Expansion chatter

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cgk8Fk1W4AAxQby.jpg

Havana?

Does he mean we would have 8 divisions of 4 teams? Sounds pretty good to me.

i don't think havana will have the economic base to support a big league team for quite some time

mexico city?

put a team in north carolina and a team in san antonio imo, those seem like the largest untapped US markets that have the potential for big growth.

latin america teams would be cool too but i dunno how determined they are to make the logistics work

what about Portland?

iirc vancouver and portland are near-identical sizewise. interest may differ between the two.

mexico city always gets thrown around, that could be interesting? south/north carolina are always spots everyone wants to go.

wherever they open expansion teams, i hope the minor league team in that town already moves to mtl. idk about a MLB team here, but i would definitely buy seasons tickets for AA/AAA.

tbf to Montreal, god knows i'm skeptical of a return, it is the largest metro area in Canada/US without a MLB team.

iirc vancouver and portland are near-identical sizewise. interest may differ between the two.

feel like Portland makes more sense just because in Vancouver you're in the market of both the Jays and the Mariners. otoh they're both reasonably big cities with plenty of $$$; they only have short season A teams (and Portland's is outside the city in a suburb); and they each only have one major league sporting team in town (not counting soccer).

id personally be happy if Vancouver had a non-short-season minor league team tbh (as it used to do long before i moved here)

portland has a lengthy history of being unable to keep a triple-a team, although the stadium situation was never good

charlotte has a new triple-a ballpark that draws very well but is not expandable to meet major league standards

sounds like colorado springs' triple-a team is going to move to san antonio, though i'm not sure if that's contingent on a new park. there's currently a double-a club there that doesn't draw particularly well, even by texas league standards

i imagine any of those places could ultimately get a team if it were willing to build a stadium for free? maybe san antonio could get a package deal on the a's and raiders

jaffe: http://www.si.com/mlb/2016/04/22/mlb-expansion-montreal-mexico-city-charlotte-portland

RIch W.:
Expansion question: if two more teams are added, is Charlotte in the conversation?

Jay Jaffe:
It sounds as though they’re certainly among the top choices. Based on Jayson Stark’s most recent column at The Athletic (https://theathletic.com/390737/2018/06/13/stark-how-mlb-expansion-coul…) and my own previous work in this area, it seems as though Charlotte, Portland, Montreal and San Antonio (or maybe Austin) are probably the top 4, not necessarily in that order.

JJ also thinks it would mean 16 teams in the playoffs, ughhhh

Our ManFredo has a list of cities

“Portland, Las Vegas, Charlotte, Nashville in the United States, certainly Montreal, maybe Vancouver, in Canada. We think there’s places in Mexico we could go over the long haul.”

https://deadspin.com/rob-manfred-says-he-wants-mlb-expansion-lists-six-pote-1827712616

id bite my arm off for major league baseball in vancouver

seems like a natural... they'd need something bigger than Nat Bailey from the get-go, of course

http://www.milb.com/content/page.jsp?ymd=20090505&content_id=40995160&sid=t435&vkey=team1

Montreal can't afford it.

i'm not sure how many of those places can support 81 home games a year and i'm even less sure that any of them will pony up public money for billion-dollar stadiums

manfred's trying to play cities off against each other, as ever, but i think/hope we've reached the point where cities are no longer fooled. no one now thinks 'we need a big-league baseball team to be a big-league city' and all anyone has to do is point to miami to see how things will work out

dear god

The official logo unveil for the #OrlandoDreamers.

Williams says now we have to see how much the community is willing to embrace this. pic.twitter.com/nmNzi64Ktz

— Joe Kepner (@JKepnerWFTV) November 20, 2019

Dave Dombrowski, former GM of the #RedSox, is moving to Nashville and joining Music City Baseball, LLC, in an attempt to bring #MLB to Nashville. The city is hoping to land an expansion franchise or have an existing team relocate to Nashville.

— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) July 6, 2020

no pursed-lips photo? smdh

Justin Timberlake 'thrilled to be involved' in group working to bring MLB franchise to Nashville

rip the 10k-seat five-year-old minor league stadium the city will spend the next 30 years paying for. it's important to be Big League

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-playoffs-arent-too-big-the-league-is-way-too-small

that article was kind of all over the place, but it is fun to ponder