MLB expansion 'thin'?
- Thread starter Bonk
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MLB has said there will be no expansion until Oakland and Tampa Bay are settled.
Oakland has made the move to Vegas and MLB is on board.
Tampa Bay.....................The Rays are promoting a new stadium in St Pete but that will not solve their attendance issues.
My best guess is MLB wants Tampa to relocate to Montreal and then award expansion teams to Nashville and Portland.
Oakland has made the move to Vegas and MLB is on board.
Tampa Bay.....................The Rays are promoting a new stadium in St Pete but that will not solve their attendance issues.
My best guess is MLB wants Tampa to relocate to Montreal and then award expansion teams to Nashville and Portland.
Centrum Hockey
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- Aug 2, 2018
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Just a guess but it seems like a lot of people involved in baseball would love to blow up the existing AL/NL divide at this point and have leagues that are purely geography based.
GKJ
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- Feb 27, 2002
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There is zero chance they actively want them to move out of Florida.
The real issue going on seems to be that you don’t hear much in terms of anyone trying to build a stadium, except in Vegas, and that’s where this thing dies. Maybe those markets want the team locked in to do it.
Mightygoose
Registered User
GKJ
Global Moderator
- Feb 27, 2002
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I don’t get why they even have to wait to start the processes. And I know people have been working on it, but the Rays still need a new stadium no matter what, why limit yourselves if other markets can get it together and send you the checks.
Mightygoose
Registered User
I think it's because the Rays' use agreement until 2027 is so ironclad that it puts MLB in a bit of a holding pattern.
With the A's lease up earlier the rubber hit the road sooner. I think if the Rays and St. Pete's can't close the deal a year from now MLB will give them permission to look somewhere.
DraftEligibleOHL
Pest
I'm not opposed to a more regional schedule being put together provided every team plays against each other at least once a year and they alternate home series every season.
I'm surprised to hear that people inside baseball aren't fighting against this though. Baseball usually fights change and usually opt for a traditional approach, at least they did until Manfred became the commish.
KevFu
Registered User
Manfred definitely is advocating a radical geographic realignment. Mainly because Manfred's dumb. It's like he thinks the reason that baseball is doing worse than the NBA is Eastern/Western conferences and not the fact that the stars have the ball 90% of the time in the NBA and baseball players take turns hitting.
Having leagues being purely geography based would be REALLY DUMB. It's just an inefficient use of TV inventory, schedule inventory, it costs teams money, it's bad for travel, TV start time for fans; it's unfair competitively and it's unfair economically (Other than EVERYTHING, it's fine!).
I've nerded out over this for weeks of my life, and the best possible solution is four LEAGUES, with a new Western League and Southern League. It balances baseball strength and economic strength, makes geography, travel and TV start times better. The right blend of economics and rivals for the West/South, and tradition for the AL and NL.
- Aug 24, 2011
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Four LEAGUES? Do I even dare ask you to explain yourself further? That sounds like a non-solution to a non-problem if you ask me.
KevFu
Registered User
Yeah.. Imagine the old AL and NL from 1903-1957. You had two eight-team leagues who played 154 games only against each other; then winners met in the World Series. Everyone loved it, golden age of baseball, all that crap...
But no one in the West or South had teams. Now they do. Just DOUBLE what we had.
Western League (SEA, SF, OAK, LAD, LAA, SD, COL, ARZ)
Southern League (HOU, TEX, KC, Nashville, TB, MIA, ATL, WAS).
American (BOS, NYY, BAL, TOR, CLE, DET, CWS, MIN)
National (NYM, PHI, PIT, CIN, CHC, MIL, STL, Montreal).
No one wants to do 22 games vs 7 teams for 154 games like they used to.
How about 16 games vs 7 teams; 48 interleague games (160 total). Play all four game series (28 league, 12 interleague) which reduces travel by a ton. The TV start times are better for EVERYONE.
But it also solves the ECONOMIC and competitive imbalance of divisions as well.
If you look at Average Payroll for each division: High to Low gaps currently are:
$68m AVG payroll, and 11.6 AVG wins (entering July 4 games), which full season is like a 20-win gap.
Now look at my concept. High-Low Gap: $48m AVG payroll, 2.1 AVG wins (full season is like 4 win average).
If you use a MAP to divide baseball. into West, Central, Northeast and Southeast... The West and Central both spend about $1.2 billion total with eight teams each.
But Northeast-7 spends $1.4 billion with only seven teams, while the SOUTHEAST only spends about $600m total.
KevFu
Registered User
I do think MLB expansion is ALWAYS "thin"
You need more population than the other leagues, because the season is twice as long as NBA/NHL and the stadiums are twice as big.
You need more population than the other leagues, because the season is twice as long as NBA/NHL and the stadiums are twice as big.
In some respects having 4 Leagues with 7 to 8 teams would better resemble baseball as it was in the first half of the 20th century than early 21st century.
I could imagine AL / NL based on North East US teams, Continental League for South East / Midwest Teams, and a "Pacific Coast" League for teams in the Pacific Time Zone.
The devil would be in the playoff details.
ponder719
Haute Couturier
NHL probably would be, too, if there were any Canadian markets the size of Montréal currently unserved by an NHL team.
It's not the size of the market that counts. But the NHL has a lot to learn about stuff like that.
The issue here is stadium . Baseball has a unique stadiums and don’t want a dodgers coliseum type thing which makes them look Busch league
Don't worry everyone, the MLB desperately needs realignment but won't do it until expansion and won't do expansion until Oakland and Tampa are sorted, and Tampa won't be sorted until aliens come from the skies and force them into downtown. Should be any day now.
If expansion wasn't on the table, I just can't imagine the AL Central would still exist.
If expansion wasn't on the table, I just can't imagine the AL Central would still exist.
I’m sure if there was a willing billionaire group or public entity in BC that NBA would give Vancouver a 2nd chance. Both David Stern and Adam Silver have admitted they gave up on the market too soon. Canadiens owners talked to Silver a few years ago about putting a team there, but obviously Seattle and Vegas are the markets they are focused on for expansion. I’m sure if the scenario is right, Montreal could get a NBA team.
Voight
#winning
Like any market in any sport it really depends on if you build a winning organization in a 3-5 year period. Montreal has developed quite a few NBA players recently so I think there is some potential there. But it can’t be a Vancouver Grizzlies situation for sure
No Fun Shogun
34-38-61-10-13-15
My adage has always been that whichever market puts together a financing plan and secures a location for a new MLB-quality stadium first will be the next MLB market without question.
If Omaha starts building a ballpark, they'll have a team lined up before they're done.
That's the barrier, and I don't think any other sport has that low of a threshold for an expansion team.
Problem is that any other stadium or arena offers much more flexible use options compared to a ballpark.
If Omaha starts building a ballpark, they'll have a team lined up before they're done.
That's the barrier, and I don't think any other sport has that low of a threshold for an expansion team.
Problem is that any other stadium or arena offers much more flexible use options compared to a ballpark.
KevFu
Registered User
I think you're right, except Omaha is a terrible example because they HAVE an "MLB ballpark."
(That was the first stadium people thought of for the Jays to use during COVID, because it's the closest thing a non-MLB stadium has to MLB capability. Minor league teams don't need to fit seven broadcasting booths or an instant replay center. The host of the Men's College World Series does.
KevFu
Registered User
You know, the more I think about it.... I wonder if the MLB's insane desire for radical realignment is because they WANT to put all the poor teams in a group together.
Any way you slice it, the solution to realignment is to not let one principle dictate your decisions. Like, "A Map" shouldn't decide how baseball is configured, because no one cares about a map, we care about baseball teams.
(Best example is the NFL, where after doing a new alignment when they went to 32, they kept Dallas-Washington-NY Giants and Philadelphia despite that making NO geographic sense).
Which is why you need a hybrid of geography as it pertains to economics, and tradition/history.
Which is why I landed on a West, South, AL and NL four-league plan. It's "Radical" for half the league, but for TEN it's "what they really want" and the other five are all teams that benefited from the LAST "radical" change 30 years ago, and aren't getting "Worse."
Timeline to complete a stadium is around 2 years from when the shovels hit the ground. Plus on top of that you need zoning, plans, etc. to be approved. 5 years seems like a long way, but it comes fast. Maybe 2 more years to 2025 before they need to have an ironclad final decision of where the stadium will be. I'm assuming by 2027 you mean that the Rays have to play the 2027 in their current stadium, thus the earliest they could play in a new one is in the 2028 season. If not, everything moves up a year.
