Kansas City Royals: MLB expansion would drastically change league

The Kansas City Royals are currently a part of the American League Central, but if Major League Baseball expands and welcomes in two new teams, the Royals could call a new division home.

What would Kansas City Royals fans think of a longer postseason with more teams involved? What about a realignment of divisions? Well, according to Tracy Ringolsby of Baseball America, these are possibilities should the league opt to add expansion teams.

"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."

According to Ringolsby, Portland could be an option to get a baseball team and so could Montreal. If this happened, the MLB would have 32 teams and could shake up the current divisional structure.

One of Ringolsby’s suggestions was to have four divisions with eight teams in each. This would mean teams would play their divisional foes 12 times as well as every team NOT in their division in one three-game series. The league would have 156 games a year rather than the current 162 game schedule.

The postseason would consist of the four divisional winners and then the eight best teams who didn’t win the division would battle it out in a series of Wild Card games. Those four winners would advance to face the division champs. This would allow for the postseason to last longer and for more teams to be able to participate. This, in turn, would get more fans into the sport supposedly.

As for the realignment of the divisions, it could look like this:

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"East: Atlanta, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Miami, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Tampa Bay and Washington.North: Boston, Cleveland, Detroit, Minnesota, Montreal, both New York franchises and Toronto.Midwest: Both Chicago franchises, Colorado, Houston, Kansas City, Milwaukee, St. Louis and Texas.West: Anaheim, Arizona, Los Angeles, Oakland, Portland, San Diego, San Francisco and Seattle."

This would put the Kansas City Royals in the same division as the Cubs, White Sox, Rockies, Astros, Brewers, Cardinals, and Rangers. They’d only be sticking with the White Sox from the current AL Central and would absorb most of the NL Central and two teams from the AL West (as well as the Rockies from the NL West).

Personally, I would not be in favor of this. I want no part in playing in the same division as the Astros, Cardinals, and Cubs. While this league will eventually go through some big changes, I’m not ready for that to happen any time soon.

What do you think of this idea, Royals fans? Would you be for or against this realignment and postseason outlook?