Realignment. It feels like it's an annual talking point for Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred. He was at it again during MLB's Little League Classic on Sunday night. With the New York Mets and Seattle Mariners battling it out in front of a packed ballpark full of little leaguers, the commish spoke about geographic realignment of MLB's divisions.
"I can ... " Manfred said when asked about whether he can see expansion and realignment in the league's future. "I think if we expand it provides us with an opportunity to geographically realign. I think we can save a lot of wear and tear on our players in terms of travel, and I think our postseason format would be even more appealing ... the owners realize that there's demand for Major League Baseball in a lot of great cities and we have an opportunity to do something good around that expansion process."
Realignment of the divisions is still a ways off, but the Philadelphia Phillies will be greatly impacted by changes to the NL East division. The Athletic's Jim Bowden dove into possible realignment scenarios (subscription required) a couple of years ago. His ideas for geographic realignment, if brought to fruition, would see the Phillies remain in an East Division, but the competition would immediately get much tougher.
Phillies could wind up in MLB's toughest division in potential realignment
Bowden's proposed realignment would create eight four-team divisions (with Charlotte and Nashville added as potential expansion franchises), organized by geography and broken into Eastern and Western Conferences. The Phillies would be part of the East Division, along with their current rival New York Mets. They'd also be joined by current AL East foes the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox.
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A realignment plan from the archives, via @JimBowdenGM: https://t.co/IF0oOia1OJ pic.twitter.com/rJPZYAWClS
The first thing to note about the new East Division is that we can kiss the rivalry with the Atlanta Braves goodbye. The other thing to note is that this looks like the "Group of Death," to borrow lingo from FIFA's World Cup draws. There would be no small market/small payroll teams to beat up on. No more Miami Marlins. No more Washington Nationals.
Lumping the Phillies, Mets, Yankees and Red Sox together would pit four of the top nine and three of the top five current active 26-man roster payrolls against each other. You'd also get three of the top four total payroll teams in there, with Boston being the laggard at No. 12 in MLB.
Here are the current payrolls of each team in the proposed East Division, per Spotrac. MLB ranks are indicated in parentheses.
Team | Total Payroll | Active Payroll |
|---|---|---|
NYM | $339,151,575 (2) | $297,880,055 (1) |
NYY | $297,855,595 (3) | $195,355,358 (5) |
PHI | $288,381,385 (4) | $238,117,331 (2) |
BOS | $196,717,188 (12) | $154,035,467 (9) |
Needless to say, this division would be a dogfight from Opening Day through to Game 162.
None of these four teams have won a World Series since Boston did so in 2018, but the Phillies (2022) and the Yankees (2024) have both been there recently. The Mets were last in the Fall Classic in 2015 but have shown no hesitation about spending over the last couple of years. Phillies owner John Middleton has repeatedly spoken about wanting to create a dynasty and is willing to pay for a team that is successful year after year.
Pairing the two teams from the biggest market (New York has a population of 8.478 million) with two of the other biggest East Coast baseball markets (Philadelphia at 1.574 million and Boston at 675,647) would make for intense and bitter rivalries among fan bases.
How any possible realignment shakes out remains to be seen. You can be sure that if new divisions are drawn up based on geography, the Phillies will be in MLB's new toughest division.