Major League Contraction?

MLB actually voted to lose the Expos and Twins in the early 2000s. Not sure why it didn’t happen. So contraction is a possibility.
Both Florida teams have tepid attendance. Would it be a viable idea to combine the Marlins and Rays and put the team in Orlando? Orlando is one of the bigger TV markets without a baseball team. Combine the Guardians and Pirates and have them play half their home games in each city? Build a stadium in Youngstown? Who would be in which league, I have no idea.

I don’t expect any of this to happen, just some amusing spitballing. Baseball has not eliminated any teams in a very very long time, just moved them.

 

I always use to say when MLB added a new team that 25 triple A guys just became Major Leaguers. Added teams water a sport down. Now the Pirates have had 25 triple A guys for a long time

 

Hands down in my top 5 of Seinfeld shows. Now thinking along those lines, I am a swimmer. Now combine aging with shrinkage and a certain little fellow gets lost in a jungle of hair. Very annoying until my son turned me on to the no hair crew. Stuff is amazing and so damn easy to do. Beats the hell out of razors in the nether regions.

 

Reminds me of the story about a certain fellow who was lamenting the same issue to a co-worker and the co-worker says "That's terrible, What do you do during sex?" Pee-Wee replied: "Not a problem, it's twice as big and there're 2 of us hunting for it!"

 

I have never been convinced of the truth of this. I was just reading about Walter Johnson, so I will use his era for comparison. There were 16 teams, each with a 25 man roster. The US population in his middle years was about 100 million people. It is safe to assume that about 50 million were men.
The US population today is 330 million, with 32 teams. Never mind that there were no African American players in MLB pre WWII, and few Latin ballplayers. Asian players were not even on the radar screen. It should be clear that while we have more teams, we have a much much larger talent pool to pick from. Note that Johnson, considered the dominant fastballer of his time, was clocked at 91 mph. That would not raise any eyebrows at all today.
I would buy that the talent level drops for a year or two when expansion takes place, until the supply chain of players catches up. It certainly is not a permanent dilution.
I do agree about the Pirates having basically a triple A roster for a long time.

 

Point taken about the population. Kind of like when people say there were not all these mass shootings in the 50's or 60's that seem to happen once a week in todays world. Higher population means more crazy people.

 

MLB will expand again before it drops franchises. They'll push teams in struggling markets to new markets, if anything.