Nashville Stars, proposed MLB expansion team discussion

[KevFu]

After all, there are still several top 25 markets without an MLB team, and would remain so even after expansion to 40 teams (the last top-25 market gaps, Sacramento and Orlando, would be filled decades after expanding to 40 teams by going to 48).

Have you ever seen Sacramento's MLB stadium?

When they built the NBA arena back in 1986-88, they built a foundation for an MLB Stadium next door so they could try and get a team to move to Sacramento or get an expansion team. Sacramento applied but wasn't a finalist for the 1993 expansion (Miami/Colorado).

So their work was just kind of abandoned....

 

[Big Z Man 1990]

With the creation of the PCL and CL, MLB should commit to placing future PCL expansion teams in Portland and Sacramento (the last two heyday PCL cities without MLB) - even if not at the same time (as of now, five of the Mountain/Pacific teams are in CA, but only three not in CA, thus, adding Las Vegas and Portland together would balance things out) - and a future CL expansion team in Buffalo - the last prospective CL market without MLB.

 

[GindyDraws]

Have you ever seen Sacramento's MLB stadium?

When they built the NBA arena back in 1986-88, they built a foundation for an MLB Stadium next door so they could try and get a team to move to Sacramento or get an expansion team. Sacramento applied but wasn't a finalist for the 1993 expansion (Miami/Colorado).

So their work was just kind of abandoned....


View attachment 377231

... They ever going to tear that down and put something new there?

 

[KevFu]

... They ever going to tear that down and put something new there?

No need to tear down the baseball foundation, so I assume you mean the NBA arena?

I don't know.

 

[BKIslandersFan]

No need to tear down the baseball foundation, so I assume you mean the NBA arena?

I don't know.

MLB isn't giving an expansion team to Sacramento.

Only way they get a team is if A's move there. Which itself will probably never happen.

 

[KevFu]

MLB isn't giving an expansion team to Sacramento.

Only way they get a team is if A's move there. Which itself will probably never happen.

I would agree. Although, the lone exception I would make would be if the A's moved to like Portland and then down the road, Sacramento got a team later to "replace" the A's as the AL Bay Area team.

 

[Big Z Man 1990]

And having a history-based realignment would expose new generations of fans to a Pacific Coast League that represents the top level of baseball on the West Coast and to an American League based entirely in the Northeast and Midwest, among other things. The older generations who fondly remember the AAA PCL's classic era are dying out, as well as people who still remember the days when the AL and NL were collectively confined to the Northeast and Midwest. My new-look AL and NL is almost perfect in regards to restoring the 1957 city line-ups, Miami has to replace Brooklyn in the NL because current rules won't allow a new MLB team in Brooklyn which at the end of the day is still part of NYC (which already has the Yankees and Mets).

As a matter of fact, there are only 195 living former players who played in Major League Baseball during its Northeast/Midwest-only era. All players who were active prior to 1942 are deceased, and there are only 17 living players active in the 1940s. And those numbers are only going to get smaller over time, until there are none left.

 

[GindyDraws]

No need to tear down the baseball foundation, so I assume you mean the NBA arena?

I don't know.

No... I was explicitly referring to the MLB stadium foundation.

There's no way a MLB or NFL team is ever going to Sacramento due to population and proximity to Oakland/San Francisco. As a result, keeping that standing for no reason besides blind hope is just silly.

 

[Big Z Man 1990]

Here's how spring training could look beginning as early as 2029:

Grapefruit League (Florida)
Atlanta: CoolToday Park in North Port
Baltimore: Ed Smith Stadium in Sarasota
Boston: JetBlue Park at Fenway South in Fort Myers
Cincinnati: Radiology Associates Field at Jackie Robinson Ballpark in Daytona Beach
Cleveland and Miami: Roger Dean Chevrolet Stadium in Jupiter
Detroit: Publix Field at Joker Marchant Stadium in Lakeland
Montreal: Hammond Stadium in Fort Myers
Nashville: Champion Stadium in Kissimmee
NY Mets: Clover Park in Port St. Lucie
NY Yankees: George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa
Philadelphia: Spectrum Field in Clearwater
Pittsburgh: LECOM Park in Bradenton
Tampa Bay: Charlotte Sports Park in Port Charlotte
Toronto: TD Ballpark in Dunedin
Washington: FITTEAM Ballpark of the Palm Beaches in West Palm Beach

Cotton League (Texas, these teams would begin the four-league era training in Arizona, then move to Texas after a few years)
Chicago Cubs: Lupton Stadium in Fort Worth on the Texas Christian University Campus
Chicago Sox: The Depot at Cleburne Station in Cleburne
Houston: Constellation Field in Sugar Land
Kansas City: Whataburger Field in Corpus Christi
Milwaukee: Nelson W. Wolff Municipal Stadium in San Antonio
Minnesota: Dell Diamond in Round Rock
St. Louis: Reckling Park in Houston on the Rice University campus
Texas: Dr Pepper Ballpark in Frisco

Cactus League (Arizona, now exclusively having the PCL teams)
Arizona: American Family Fields of Phoenix in Phoenix
Colorado: Salt River Fields at Talking Stick in Salt River Pima–Maricopa Indian Community
LA Angels: Goodyear Ballpark in Goodyear
LA Dodgers: Camelback Ranch-Glendale in Glendale
Oakland: Hohokam Stadium in Mesa
San Diego: Peoria Sports Complex in Peoria
San Francisco: Sloan Park in Mesa
Seattle: Surprise Stadium in Surprise

The two oldest Cactus League venues, Tempe's Tempe Diablo Stadium (opened in 1969) and Scottsdale's Scottsdale Stadium (opened in 1992, replacing a venue built in 1956 on the same site) would be left out of the Cactus League until MLB expands to 40 teams, which would place (ideally) Las Vegas and Portland in those stadiums. In the meantime, they would play host to teams in the American Association, an independent league that has recently partnered with MLB.

The move of Cincinnati and Cleveland from the Cactus League back to the Grapefruit League, as well as creating the Cotton League for most Central Time Zone teams (and also, the Rookie-level Lone Star League), would be part of MLB's travel reduction initiative.

With how the minor leagues are reorganizing, the AAA league to be formerly known as the PCL (with the Central Time Zone teams removed from the league), the soon-to-be low-A California League, and soon-to-be high A Northwest League would effectively serve as farm leagues for the major league PCL, and eventually, so would the Arizona League in the Rookie level.

 

[KevFu]

No... I was explicitly referring to the MLB stadium foundation.

There's no way a MLB or NFL team is ever going to Sacramento due to population and proximity to Oakland/San Francisco. As a result, keeping that standing for no reason besides blind hope is just silly.

I would assume that if Sacramento actually got an MLB team (highly unlikely), they'd start over from scratch since any stadium planning stages from 1986 would be insanely out of date, and there's been zero upkeep on the "stadium construction site" for probably like 15 to 20 years.

 

[Big Z Man 1990]

Sacramento already has an NBA team, and they just built a new arena a few years ago. Sacramento is large enough that it can also support MLB as well.

 

[AdmiralsFan24]

Cotton League (Texas, these teams would begin the four-league era training in Arizona, then move to Texas after a few years)
Chicago Cubs: Lupton Stadium in Fort Worth on the Texas Christian University Campus
Chicago Sox: The Depot at Cleburne Station in Cleburne
Houston: Constellation Field in Sugar Land
Kansas City: Whataburger Field in Corpus Christi
Milwaukee: Nelson W. Wolff Municipal Stadium in San Antonio
Minnesota: Dell Diamond in Round Rock
St. Louis: Reckling Park in Houston on the Rice University campus
Texas: Dr Pepper Ballpark in Frisco

Just stop.

 

[Big Z Man 1990]

I'm trying to make spring training travel better. There's no reason the Ohio teams need to train in Arizona for instance. Florida is much closer and for the most part is in the same time zone. For the Central Time teams (outside Nashville), eastern Texas is a more economically-feasible location for spring training than Arizona. For Houston, Minnesota, and St. Louis, training in Arizona would only be a temporary measure (the other five existing Central Time teams already train in Arizona).

Take the Cubs for example. They currently train in Mesa, AZ, a suburb of Phoenix, and have done so for many years. The flight distance between Phoenix and Chicago is 1440 miles. I'm proposing the Cubs train in Fort Worth. The flight distance between Chicago and DFW is only 802 miles - and the time is the same between both cities, which are in the CTZ.

In contrast, when leaving Phoenix for Chicago during baseball season, which takes place entirely within Daylight Savings Time, you lose two hours - that is because even though Phoenix is technically in the Mountain Time Zone, it does not observe DST, so for all intents and purposes, during baseball season, Phoenix is in the Pacific Time Zone.

 

[Big Z Man 1990]

When the Dodgers left Vero Beach, FL for a site in Arizona, they were wise to do so because they wanted to save on travel costs for spring training.

 

[Big Z Man 1990]

Furthermore, the Astros and Rangers would train in the home parks of one of their minor league affiliates - the Astros in the home of the Sugar Land Skeeters and the Rangers in the home of the Frisco RoughRiders. Both are located in the same metro areas as their parent clubs.

 

[HisIceness]

Have you ever seen Sacramento's MLB stadium?

When they built the NBA arena back in 1986-88, they built a foundation for an MLB Stadium next door so they could try and get a team to move to Sacramento or get an expansion team. Sacramento applied but wasn't a finalist for the 1993 expansion (Miami/Colorado).

So their work was just kind of abandoned....


View attachment 377231

Not only MLB, the city was also trying to lure the Oakland Raiders

 

[AdmiralsFan24]

For the Central Time teams (outside Nashville), eastern Texas is a more economically-feasible location for spring training than Arizona.

Take the Cubs for example. They currently train in Mesa, AZ, a suburb of Phoenix, and have done so for many years. The flight distance between Phoenix and Chicago is 1440 miles. I'm proposing the Cubs train in Fort Worth. The flight distance between Chicago and DFW is only 802 miles - and the time is the same between both cities, which are in the CTZ.

Did you think about this for more than two seconds? The Arizona setup is perfect. All teams in the Phoenix metro, great weather, good facilities. Everything they need and you're suggesting a bunch of teams now go to three different metro areas in Texas, all 200-300 miles and 3-4 hour bus rides apart from each other as a way to save costs?

Here's how it currently works.

Get a truck and send all equipment to Phoenix metro area. Team personnel and players make their way from whichever city they work/live in during the off season and make their arrangements to get to whichever city in the Phoenix metro area where their team plays.

The furthest stadiums in the Cactus League are Hohokam Stadium in Mesa and Surprise Stadium in Surprise. 45 minutes and miles from each other. Take the bus that morning, play the game and head back to your home stadium before the sun goes down. Quick, convenient. Works perfectly.

Now what you want is 8 of these teams to go to the Dallas metro, San Antonio metro and Houston metro areas, either take a long bus ride (players not happy) or a flight (owners not happy) and then spend a night (or several) at a hotel because it makes no sense to go 300 miles to play one game, get back on the plane/bus, go 300 miles home, play another game and continue that for a month.

Second, you have a couple teams playing at college baseball stadiums in the middle of college baseball season. That's not happening.

Lastly, these teams need more than one stadium. Look at any spring training facility. It's a stadium, several practice fields, training facilities, offices etc. Saying oh, here's a college stadium you can play at is totally insufficient and lacks any understanding of how spring training actually works and the facilities needed for it.

 

[Whalers Fan]

I'm trying to make spring training travel better. There's no reason the Ohio teams need to train in Arizona for instance. Florida is much closer and for the most part is in the same time zone. For the Central Time teams (outside Nashville), eastern Texas is a more economically-feasible location for spring training than Arizona. For Houston, Minnesota, and St. Louis, training in Arizona would only be a temporary measure (the other five existing Central Time teams already train in Arizona).

Take the Cubs for example. They currently train in Mesa, AZ, a suburb of Phoenix, and have done so for many years. The flight distance between Phoenix and Chicago is 1440 miles. I'm proposing the Cubs train in Fort Worth. The flight distance between Chicago and DFW is only 802 miles - and the time is the same between both cities, which are in the CTZ.

In contrast, when leaving Phoenix for Chicago during baseball season, which takes place entirely within Daylight Savings Time, you lose two hours - that is because even though Phoenix is technically in the Mountain Time Zone, it does not observe DST, so for all intents and purposes, during baseball season, Phoenix is in the Pacific Time Zone.

Teams are not traveling back and forth between their spring training city and regular season city during spring training -- they only travel once when training camp is completed. So you are only saving a couple of hours on a single flight, yet creating much more extra travel during the spring training season. You are trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist by creating a new one that would be a real issue.

 

[Big Z Man 1990]

Which is why I said the CTZ teams (sans Nashville) wouldn't start training in Texas right away. There would be years of preparation for those teams to move to Texas for spring training.

Plus teams televise spring training games on their RSNs often. Cincinnati and Cleveland occasionally play spring training games that start well into the night (9 or 10 PM) Eastern time. That's too late for their fans. Thus, they should go back to Florida.

 

[AdmiralsFan24]

Which is why I said the CTZ teams (sans Nashville) wouldn't start training in Texas right away. There would be years of preparation for those teams to move to Texas for spring training.

Plus teams televise spring training games on their RSNs often. Cincinnati and Cleveland occasionally play spring training games that start well into the night (9 or 10 PM) Eastern time. That's too late for their fans. Thus, they should go back to Florida.

They had reasons for going to Arizona. Saying they should go back to Florida assumes they didn't think of all the ramifications of moving their spring training to Arizona. Cleveland had only 5 of 35 games scheduled to start at 9 last spring training. Only two of those games were on TV and the vast majority of games start in the afternoon when people are at work and can't watch, so it's not like you're getting a ton of viewers at any time. You're just making things up to make your idea look better when it never will.

 

[Big Z Man 1990]

My points still stand.

But still, the new schedule format for the regular season that would come with my proposed alignment would allow more geographical interleague rivalries to be protected.

Most teams are currently only allowed one protected rivalry, But with all the Mountain/Pacific teams put into their own league, and only playing 18 interleague games compared to 36 for the ET/CT teams, MLB would use this opportunity to make more geographic interleague rivalries part of the annual schedule.

For instance, right now the Chicago White Sox are only guaranteed annual games against their crosstown rivals, the Cubs. After the new alignment and schedule is in place, they'd also play the Milwaukee Brewers, located up I-94, and St. Louis Cardinals, located down I-55, every year. Their interleague schedule would be completed by one rotating team from the NL, CL, and PCL. All 6 teams would be played 6 games each, 3 in each ballpark.

 

[KevFu]

This is probably better off being in the Minor League Reorganization Thread.


But there is some validity to abandoning Phoenix for spring training sites and setting up shop in Texas or California.

And that reason is COMPLEX BALL.
- In Florida, almost all the teams of the Florida State League play in the spring training complexes of their MLB parents.
- The main purpose of shrinking the minor leagues is that a lot of teams were getting more skill development progress from keeping players in training (extended spring training) instead of playing league games at higher levels.
- So the minor league plan was shrink the leagues but have more players in complex ball training for a year before turning them lose into league play.

Well, in Florida, Texas and California, that's doable. But in Arizona, once you hit May, it's like 115 degrees for the next five months. Then they do the Arizona Fall League in those stadiums in the off-season league that starts in October.

 

[Big Z Man 1990]

If need be, Arizona League games can be scheduled locally after 9 PM to combat the heat

 

[Big Z Man 1990]

The main reason I had wanted a geographical realignment of spring training is because a complete geographical realignment for regular season play would upset many as the AL and NL would lose their identities (it could have been done this year as a temporary measure due to COVID). So, fans would likely accept a spring training-only complete geographical split.

Let's look at it this way.

For all intents and purposes, the Phoenix area is in the Pacific Time Zone during MLB season, spring training, regular, and most, if not all the postseason. Home regular season games that would start at 7 PM locally in most PCL parks would be a 10 PM start on the East Coast. The Rockies are the only exception. Therefore, by limiting the Cactus League to the PCL teams, almost every team in the PCL is in a way training in their own time zone.

By moving most of the Central Time teams to eastern Texas for spring training, they too are training in their own time zone.

And moving Cincinnati and Cleveland back to the Grapefruit League would allow them once again to train in their own time zone, as the other Eastern time teams already do.

Thus under this plan, only Nashville and Colorado would not be conducting spring training in their own time zone if one were to consider Phoenix on Pacific Time during MLB season.

And a move to this plan would not be overnight. It would take years of planning. But it can be pulled off.

 

[Big Z Man 1990]

As it is now, for the regular season, PCL teams would only play 9 road games (all of them interleague) east of the Mountain Time Zone under my plan, and all of them would be played in one road trip.

For their part, the ET/CT teams would only play one series of three games west of the Central Time Zone each year, once again these would now be considered interleague games.

After interleague play is done, there would be no travel west of the CTZ or east of the MTZ until the national semifinal series in the postseason. So, only a maximum of two postseason series can pit an ET/CT team against an MT/PT team. And they would both be best of 7.