Re: “Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred eyes MLB realignment with future expansion teams” (by Lauren Merola, The Athletic, and online in The Salt Lake Tribune):
Salt Lake City is one of the two most likely expansion cities to be announced by 2029 – which we already knew. Nashville is the other, if the reporting is correct.
The one I didn’t see coming, from Commissioner Rob Manfred’s live-TV interview from the Mets-Mariners game in Williamsport, was his justification for geographic realignment. Reducing “wear and tear” from East-West plane travel makes sense. Manfred also singled out the 10 p.m. EST time slot on ESPN as a reason. He wants playoff matchups from the Mountain and West regions there.
I’d hate to see anything so drastic done because ESPN and linear TV networks might like it. As someone who tuned in to watch Arizona make the World Series the other year, I guarantee that a team playing good baseball will get viewers in any time zone. We shouldn’t hold up a new team in Salt Lake City while they try to hammer out a historic realignment.
Adam Silbert, New York