Phillies news and rumors 2/21: Would MLB expansion push Braves out of NL East?

Ronald Acuna Jr. is the reigning NL MVP. (John Adams/Icon Sportswire)

The Philadelphia Phillies will begin their 2024 regular-season slate by reigniting what’s become one of the best rivalries in baseball, when they host the Atlanta Braves at Citizens Bank Park on March 28.

Atlanta has won six consecutive NL East titles, but been upset by Philadelphia in four games in the NLDS in each of the last two seasons. However insignificant the Orlando Arcia-Bryce Harper drama last October was in the grand scheme of things, it was a fun storyline that increased the heat between the two fanbases. And you can bet that for the rest of his career, Arcia will be booed loudly whenever he steps near the batter’s box at Citizens Bank Park.

But while it feels entirely possible that the Phillies and Braves will meet in the postseason for the third consecutive season in 2024, the long-term future of the two as division-rivals is uncertain.

ESPN‘s Jeff Passan reported this week that Major League Baseball expanding from 30 to 32 teams at some point is seen as an “inevitability” from those in the know around the sport. Expansion wouldn’t happen until the early 2030s in the estimation of Passan, but it would no doubt lead to some major changes in the sport.

Certainly, there are arguments to be made against expansion. The Oakland Athletics and Tampa Bay Rays don’t have their future stadium plans finalized, while the Arizona Diamondbacks and Milwaukee Brewers both have begun to make noise about needing new parks. And it can just generally be argued that there aren’t enough good pitchers to go around for 30 teams, and adding two more would further water down the talent pool in the sport.

Regardless of any of those objections, arguing against MLB expansion now is probably going to prove as futile an effort as fighting the DH becoming universal was a few years ago. Salt Lake City, Utah and Nashville, Tennessee appear to be the favorites if (when?) MLB adds two more teams Passan believes, although there will never be a shortage of cities interested in obtaining a team.

Perhaps the most notable part of the expansion discussion for the Phillies would be that divisional realignment would become necessary if the league expands to 32 teams. Passan wrote in his story that “whether MLB would opt for four eight-team divisions or eight four-team divisions is not yet decided.”

Our bet — based on nothing, other than common sense — is that MLB will ultimately opt for an NFL model, which would mean there would be eight divisions that have four teams. It’s possible that some teams would then change leagues, but we’re going to assume that the Phillies are going to remain in the senior circuit, and that they would be in a four-team division, probably still called the NL East.

Just from a logistical sense, the Phillies would seemingly retain the New York Mets and Washington Nationals in their division. Barring something drastic like the Baltimore Orioles or Boston Red Sox changing leagues, the team that makes the most sense to fill out the NL East would then be the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Pirates currently play in the NL Central, despite Pittsburgh being in the Eastern time zone.

The NL East would then see the Braves and Miami Marlins depart. Like in the NFL, there would be a South division in each league. Atlanta and Miami would make sense as teams to be in the NL South, along with Nashville, if that is indeed one of the two expansion cities.

The logistics of the fourth team get a bit more complicated. You could make the NL South more like the South East, and the AL South kind of the rest of the teams not in the North or West, like the two Texas franchises, the Kansas City Royals and St. Louis Cardinals. It’s hard to imagine the Cardinals not being in the NL, but the Tampa Bay Rays would make more sense to be in a division with the Braves, Marlins and Nashville.

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In any event, the Braves and Marlins would no longer be in the same division as the Phillies. Losing the Marlins as a division-rival would be whatever, but the Braves would be significant. Since moving to the NL East in 1994 (there didn’t end up being playoffs that season because of the strike), the Braves have won a staggering 18 division titles in 29 seasons. Two additional Wild Cards have been added since then per league, so perhaps winning the division isn’t as important as it once was. But it’s still advantageous to win the division, and the Braves have been the primary impediment to the Phillies doing so for a generation.

On paper, a new division that includes the Mets, Nationals and Pirates feels like it could be one of the weaker in the league, as those teams went a combined 222-264 (.457). Under owner Steve Cohen and president of baseball operations David Steans, the Mets probably will develop into a consistent power, even if the rise hasn’t been as quick as ownership initially anticipated. But the Pirates aren’t a team that spends money consistently, and while the Nationals have made major investments in the past, they’ve allowed the likes of Bryce Harper, Trea Turner and Juan Soto to depart their organization in recent years. It may not be as weak as the AFC East during Tom Brady’s tenure with the New England Patriots, but this version of the NL East would be pretty good for the Phillies, in theory.

But the rivalry with the Braves has become a fun one. At least half of the Phillies fanbase at this point doesn’t remember when Atlanta wasn’t in their division. Obviously, most or all of the names and faces will change before there’s realignment. Maybe Bryce Harper and Trea Turner will still be on the Phillies. The same with Ronald Acuña Jr. and Austin Riley, for example, in Atlanta. But the teams will look drastically different, and it’s possible one or both of them is irrelevant by the time they would be split up.

Under managing partner John Middleton, though, the Phillies are going to spend. And the Braves have been a power for almost the entire existence of their franchise. Splitting those two teams up might give the Phillies an easier path to division titles, but it would make the regular season a little less enjoyable.