[Pelican]

My preference would be 32 teams (two expansion franchises), in four leagues of eight teams each. When I did this, I had one wild card team for each league, so only eight teams out of 32 in the playoffs. Of course you could do 12 or even 16 teams.

I use the Buffalo Wings and the Charlotte Hive. The Pirates moved to New Orleans and remained the Pirates. The Rays moved to Montreal and became the Moose. Oakland moved to San Jose and became (or continued to be) the Elephants.

BTW, my expansion draft rules exempted all players under three years of MLB service, and only allowed teams to protect 12 guys initially. As they lost a player, they could protect another. This, as you might expect, makes for expansion teams that do not suck, and are competitive, if not playoff material. It also tends to promote parity as the best organizations lose more players.