Let’s dive back into a fantasy land where we have put ourselves in charge of the resurrection of the Colorado Rockies.
We bought the team, taking ownership concerns off the board. We replaced the analytics and coaching staffs with top-of-the-line talent. We also gave the team a fresh new look, something they’ve arguably needed for a while.
Time to get to the nitty-gritty, on-field stuff, right? Well, not quite. We still have a few orders of business that will absolutely impact the results but aren’t baseball philosophy or strategy. Arguably the most transformative of which would be a realignment of MLB.
Now, this is obviously not a Rockies-specific thing, nor is it something that we as the new owners of the ballclub can force to happen according to our own will. But by many accounts, MLB has been looking to expand for a little while and with a new CBA on the horizon those talks have heated up.
A little bit lost in those talks is that they would almost certainly necessitate a realignment of the divisions which should, logically, see the Colorado club no longer in constant competition with the California clubs.
In truth, it has never made a ton of sense that the Rockies play in the NL West. The difference in TV audience (and TV money) is massive. It creates an intense travel schedule. It makes for extreme variance in environments whereby the team must travel directly from high-altitude batter-friendly parks (Coors and Chase) to pitcher-friendly parks that are practically underwater.
Everything in terms of market, travel, competition, and environment will be made a bit easier if the Rockies find themselves facing off against middle-of-the-country teams.
Make no mistake, this doesn’t solve every problem. Teams like the Cubs, Cardinals, and Royals of late are no cakewalk. The Reds have experienced plenty of their own inconsistencies but it’s also possible you could find yourselves locked up against the perennially-good-but-not-great northern teams in the Twins and Guardians.
If the Rox moved to a division more to the south, Texas and Houston could be awaiting them. And there is almost no reconfiguration that will see them escape the Arizona Diamondbacks who have proven themselves to be far more adept than the Rockies at overcoming obstacles.
There are a lot of ways to potentially reimagine the divisions to make more sense from every single aspect. Regardless of which is your favorite, though, the Rockies will no longer be stuck constantly facing the behemoth Los Angeles Dodgers or the institution that is the San Fransisco Giants.
Again this is not a solution for everything nor is it a replacement for a well-run team of talented players. We will get to that. But before you can get to that, as a new team owner (congratulations again, by the way!) you need to take an all-encompassing look at the best possible ways to help your club compete in the long term.
We could puff out our chests with a bit of bravado and demand instead that the club rise to the level of the Dodgers and the Giants rather than run from them. And along the way, we can survey the corpses of all others who thought the same.
But the wiser course would be to spend whatever influence we have available to us to create a slightly easier path to consistent competition. That path runs through the middle of the country and away from the California coast.
