins, Rays, East expansion team NL West: Dodgers, Giants, Padres, Diamondbacks AL East: Red Sox, Yankees, Orioles, Blue Jays AL North: Tigers, Guardians, White Sox, Twins AL South: Royals, Astros, Rangers, Rockies AL West: Angels, Mariners, Athletics, West expansion team To be clear, MLB has not said how the division would realign. There are some obvious issues to iron out with any realignment plan. This version is simply a way to illustrate how dramatically the landscape could change if this plan moves forward. Expansion and realignment might not be the only structural ideas on the commissioner’s whiteboard. Manfred was also asked about the NBA Cup and the idea of an in-season baseball tournament. He acknowledged that the league has discussed similar concepts, but sounded far less enthusiastic about the idea. “We’ve talked about split seasons we’ve talked about in season tournaments. We do understand that 162 [games] is a long pull. I think the difficulty to accomplish those sort of in season events you almost inevitably start talking about fewer regular-season games.” “It is a much more complicated thing in our sport than it is in other sports because of all of our season-long records. You’re playing around with something that people care a lot about.” Manfred again confirmed that he expects to step down when his contract ends in January 2029. Whether he completes all of these changes himself or hands some of them to a successor remains to be seen. Either way, the next commissioner may not just oversee baseball’s future but be tasked with guiding a sport that has already begun to redraw its own boundaries. How will expansion impact MLB? How would you realign the divisions? Leave a comment and start the discussion. View full article