While it’s tempting to report on yesterday’s meeting between Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf and state legislative leaders about a new South Loop stadium with a potential $1.7 billion subsidy, the public statements by Reinsdorf and his developer pals were just along the lines of “yup, we met, thanks everyone for their time,” which isn’t really much fodder even for tea-leaf reading. So instead, let’s devote some attention to the big article yesterday by ESPN’s Jeff Passan on MLB’s expansion plans, such as his unnamed sources may claim they are:
While no current plans to expand exist, the potential of a nine-figure financial windfall for every existing team reaping its piece of a combined $4 billion-plus in expansion fees for two new franchises — and the emergence of viable candidates whose merits appeal to owners and the league — has left the game preparing for a 32-team league as an inevitability, according to owners, high-ranking league sources and other team personnel who spoke to ESPN.
We kind of knew this already: Existing MLB owners are salivating at their cut of expansion fees (though even if each team cost $2 billion, they’d only each be getting $133 million, or about one and a half Eduardo Rodriguezes), so expansion will happen eventually. But “eventually” has always been the timeline, so what kind of eventually are we talking about here?
Expansion, those sources said, is not imminent — and in fact is unlikely to happen until the early 2030s. Creating a franchise out of nothing takes time, and expansion isn’t MLB’s immediate priority, either — not amid the fallout from the bankruptcy of Diamond Sports Group, the company that owned local television rights to 14 teams, the unsettled status of the Rays’ attempt to build a new stadium and the Oakland A’s attempt to abscond to Las Vegas. Not to mention the new collective bargaining agreement to be negotiated after the current one expires in 2026, too.
“It hasn’t been much of a topic of conversation,” one owner, who was granted anonymity to speak freely, told ESPN. “Everybody knows what’s going to happen eventually, but it’s so far off that people just haven’t focused on it.”
So maybe MLB commissioner Rob Manfred will be able to work out an expansion plan before he leaves office in 2029 as he’s promised. Or maybe the Oakland A’s and Tampa Bay Rays will still be trying to figure out stadium deals by then, or maybe a 93-year-old Reinsdorf will still be trying to extract a stadium deal from Chicago and will need Nashville to remain vacant so he can create leverage there, or maybe expansion will need to be held over the head of either the players union or an owners faction in order to get them to cave on some issue that Manfred will want to horse-trade on.
This has gone from “inevitable” to “someday” in record time, but sure, let’s keep playing along. Where exactly would MLB expand to, given that when the Rays and A’s owners were looking for places to move or at least threaten to, the best they could come up was “maybe part-time in Montreal in a stadium that doesn’t exist” and “maybe in Las Vegas in a stadium we still don’t know how to pay for even after $600 million in public cash“?
It is expected to include one team situated in the East and another in the West, paving the way for realignment that could radically alter the game.
Uh, if you’re going to completely reshuffle all the divisions, it doesn’t matter where the new teams are geographically. And if you’re not, you would have to have uneven division sizes anyway, since right now there are six five-team divisions, so there’s nothing stopping MLB from putting, say, one team in the AL East and one in the NL West. But if the sources say it, the sources say it.
Any particular cities in mind, Jeff?
FOR ALL OF their differences culturally, spiritually and historically, Nashville, Tennessee, and Salt Lake City share plenty in common. Nashville is the 26th-biggest media market in the United States; Salt Lake City is the 27th. Both regularly rank among the United States’ fastest-growing cities. And both have positioned themselves to be at the front of the line when MLB finally decides to expand.
I mean, yes, Nashville and Salt Lake are both similar media markets — bigger than Cincinnati and Milwaukee, about the size of Baltimore and San Diego. That also applies to San Antonio and Charlotte, both of which are growing as fast if not faster than Nashville and Salt Lake. So why are Tennessee and Utah at the front of the line?
Nashville’s and Salt Lake City’s reputations as front-runners is in large part due to their preparation and planning.
Go on…
Music City Baseball recently contracted the real estate development company Mortenson to undertake a stadium site and market analysis, two integral pieces to any eventual presentation to the league….
Big League Utah is proposing an exceptional mixed-use development that would cost $3.5 billion in private money.
And there we go. Nashville and Salt Lake City are — for the moment — the expansion frontrunners because they have stadium plans, or at least are talking about them. (Better yet, that Utah stadium development that would cost $3.5 billion in private money would also include $600 million or more in public money.) Or at least that’s what league sources want everyone to think, and why would league sources possibly mislead anyone about that in order to prompt a bidding war with taxpayer cash? You think they would lie just because they’re shielded by anonymity? What kind of monster would do that?
So we’re left with: MLB may expand someday, and right now Nashville and Salt Lake City are on their radar because they’re waving around possible stadium money, but that could always change. And it’s always possible that MLB will pick expansion cities based on some other criteria: probably not market size since there are no obvious slam-dunk markets, but which city has a potential owner who will sign the biggest expansion-fee check, or who just seems like they’d be most fun to hang out with at owners’ meetings, can’t be ruled out.
Let’s turn it back over to Passan for some closing words:
Expansion is coming to Major League Baseball. In what form, in what cities, in what year — all of those questions will be answered in time. It’s destiny.
