The Kansas City Royals have played much better baseball as of late. The team is still alive and well in the American League Wild Card chase. Following a 4-3 win on Monday night over the Texas Rangers, the Royals moved to within 3 1/2 games of the defending American League champion New York Yankees for the final spot. They also have now won four consecutive games.
The team won 86 games last year and was the second AL Wild Card team, beating the Baltimore Orioles in the first round before losing the ALDS to the Yankees. The playoff format now consists of 12 teams, six per league and three Wild Cards. Such changes were made in 2022.
But with the playoff format having expanded, the league too will soon expand. Commissioner Rob Manfred has proposed the idea of realigning the divisions within Major League Baseball. Kerry Miller of Bleacher Report predicts the Royals will join an all-new division along with the Texas Rangers, Colorado Rockies and Houston Astros when the time comes to expand the league. He also predicts that the American League and National League will cease to exist in favor of an Eastern Conference and a Western Conference.
“Yes, the names of the divisions will need some workshopping, but the geography here at least makes some sense,” Miller wrote on Tuesday.
“Would love to have two pairs of nearby rivals together here with Rangers-Astros and Royals-Cardinals, but darn it if we don’t have to put the Rockies somewhere. This division is probably the main argument against the second expansion team going somewhere near Seattle, as Colorado could replace TBD PNW in Division A. But it does help balance everything else out.”
MLB has been toying with the idea of expansion for several years now. Fans certainly aren’t thrilled about it. This would completely dismantle the AL and NL and give the league an entirely different look going forward.
The Royals would lose their division rivalries with the Cleveland Guardians, Detroit Tigers, Minnesota Twins and Chicago White Sox.
However, it appears very likely that soon, expansion will take place and will forever change the league as we know it.
It will be interesting to see how the potential changes will go over with the majority of MLB’s fanbase.
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