"MLB could expand to 32 teams in 'five to six years"

[requiredusername]

I kind of like the idea of an MLB team in Mexico, but I think that Monterrey might be a better choice than Mexico City. It is closer, has a more affluent population (income is much closer to US averages than Mexico City), and doesn't have the same altitude or pollution problems. The downside is that the population is not as large as Mexico City, but it still has a big metro (population over 4 million).

As for a name, if the Tampa team moves they could be the Reyes (kings).

Personally, I would love to see a team in Cuba first. If you can make the financial numbers work and absorb the Cuban baseball league it would be a huge success.

The country is rabid for baseball.

There is no downside for MLB baseball in Cuba if you absorb the Cuban baseball league.

 

[BigMac1212]

Shouldn't MLB focus on putting a franchise on the West Coast? Or will they force Arizona or Colorado to the AL so Texas won't scream bloody murder to be in the AL West purgatory for all eternity?

 

[kdb209]

Personally, I would love to see a team in Cuba first. If you can make the financial numbers work and absorb the Cuban baseball league it would be a huge success.

The country is rabid for baseball.

There is no downside for MLB baseball in Cuba if you absorb the Cuban baseball league.

Even in a post-Castro Cuba, it is very unlikely that the government would cede any control over Cuban baseball - owned and controlled by the State.

 

[Killion]

Even in a post-Castro Cuba, it is very unlikely that the government would cede any control over Cuban baseball - owned and controlled by the State.

Interesting.... What would make you believe that kdb?

 

[kdb209]

Interesting.... What would make you believe that kdb?

Castro or no Castro, the Cuban national baseball system is a source of huge Cuban national pride - any attempt to privatize it or cede control would face a huge national backlash.

 

[requiredusername]

Castro or no Castro, the Cuban national baseball system is a source of huge Cuban national pride - any attempt to privatize it or cede control would face a huge national backlash.

The one big item in favor is centralizing all of the Latin American operations in one country. Right now everything is a patchwork where teams package players and bribe officials all over the Latin America.

Having a centralized organization in a country that loves baseball with a MLB team would also cut down on the dangerous operations where players are smuggled out of the country to Mexico, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic.

The whole process is a complete mess with mobsters wanting a cut.

http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/sto...-los-angeles-dodgers-yasiel-puig-journey-cuba

http://www.latimes.com/sports/dodgers/la-sp-usa-cuba-puig-20151220-story.html

 

[Killion]

^^^ Blackmail... Kidnapping... Extortion.... Right.... On... ha?

 

[DoyleG]

Even in a post-Castro Cuba, it is very unlikely that the government would cede any control over Cuban baseball - owned and controlled by the State.

More that the national team is a serious consideration and that any significant changes would affect the team in a negative way. The agreement for them to play for teams in countries like Japan require the players to return home for the national competition.

The infrastructure to host an MLB team also doesn't exist, not to mention its still below the stadium qualities in Puerto Rico or the DR.

More likely you would see a move to integrate Cubans already in MLB back into the Cuban baseball system.

 

[Voight]

Shouldn't MLB focus on putting a franchise on the West Coast? Or will they force Arizona or Colorado to the AL so Texas won't scream bloody murder to be in the AL West purgatory for all eternity?

SD, LA x2, SF, Oakland, Seattle not enough?

 

[ponder719]

SD, LA x2, SF, Oakland, Seattle not enough?

Not if you're going with a 4x8 alignment. What you end up with, if you don't switch any teams, looks something like this:

NL West: SD, LA, SF, ARZ (COL somewhere else)
AL West: LA, OAK, SEA, TEX (HOU somewhere else)

That leaves Texas, a CTZ team, in a division with 3 PTZ teams, separated from the other Texas team (which was just moved to the AL to give the Rangers a local rival), while in the NL, an MTZ team is aligning with teams further East than the Rangers.

The thought process here is that MLB, with only 6 PTZ teams, 1 MTZ team, and 1 hybrid team (Arizona, your lack of daylight savings is a pain in the butt) should never be stuck in a situation where one team is two hours removed from all its divisional rivals. If they expand to, say, Vancouver, then this looks a lot different, because the AL West could be 4 PTZ teams, HOU/TEX could be in an AL South with other relatively local teams, and COL/AZ can remain in the NL, albeit in different divisions.

 

[Bjorn Le]

It was closer to a no-brainer when CAD-USD was 1:1

At 0.77:1.00 it's dead on arrival.

Not really. Revenue sharing in MLB is massive, it makes teams like Tampa profitable. At par, Tampa might have moved to Montreal already. At what it is now, Montreal is still by far the best option of any location.

 

[KevFu]

1) Manfred has said they don't expect cities to build MLB ballparks BEFORE they are confirmed to be getting a team. That would just be stupid (Quebec city).

2) They are waiting on T-bay and Oakland situations to sort out in case relocation is needed before they do any expansion.

1) Which is wise. No one is going to build on the POTENTIAL of a team. The last cities to try it have gotten bit in the behind:

One of the most fun Google Maps there is, Sacramento’s MLB Stadium: https://goo.gl/maps/71qEWZGstwM2

Construction in Tampa for what is now Tropicana Field began in 1986. TWELVE YEARS before the Rays played their first game.
- They tried to get the White Sox and got left at the alter when Illinois stopped the clock to build new Comisky
- they bought the Giants and MLB vetoed the sale; they applied for expansion and lost to Miami.
- Only after the Florida Congressmen announced they’d investigate MLB’s anti-trust exemption and call MLB to hearings did MLB quickly form an expansion committee (which featured Yankees owner & TAMPA RESIDENT George Steinbrenner, Jerry Reinsdorf who owned the White Sox that nearly moved to Tampa and gave Jerry Colangelo his start with the Bulls before Colangelo took over the Phoenix Suns). The committee instantly awarded teams to Tampa and to Colangelo in Phoenix.

Which is why Tampa is in the situation they are in NOW, because they designed the place in 1985 and then (credit where credit is due) Janet Marie Smith saved us all from cookie-cutter multi-purpose stadiums with the brilliant decision to make Camden Yards retro gorgeous. Which brings me to:

2) I actually think MLB would run the opposite way with TB/OAK and stadium issues: There’s no urgency in Oakland & Tampa to solve arena issues because there’s zero fear of losing their teams when no one else has stadiums, and opening up expansion would make multiple cities mobilize/draw up stadium plans. Now Oakland & Tampa have to solve their issues because the expansion losers will have their hopes up and a willingness to build… so they’ll look to poach.

MLB DOES WANT 32 teams because it gives them scheduling options. They can reconfigure the schedule on a whim to the desires of the teams for max revenue if they have 16/16. With 15/15 they need a minimum of 6 interleague games per team, must have three-game series, and they have have at least one interleague series going on at all times.

Getting cities hyped for having a team leads to potential solutions in multiple cities (Like when the North Stars & Whalers moved. The Whalers engaged in talks with Columbus first, and then Raleigh. The result was both cities bidding on the 1997 expansion. Karamanos chose Raleigh, so they withdrew their bid and Columbus got an expansion team. After the North Stars left, the Twin Cities were ready for the 1997 expansion process.

As long as they get more than ZERO expansion bids, they’re in better shape than right now. If they get one bid and don’t expand, they can say “That’s a better stadium deal than Oakland or Tampa…†and now the A’s & Rays have leverage because there’s somewhere to go, and force Oakland/Tampa’s hand.

 

[BattleBorn]

I always thought Sacramento's plan was to snag the Raiders and then try for the Giants if they had the shot, but it was supposed to be a football stadium from what I can remember (which isn't much, TBH.)

It's good that it didn't work out, because a new-ish multipurpose stadium would likely have had at least the Raiders looking for a new place by now and likely whatever baseball team came as well. Pretty sure that all happened in the 80s and it likely would have been the last of the cruddy multipurpose/cookie cutter stadiums to have been built.

They may have dodged a bullet there.

 

[KevFu]

Personally, I would love to see a team in Cuba first. If you can make the financial numbers work and absorb the Cuban baseball league it would be a huge success. The country is rabid for baseball. There is no downside for MLB baseball in Cuba if you absorb the Cuban baseball league.

Even in a post-Castro Cuba, it is very unlikely that the government would cede any control over Cuban baseball - owned and controlled by the State.

More that the national team is a serious consideration and that any significant changes would affect the team in a negative way. The agreement for them to play for teams in countries like Japan require the players to return home for the national competition.

The infrastructure to host an MLB team also doesn't exist, not to mention its still below the stadium qualities in Puerto Rico or the DR.

More likely you would see a move to integrate Cubans already in MLB back into the Cuban baseball system.

There’s massive hurdles for an MLB team in Cuba. In theory, there’s actually “nothing wrong” BUSINESS WISE with someone within the Cuban government owning an MLB baseball team that plays in Havana. Baseball owners are rich guys with corporate empires.

Obviously, PR wise “they got rich by nationalizing the country” is problematic (but that’s coming close to a double-standard to me when Anheuser-Busch owned the Cardinals for 45 years). But the same thing exists already in some other sports: Sheik Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan owns Manchester City and he’s a member of the royal family of UAE and his wealth comes from Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, which as you can guess from the name, is the nationalized oil conglomerate.


It would take A LOT of work for an agreement, PR spin, and an all-encompassing MLB-Cuba relations plan to put together. But if the United States wants to push Cuba towards reform, a Major League Baseball team is a GIGANTIC CARROT at the end of the stick.

The Cuban MLB team would have to abide by the rules and procedures of MLB in all facets (but they’d be free to draft/sign an entirely Cuban roster if they desire). The key sticking points (from an MLB perspective) would be the political/social effects on players who leave via free agency and defect: Cuba would literally need to grant political pardons in writing for all former Cubans who left the country and joined the MLBPA/MiLBPA, and be bound, IN WRITING, to leave players and their families alone (from a “play for us, or else” vantage point) once they’re apart of baseball’s system.

THAT is a huge part of moving Cuba forward as a nation, much like Jackie Robinson. It’s a perception changer and the door opening a crack: Once Cuba’s BASEBALL PLAYERS have the rights/liberties that American baseball players possess, it won’t take very long for the PEOPLE of Cuba to demand that as well.

Like I said, it's got massive hurdles and a team is a massive carrot for Cuban reform. The benefit for Cuba being that the baseball team would bring in revenue streams that are pretty large. And that's going to help ease some financial burden on Cuba suddenly letting citizens go from "state employees" to private citizens. And of course, you'd expect them to place a tax on their citizens working in the US playing baseball. It would take a lot of time and effort, but long term an MLB team in Cuba would be both the signal of, and help lead, progressive reform.

 

[KevFu]

I always thought Sacramento's plan was to snag the Raiders and then try for the Giants if they had the shot, but it was supposed to be a football stadium from what I can remember (which isn't much, TBH.)

It's good that it didn't work out, because a new-ish multipurpose stadium would likely have had at least the Raiders looking for a new place by now and likely whatever baseball team came as well. Pretty sure that all happened in the 80s and it likely would have been the last of the cruddy multipurpose/cookie cutter stadiums to have been built.

They may have dodged a bullet there.

I don't know the particulars at all. I just know the foundation is there and it's an embarrassing eyesore

 

[KevFu]

Expanding to the West isn’t “necessity” like it is in the NHL because they have EIGHT TEAMS in the Pacific/Mountain time zones NOW, which is fine/good.

(Colorado is the outlier, so they could add ONE Western team if they desired, but I don’t necessarily think that’s smart and they definitely shouldn’t add TWO. Because)

Any realistic format for a 32 team MLB is going to retain NL/AL, and they are going to WANT two groups of four PTZ/MTZ teams, one in each league. (I'm going to including COL/ARZ as "PTZ" the rest of this post)

The thought behind MLB expansion is that they are after:
- Simple, symmetrical scheduling model (They swapped Houston to the AL to ease scheduling making)
- Limited interleague play in “Rivalry weekends” mid-summer they can use to promote the All-Star game and vice versa, and not have one interleague series every day, including April and September (Which they are forced to by a 15/15 split).

With 32 teams, the scheduling model of a 4-4-4-4 in each league is nice and simple:
- 19 division, 8 league, have three interleague series = 162 games

In that scenario, they’d want a four-team NL West and four-team AL West and TEX/HOU wouldn’t want to be with three PTZ teams. They could add an AL team that’s west of Denver (But would you want Portland/Vancouver WITH Seattle or opposite Seattle in the other league like they’ve had in other regions for generations?). Or add an NL West team and move Colorado or Arizona to the AL.


HOWEVER, everyone knows that for the OTHER 24 teams, they’ll never come up with groups of four that make everyone happy. The primary example is with Toronto & Tampa. They each get 18 or 19 at home against New York/Boston. But only one of them would get to be in a four-team division with BOS-NYY-BAL and keep those 19 home games and the other will be reduced to EIGHT.

And it’s like that everywhere, which is why every time someone posts a 4x4 format, there’s a couple replies saying “you shouldn’t separate those two,” or “Team X won’t like that.” And that’s just with us picking our own expansion teams before owners/cities/stadium deals come into play.


So the compromise to avoid that nonsense is two divisions of eight: 12 vs division, 9 vs league, 2 interleague series of 6 games = 162. Therefore, it shouldn’t matter if the AL West is 3 PTZ and 5 CTZ and the NL West is 5 PTZ and 3 CTZ… except that ticks off the other side of the map:

Because now you’re losing 6 or 7 games vs those 3 or 4 current division rivals teams WANT to play because they sell tickets, and adding in 3 more teams. Which in the West Division are in the Central Time Zone. So now people don’t like it because you’d:
- lose 7 BOS/NYY games for TV
- NL West goes from 74 games vs PTZ teams to 48!
- AL West loses a ton of PTZ games
- NL Central teams moving West would go postal, having to play 30 road games in PTZ.


If you have those “two groups of four PTZ teams, one for each league” that means you ALSO have a group of four CTZ teams in the West division of each league. So you can unbalance the division schedule to make everyone happy:

16 vs 3 division teams (PTZ vs PTZ, CTZ vs CTZ)
12 vs 4 division teams (PTZ vs CTZ)
8 vs 4 other division teams
7 vs 4 other division teams

In the West division, the 16/12 distinction can be geographic for game time starts in your time zone.
In the East, the 16/12 distinction can alternate like the 19/18 distinction alternates now.

That way, Tampa Bay and Toronto can each get 28 games a year against New York and Boston instead of someone getting only 8. One year it’s New York 16/Boston 12, the next Boston 16/New York 12. Essentially, the schedule grid would act like TB/TOR switch between “AL East” and “AL North” every season.


Sorry if that sounded condescending. I felt like I sounded really arrogant while writing it. Didn't mean it that way!

 

[Burke the Legend]

2) I actually think MLB would run the opposite way with TB/OAK and stadium issues: There’s no urgency in Oakland & Tampa to solve arena issues because there’s zero fear of losing their teams when no one else has stadiums, and opening up expansion would make multiple cities mobilize/draw up stadium plans. Now Oakland & Tampa have to solve their issues because the expansion losers will have their hopes up and a willingness to build… so they’ll look to poach.

MLB DOES WANT 32 teams because it gives them scheduling options. They can reconfigure the schedule on a whim to the desires of the teams for max revenue if they have 16/16. With 15/15 they need a minimum of 6 interleague games per team, must have three-game series, and they have have at least one interleague series going on at all times.

Getting cities hyped for having a team leads to potential solutions in multiple cities (Like when the North Stars & Whalers moved. The Whalers engaged in talks with Columbus first, and then Raleigh. The result was both cities bidding on the 1997 expansion. Karamanos chose Raleigh, so they withdrew their bid and Columbus got an expansion team. After the North Stars left, the Twin Cities were ready for the 1997 expansion process.

As long as they get more than ZERO expansion bids, they’re in better shape than right now. If they get one bid and don’t expand, they can say “That’s a better stadium deal than Oakland or Tampa…†and now the A’s & Rays have leverage because there’s somewhere to go, and force Oakland/Tampa’s hand.

Montreal seems to be the one that is ready (although we are not sure 100% if all the money and stadium plans are set since all we are getting is hints) and being used as relocation leverage.

I don't know how far along any Mexico City plans are in terms of ownership and logistics. I assume there must be something in the works though if Manfred is mentioning it as a top choice along with Montreal.

 

[YNWA14]

I would much rather see a team in Vancouver than in Montreal. I could actually cheer for that team.

 

[GordonGecko]

Personally, I would love to see a team in Cuba first

They just cancelled a couple of games in Puerto Rico because of the zika virus, and you think MLB wants a full time team in the Caribbean?

 

[GordonGecko]

Not really. Revenue sharing in MLB is massive, it makes teams like Tampa profitable. At par, Tampa might have moved to Montreal already. At what it is now, Montreal is still by far the best option of any location.

Of course Rev share is massive, that's why they'll never let Montreal in because of the dollar. Why would the 30 other teams want to subsidize another Canadian team at a 70% handicap right off the bat?

 

[Voight]

I would much rather see a team in Vancouver than in Montreal. I could actually cheer for that team.

Aways thought it would make a good baseball town.

 

[Bjorn Le]

Of course Rev share is massive, that's why they'll never let Montreal in because of the dollar. Why would the 30 other teams want to subsidize another Canadian team at a 70% handicap right off the bat?

Because 1) Montreal will contribute more to revenue sharing than teams like Tampa (do you really think Montreal won't make 20% more than Tampa?) 2) Montreal would have to make less than Tampa to shrink the revenue sharing pie rather than enlarge it. Any increase is a good one.

 

[GordonGecko]

do you really think Montreal won't make 20% more than Tampa?

What makes you think they would? At Olympic Stadium before the really bad years of 5K, the Expos couldn't draw more than 10-12K which is much worse than Tampa. Of course the stadium sucked, so the question is how much of a draw will the new place be. I think after the initial year that 20K for baseball over 81 games would be extremely optimistic in Montreal. So no, I don't think that Montreal would be much better than Tampa for the league.

Montreal would have to make less than Tampa to shrink the revenue sharing pie rather than enlarge it. Any increase is a good one.

Why would they trade bad for mediocre? The league is going to want good or great

 

[robert terwilliger]

i thought it was proven years ago that montreal won't support a baseball team.

 

[Bjorn Le]

What makes you think they would? At Olympic Stadium before the really bad years of 5K, the Expos couldn't draw more than 10-12K which is much worse than Tampa. Of course the stadium sucked, so the question is how much of a draw will the new place be. I think after the initial year that 20K for baseball over 81 games would be extremely optimistic in Montreal. So no, I don't think that Montreal would be much better than Tampa for the league.


Why would they trade bad for mediocre? The league is going to want good or great

There's no point into getting into this again. I'lol direct you to the Montreal specific thread for the arguements debunking the claim that Montreal isn't a good market.

Essentially, the MLB needs to expand, and whether people want to cherry pick years or not Montreal is a big market, has private and public support for a team, and unlike anywhere else has a temporary venue. Montreal has a very long baseball history. They are a no brainer and will get a team, expansion or relocation. It's not a matter of if its when.