I have added to the above the following:

September Roster Expansion
"God Bless America"
Defensive Indifference

nc,

- Don't just look at the winners; anything can happen in a seven-game series.  Look at the teams that got there, and look at the success of lower payroll teams today (KC and Houston being prime examples). 

- I agree with the expansion comment, although not all teams would be added at the same time; the mechanism for expansion would impact this as well.  Overall, though, I think you're right.  Realignment is a problem, especially with the Mexican Option (Plan B).  Suggestions for the AL East?

I don't like the idea of doing away with the wildcard with 5 team divisions.  Look at the standings right now.  The Pirates, who are the 2nd-best team in the NL, 3rd best in baseball, would miss the postseason.  That doesn't feel right to me.  Especially with no salary cap (which I agree with, though I do like the idea of having the luxury tax and revenue sharing to partially level the playing field).  Now that you've moved Tampa out of the AL East and added Detroit, while watering down most of the other divisions with expansion teams, the AL East is absolutely blowing the field away in terms of average salary.  With that being the case, even over the long term things don't necessarily "even out" in terms of having really good teams miss the postseason due to the lack of a wildcard.  The AL East might lose substantially in the long term over that, while a division like the super-poor NL South doesn't lose much at all.  With 8 divisions, you're set up perfectly to use the NFL postseason model.  I think that's a good system.  It rewards the best teams for their successful seasons with the first-round bye, and 12/40 feels like a fair number of postseason teams.  That's a slightly smaller ratio than what we have now with 10/30, and the past few years it takes ~88-90 wins to make the postseason.  If that gets bumped up to normally needing low 90s, that feels pretty reasonable.

I understand what you're saying, although philosophically I've never been a fan of Wild Cards.  The NFL has the twin advantages of only having one game for a playoff as opposed to 5 or 7, and weather doesn't matter.  My model has a 4/1 Opening Day and the playoffs ending the second week of October; adding another round of playoffs means either a March beginning or a late October finish, both of which I am trying to avoid.

As for realignment, it's a beast.  I guess you could move Santo Domingo to the AL East; Detroit to the AL North; and KC to the AL South?  I really want to leave Havana and Miami in the same division.

Interesting discussion so far guys.

Love the expansion/realignment provisions.

Some other things I'd like to see open to consideration:

-- No restriction on the use of PEDs beyond what state and federal law already covers.  If players want to use these substances, they are free to do so, without restriction other than where prohibited/limited by law.
-- No public funding of stadiums.  Period.  (As an alternative, if a team seeks public funding for a stadium, then whatever percentage of the original cost of construction is borne out of the public coffers, the public financing entity shall be entitled to that percentage of ALL revenue generated by the use of the stadium, in perpetuity - including but not limited to ticket sales, merchandising, advertising, TV/radio contracts, etc.)
-- Complete freedom of any individual or entity to buy and resell tickets to any game.

And for the really important stuff:
-- No entity may have an ownership interest in more than one baseball team - at any level.  In other words, we seek to completely do away with the current minor league system.  Every city that can support a baseball team deserves to be able to do so with a team that wants to compete and win, not exist in servitude to another entity.  In principle this could be done in several ways (Bill James has an excellent discussion in the 1988 abstract); the one we favor is a five-year period in which MLB teams can divest themselves of all minor league interests in any way that they choose.  If at the end of that period they have not done so, the remaining affiliated teams will be sold at auction.  MLB rosters will then be allowed to increase to 30 players, though only 25 may be active for any game.  Should teams need additional players due to injuries, unexpected retirement, or just general poor performance they will have to acquire them on the open market.
-- MLB will be subject to all federal antitrust laws, without exception.
-- No annual draft.  All players are complete free agents at all times, free to negotiate with any team and to sign contracts for any length.
-- The combination of these last 3 provisions should almost guarantee that 1 or more competing major league(s) will form, and in our opinion that is in the long term best interests of fans, players, and the general public.

I disagree with both of these statements:

As far as a best of seven series in baseball, the best team usually wins.

If you are a low payroll team every year, you have basically no chance

to be consistently successful in the playoffs.

But be that as it may, one outcome of my tri-partite plan above (no minor league affiliation, no anti-trust exemption, complete free agency) would be to significantly equalize this disparity between teams.  If five new owners decide that the NYC metropolitan area is a good investment, they could put a team there, and there would be nothing that MLB or the two existing NYC teams could do to prevent it.  The NY area can easily support many more than 2 professional baseball teams; let the market determine how many teams it can support, and very quickly the magnitude of the disparity between large and small market teams will be much less than it is today.

nope, the Yankees can only have 30 players under contract, period.

I have missed this latest set of contributions to this discussion. I will catch up later this evening my time (afternoon in the USA), as there seem to be interesting things going on here, but no time at the moment. 

Ok, a lot to digest and reply to. Obviously the Baseball Liberation Front opposes the re-privatization policies and the other money-economic stuff advocated by the Usurper pinotfan and his fellow coup planners. 

BUT...there is some intriguing stuff here - yes, return to "Take me out to the ballgame" please. Havana v. Miami - he may have me here (you KNOW who I am rooting for in that one - and my dad lives in Miami, so that is two strikes against that place). 

The trading deadline stuff is good, and the compromise on domes/natural grass is good. We agree on interleague play. I will rethink the whole international players thing, which was not intended as a national diatribe on my part (I am NOT voting for Trump dudes), but rather a recognition that many players from overseas are recruiting en masse - leaving 90% to rot after being exploited - only to undermine US level player costs and leading inadvertently to the dearth of African American players in MLB. 

I have no idea why contrarian23 who is normally a sane person insists on PEDs - would this apply to boxing as well?  And when the first 170 mph fastball breaks the first batting helmet in half and kills someone? I am agin' cheating. Just don't see the justification for it. pinotfan's suggested separation of HOF and MLB records is interesting, will think about it, not happy with records that can never be broken unless we let cyborgs play in the 22nd century, but then again the records for most innings pitched, and for batting average in a single season are unbreakable too, so maybe I should just let it go. But want to think about it. 

I understand that pinotfan does not understand how limiting options can increase strategy, but imagine a game - any game, chess, checkers, hopscotch, gladiator games, whatever, without rules (limits on what you can do) - it is not a game, just stupid. That is what anarchy, oh, I mean the market, is. Unless we set rules. 

Otherwise your view of freedom is: "I want material forces, out of my control entirely, which millions of years of my ancestors' efforts sought to overcome to provide me with more control over my destiny, to have free reign and to completely dominate my destiny, rather that have it be the result of my own activity and efforts, my reason and the reason and efforts collectively of myself and my fellow citizens, and fellow humans. I call this slavery to material forces, freedom."