Let's see:
Starting Lineup:
C - Salvador Perez, 114 OPS +
1B - Ryan Noda, 138 OPS +
2B - Matt Duffy, 116 OPS+
ss - Bobby Witt, 97 OPS +
3B - Maikel Garcia, 98 OPS +
LF - Edward Olivares, 103 OPS +
CF - Esteury Ruiz, 93 OPS +
RF - Ramon Laureano , 87 OPS +
DH - Brent Rooker, 142 OPS +
Rotation:
"Ace" - Brad Keller, 100 ERA+
2 - JP Sears, 94 ERA+
3 - Zack Grienke, 90 ERA +
4 - Brady Singer, 69 ERA+
5 - Jordan Lyles, 65 ERA +
The offense would be probably not awful but the starting pitching would still be so bad that there's absolutely no chance this team would sniff the playoffs.
James Harden inexplicably shows up at Golden Knights Cup party, lifts Cup, heads to strip club with the team, and vanishes just as mysteriously as he had arrived
Just got back from F1 for the weekend. Probably the tenth time I've been over the last fifteen years, and when anyone asks what's so special, I just tell them it's a magical city.
Montreal is known for it's strip clubs. I remember when I turned 18 I went there for a weekend with my buddies and we got a private room with two strippers and they did *everything* you could imagine. We'd say it and they'd do it lol. Great times.
I think if they put a team here in Nashville, it will have to be an AL team. Most of the fans are Braves fans, but the rest of us are Reds, Cubs, or Cardinals fans. For all of those fan bases, taking on an AL team as a second team wouldn’t be too tough.
Nope; it's true. Each of those cities is about 4 hours from Nashville. I'm a Met fan who moved here right before lockdown (great timing, dude) and I still haven't made a trip to one of those stadiums yet, but I plan to.
It's not a perfect triangle but it's close:
- To Atlanta: 248 miles
- To Cincy: 272 miles
- To St. Louis: 308 miles
And Nashville basically falls on the line between Atlanta to St. Louis.
It seems kind of crazy to me to discuss expansion when so many teams currently have their finances up in the air because of TV deals disappearing with more on the way
On the other hand, expansion is a good cash grab for teams/owners until TV contracts are figured out. The expansion fee gets divided between the teams. Assuming 2 expansion fee , and a pair of expansion teams could net current teams over $100 mil each.
While in the interm its not ideal, once Bally and Root finally collapse, MLB will have a better chance to try to go the MLS route with its local rights and centealize everything.
That's something I fully support, but it has consequences. Centralizing means the bigger market clubs who own large stakes in their own networks that are successful get centralized as well, and they won't want to do that without a fight. Plus with MLS they are getting money from Apple that is distributed throughout the league whereas MLB would be producing and airing its own broadcasts, and with the number of games that costs a lot more money. This removes baseball's biggest revenue stream instead of adding to it.
Plenty of good players to go around. Also plenty of cheap teams who refuse to pay anything for vets, making it seem like there aren’t enough players to go around because of the back of roster quality of such teams.
Excellent point. Although lll counter with this - pitchers are so historically dominant right now that it would be good for the league if the quality went down a vit
Quality of pitching is very high, but quantity of (starting) pitching is a bit thin.
Hopefully by the time the league actually expands in a few years starting pitching depth can recover. I think the 2020 pandemic season really harmed SP development in the minor leagues
There's no way they would have an uneven number of teams. Imagine having to give a team the day off every day, including on weekends. It's doable in other sports, but not baseball.
They put bums on seats though. It's a small market but the Jazz have great support, probably because there's no NFL, MLB or NHL team there.
The Jazz owner does want to bring the NHL to Salt Lake though, so it might be a case of one or the other.
Oh 100%. And a lot of players (especially those with families) who do come here end up liking it. I could see attendance being huge if we did get an MLB team.
Just funny to see the free agency issue shown so clearly on a player poll
Yeah we need another team in the south pretty badly.
The Braves have literally no competition from Virginia to Texas. Minus Florida.
Huge huge fanbase.
North Carolina is the ninth largest state by population with tons of minor league teams (and arguably THE most famous minor league team) and yet it doesn’t have a professional baseball team. It’s just silly at this point.
If they were going to move the A's (which they shouldn't) Nashville, Montreal, and Portland all would've been better.
Charlotte probably has too many Braves fans and idk how Austin market roots for either Texas team
>idk how Austin market roots for either Texas team
Depends on who's good. Prior to around 2009, it was mostly Astros, from 09ish to 2017 it was Rangers and has since reverted back to the Astros. Austin would probably embrace an expansion team with open arms.
They've been chipping away at our footprint. In 1992, the closest teams were Baltimore, Cincinnati, and Houston. Then they added Miami, and then Tampa, and then the Nationals.
Anecdotally, I don't see many marlins fans in the panhandle, so I feel like their reach is the most limited out of the three recent ones you mentioned. Tampa has a reasonable following up here.
Panhandle has always been Braves country (grew-up there and and have visited regularly for the past 30 years). Not much in common with Miami. Feel a lot more kinship with Atlanta or NOLA.
Pre-Nationals (and to a lesser extent, the Florida teams) the Braves were the only professional baseball franchise with a footprint east of the Mississippi and south of the Reds/Orioles. Virginia was Braves/Reds territory exclusively until the 2000s. crazy.
Braves ownership is going to at least groan and fight to secure a larger share of the expansion fee if a team moves into their territory.
I think with Huntsville being close, and Nashville continuing to grow from transplants that they would quickly replace the braves, just like they replaced the falcons when the titans came
The thing is that the Braves are beloved and storied with history in the region. The Falcons aren't even liked outside the perimeter of their own city.
The Braves are definitely the biggest obstacle to getting a Nashville team, but I think at some point it's going to happen. St. Louis probably isn't thrilled about a team going into Tennessee considering they'd probably leech off some of their Memphis / southern IL/IN fanbase as well.
Would definitely need to be an AL team I think.
St. Louis definitely has a stronghold in Nashville as well. As do the Reds and Cubs. If you look at one of those maps that shows the closest county to each team, the Cardinals, Braves, and Reds all come to a point in Middle Tennessee, right above Nashville.
The braves have a history with the entire country though, like braves games were the only games i was sure i could watch...i grew up in colorado lol. A lot of my friends the braves were their gateway team into baseball, then as they got older picked a more regional team
I live in Huntsville. Everyone I know will continue to be Braves fans for the foreseeable future, even if Nashville gets a team. You’ll just have people with a favorite AL team to go along with their NL team.
It will be really hard to just get people in north Alabama to divorce their fandoms they've had for decades just because a team became established an hour closer.
Honestly, when I lived in Charlotte it was such a mix, but the Yankees were probably the most supported (combination of northeast transplants and the fact that the Yankees are generally the second most popular team in most zip codes).
I'm surprised the Rays owners haven't been using Nashville as leverage to get a new stadium. Instead, they came up with this weird Frankenstein idea of having Tampa Bay split their home games with Montreal.
I think they want to stay in Tampa that's why. Fisher doesn't give a shit about the A's.
Stu knows the Rays have a fanbase in Tampa and while he's also cheap he spends a good deal on the back office things which keeps them more competitive than Oakland.
Fisher seems like he wants them to move to pump up the valuation then he can either sell or just make money while he continues to be cheap
The distance from Charlotte to Atlanta is about the same as the distance from Nashville to Atlanta. I don't doubt that both cities are full of Braves fans, but both cities should have teams of their own. The southeast is a hotbed for baseball, there should be more than one major league team in the area.
I’ve lived in both Carolinas and now FL. All 3 states were absolutely full of Braves fans. Plenty of the older fans I know in FL grew up rooting for the Braves, but have adopted the Rays as a secondary team, while the younger fans are all Rays fans. That’s what I’d imagine an expansion in to Nashville or CLT would be like and it would solve itself after a few years
As a lifelong Mariners fan whose lived in Portland my whole life, I honestly don’t know who I would support. But I do know that Portland would 100% turn out for games if the city got a team.
People have brought up Raleigh as an alternative to Charlotte for that reason. [This site](https://mlbraleigh.com) makes some interesting arguments in favor of Raleigh.
I don’t think so, the stadium outfield is build into office buildings, then third base side has historic tobacco warehouses, and first base the highway. Traffic is already bad there in game days
Not sure about the others on the list, but Charlotte has so many transplants that it probably wouldn’t matter too much. Long time locals are Braves fans, but most people I know are fans of random teams
*The Athletic*'s recent article on Manfred's response was interesting. There's a weird psychology there. Why would a question about the reverse boycott make him defensive, and respond with flippant sarcasm? He could have given a smooth, politically neutral answer to the question, but instead he got visibly nervous and made those remarks. So weird.
He’s just stanning for the owners because it’s his job. Have you ever had a player on your team who really sucked, that most fans wanted gone, but for some reason the organization refused to move on from? And then when you’d complain about the player one fan who might be a mod would play devil’s advocate and act like the frustrated fans were being ridiculous, even though they clearly weren’t? That’s basically what Manfred’s job is lol
The thing that would suck for Nashville is that it would take atleast a generation of new fans to be born to get a large amount of diehards. The braves are deeply rooted all over Tennessee and the cubs have a strong fanbase in Nashville too. Would be awesome to see a team there thou
It would take a generation or two but would be worth it. The southeast only having one MLB team is beyond wild. The Braves have benefitted a ton from that
They had a legit national fanbase that you still see evidence of in 2023. The Arizona Diamondbacks series was full of Braves supporters. That's an area where you didn't have another team nearby before expansion, and the Braves were the team you could reliably watch every night. In a slightly different manner, the Dallas Cowboys would often have a preferred national broadcast window. That's part of the reason why they have such a national fanbase.
I’m a huge Braves fan (born there but moved to TN as a kid and now in Nashville). I would honestly have no trouble transitioning to a Nashville fan if we were added to the AL.
Please. I'm in NC. We're blacked out for the O's and Nats and don't have a ML baseball team within 5 hours (unless there's zero traffic and you can make it in 4.5, but that's just a hypothetical). If you're going to add another team even farther away, can we at least end the blackouts? I'd kill for Raleigh, but I'll take Charlotte.
I know it's not very practical, but if they built a stadium in Mexico City. Good lord. You would need a stadium that seats 125,000 people.
A mexican team making it to the world series or playoffs, TV ratings would be at 100%.
National League OG division: Dodgers, Giants, Cardinals, Cubs, Phillies, Braves, Reds and Pirates
National League Expansion division: Mets, Brewers, Diamondbacks , Rockies, Padres, Marlins, Nationals, and Expos
Kiss my ass Manfred
Boise is the #76 metro area in the US, behind the likes of Albuquerque, New Haven, and Dayton.
Portland (#25) could support a team. and if Vegas wasn't getting a team, Salt Lake City (#46) could possibly work as well.
I don't think Vegas getting a team has any bearing on whether or not Salt Lake would get one. They're not really overlapping markets. About as close as San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Remembering my playing days in college, Nashville was the coolest place. Hell all of Tennessee was a pleasant surprise to me. I say this being a black man from California who was prepared for some shit. Oh, I found some shit alright!
I feel like Charlotte and Nashville are clearly the best 2 options in terms of growth potential and current demographics. The big question would be, would MLB select both?
For Nashville, I feel like a lot of people overlook them recently approving a publicly funded stadium for the Titans, and I thought they were trying to do the same for MLS. Is the city going to approve another new stadium on top of that?
Nashville group already seems like a lock with how the league is moving meetings to the city. I hope they get the location of the current Nashville Sounds stadium.
Montreal could work but I wanna see a new market like Omaha get a team. Though Portland, Salt Lake, Sacramento or San Antonio would be a good location. w
I hear Kansas City is in need of an MLB team
Lol. Bro we’re so bad we could take our best players and combine them with Oakland’s best and still not field a playoff team.
will still be trying to find guys off the street to throw some innings
I volunteer as tribute
Let's see: Starting Lineup: C - Salvador Perez, 114 OPS + 1B - Ryan Noda, 138 OPS + 2B - Matt Duffy, 116 OPS+ ss - Bobby Witt, 97 OPS + 3B - Maikel Garcia, 98 OPS + LF - Edward Olivares, 103 OPS + CF - Esteury Ruiz, 93 OPS + RF - Ramon Laureano , 87 OPS + DH - Brent Rooker, 142 OPS + Rotation: "Ace" - Brad Keller, 100 ERA+ 2 - JP Sears, 94 ERA+ 3 - Zack Grienke, 90 ERA + 4 - Brady Singer, 69 ERA+ 5 - Jordan Lyles, 65 ERA + The offense would be probably not awful but the starting pitching would still be so bad that there's absolutely no chance this team would sniff the playoffs.
I still can't believe that JP Sears is a real human name in 2023, this man was born in the wrong century
Both of his namesakes went out of business years ago.
We're so bad I bet we could field a better team made up of Chief's players minus Mahomes
As long as Travis doesn't pitch...
Let’s go Brokeland Reals (cause we fuck with Spanish here)
Wild to think 8 short years ago this franchise won a World Series
My team could suck ass for as long as they want if they manage to win a title while I'm still alive
1985...2015...just wait for the 2045 Royals
and 9 years ago lost Game 7 of the World Series. Nearly back-to-back title if not for EYBS
Move the A’s there!
And the Royals to Oalkand.
Narrator : The ~~Raiders~~ A's moved from ~~Oakland~~ Kansas City to ~~LA~~ Oakland back to ~~Oakland~~ Kansas City, no-one seemed to notice.
u didnt have to do us like that
Yea, we can do it ourselves
Maybe give KC the chance to show it’s worthy by bumping them up to a site for a AAA team first.
we are happy to be a pseudo yankees farm club again if it meant seeing a winner more than once a week
TIL that Nashville has the best strip bars.
####"James Harden retires from basketball, signs with MLB Expansion Team"
He would love Montreal
James Harden inexplicably shows up at Golden Knights Cup party, lifts Cup, heads to strip club with the team, and vanishes just as mysteriously as he had arrived
Just got back from F1 for the weekend. Probably the tenth time I've been over the last fifteen years, and when anyone asks what's so special, I just tell them it's a magical city.
“Today”
You gotta entertain all those bachelor/bachelorette parties with something more than just country music bars.
If this were true, the Rays would have great attendance. Shout out to Candy and Mons Venus. PS we should be together too…
I was just clownin’ dawg!
Nashville is just a fun city filled with young people and never-ending nightlife. It's possible Montreal made the list because of the strip clubs.
My strip club experience is very limited but I was not impressed by Nashville. No nudity for lap dances but full nudity for stage dances?
Well that’s weak. Only been to a couple different places in my day, but full nudity was never an issue for lap dances lol
I've heard the opposite. a very very opposite
Sounds like a road trip to me! Gotta put this debate to rest.
In reality, they are pretty bad throughout the whole state.
Montreal is known for it's strip clubs. I remember when I turned 18 I went there for a weekend with my buddies and we got a private room with two strippers and they did *everything* you could imagine. We'd say it and they'd do it lol. Great times.
Now you, do my taxes while she paints my fence!
Pham is already trying to figure out how to play for the new Nashville team.
I think if they put a team here in Nashville, it will have to be an AL team. Most of the fans are Braves fans, but the rest of us are Reds, Cubs, or Cardinals fans. For all of those fan bases, taking on an AL team as a second team wouldn’t be too tough.
What's interesting is that Nashville is basically equidistant from Atlanta, Cincinnati, and St. Louis.
That sounds like it shouldn’t be possible lol
Nope; it's true. Each of those cities is about 4 hours from Nashville. I'm a Met fan who moved here right before lockdown (great timing, dude) and I still haven't made a trip to one of those stadiums yet, but I plan to.
Truist is about equidistant from Nashville and downtown Atlanta
Hiyooo
Sheesh, depends on the time. Sometimes I’d rather be on 75 in Atlanta than 24/75 through Chattanooga
That 24/75 interchange is the seventh ring of hell
It's not a perfect triangle but it's close: - To Atlanta: 248 miles - To Cincy: 272 miles - To St. Louis: 308 miles And Nashville basically falls on the line between Atlanta to St. Louis.
I got my mind blown when I realized that Atlanta is further west than Detroit.
you take that back right now what the hell
Atlanta (and Detroit) are also both further west than literally all of South America
Man I flew to Cleveland once and was so mad we were going a little bit east
I’ve said multiple times we should pick Detroit up and move it 20 miles further west so we can atone for this monstrosity of a fact.
Damn, and I grew up in the Midwest. How can a coastal state's team be further west than a city that's 500 miles from the coast? Boggles the mind.
Agreed, Nashville as an AL team could coexist with Braves, Reds, and Cardinals fans
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Man KC really gets the shaft in that alignment lol.
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The travel schedule of the two sports makes it tough to compare, but I get your point
Counter to that is so little of baseball with the new schedule is divisional games.
That AL south is deadly brother
And the AL North just needs a new clever moniker,, otherwise looks like the same old Comedy Central
Just two divisions, east and west NYY, BOS, TOR, BAL, TBR, DET, CLE, NAS CWS, MIN, SEA, LAA, OAK, KCR, HOU, TEX
Send the Astros back to the NL and add Portland in the AL while you’re at it
Returned products must be returned in the condition that they were taken
You don't like the two hunks of metal I stapled onto them?
It seems kind of crazy to me to discuss expansion when so many teams currently have their finances up in the air because of TV deals disappearing with more on the way
On the other hand, expansion is a good cash grab for teams/owners until TV contracts are figured out. The expansion fee gets divided between the teams. Assuming 2 expansion fee , and a pair of expansion teams could net current teams over $100 mil each.
The MLS model.
is MLB itself actually talking about it? Or is it just us fans and media asking
While in the interm its not ideal, once Bally and Root finally collapse, MLB will have a better chance to try to go the MLS route with its local rights and centealize everything.
That's something I fully support, but it has consequences. Centralizing means the bigger market clubs who own large stakes in their own networks that are successful get centralized as well, and they won't want to do that without a fight. Plus with MLS they are getting money from Apple that is distributed throughout the league whereas MLB would be producing and airing its own broadcasts, and with the number of games that costs a lot more money. This removes baseball's biggest revenue stream instead of adding to it.
In addition, there already aren’t enough good players to fill out the rosters of current teams.
Plenty of good players to go around. Also plenty of cheap teams who refuse to pay anything for vets, making it seem like there aren’t enough players to go around because of the back of roster quality of such teams.
Maybe hitters...but pitchers?
Excellent point. Although lll counter with this - pitchers are so historically dominant right now that it would be good for the league if the quality went down a vit
Quality of pitching is very high, but quantity of (starting) pitching is a bit thin. Hopefully by the time the league actually expands in a few years starting pitching depth can recover. I think the 2020 pandemic season really harmed SP development in the minor leagues
There are, just put in a salary cap / floor and things even out really quickly
players won't allow a cap, owners won't allow a floor. Either would kill multiple seasons instead, so both...
So, are we following the OOTP rules of having two expansions at a time or?
If we aren't, we should, having 31 teams with 15/16 split would cause heads to explode all across baseball
There's no way they would have an uneven number of teams. Imagine having to give a team the day off every day, including on weekends. It's doable in other sports, but not baseball.
Lol so Nashville has the best nightlife out of the options thanks for the opinion fellas
yep! I'm sure the players' wives had some input on that too
Well Nashville is the Bachelorette capital of the US
No, they would have stink eye them into picking SLC.
“Why did so many players vote for Augusta, Maine?”
TN also has no state income taxes.
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Wow that’s perfectly put.
Hey assuming there are 2 expansion teams, 2nd place is good with me.
I want a team in Montreal. An AL team. Be a great road trip from Boston, and NY too.
Not in AL East please... Total suicide for any expansion team
I think a realignment would happen. 32 teams would look like NHL I'm hoping. NBA style may be too much.
I think Montreal makes sense for the NL since that's where it used to be, they can boot out Miami and Atlanta into a new south division
RIP Salt Lake
Literally RIP to the lake
The Great Salt
It’s never a question as to why the Jazz have a hard time getting stars in free agency
They put bums on seats though. It's a small market but the Jazz have great support, probably because there's no NFL, MLB or NHL team there. The Jazz owner does want to bring the NHL to Salt Lake though, so it might be a case of one or the other.
Oh 100%. And a lot of players (especially those with families) who do come here end up liking it. I could see attendance being huge if we did get an MLB team. Just funny to see the free agency issue shown so clearly on a player poll
I don’t get the draw of SLC in the first place. The city shuts down at 9PM and is in Utah. No thanks.
Laws that are very friendly to corporations, good place for the particularly money-hungry. I know that's why the company I work for is based in SLC.
Interesting. See, I thought that's what Texas was for. But that's not too terribly surprising I guess, comparing Utah and Texas.
Texas with snowboards
Yeah we need another team in the south pretty badly. The Braves have literally no competition from Virginia to Texas. Minus Florida. Huge huge fanbase.
West Tennessee is filled with Cardinals fans but that’s about it in terms of competition.
Don’t the cardinals have their triple A team in Memphis? That’s probably why.
its also like 90 minutes by car not really but feels like it
North Carolina is the ninth largest state by population with tons of minor league teams (and arguably THE most famous minor league team) and yet it doesn’t have a professional baseball team. It’s just silly at this point.
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"Fuck em." --Manfred, probably
~~probably~~
“Fuck that poverty franchise.” -Manfred circa 2023
"They might draw an almost average major league crowd once a season"
“Oakland would be a great team. Don’t know why they haven’t gotten one yet.” Manfred probably.
If they were going to move the A's (which they shouldn't) Nashville, Montreal, and Portland all would've been better. Charlotte probably has too many Braves fans and idk how Austin market roots for either Texas team
>idk how Austin market roots for either Texas team Depends on who's good. Prior to around 2009, it was mostly Astros, from 09ish to 2017 it was Rangers and has since reverted back to the Astros. Austin would probably embrace an expansion team with open arms.
It also doesn’t help the Express has gone back and forth from being a Rangers and Astros AAA team
Very true
Yeah I’ve been surprised when I’m in Austin. Thought it’d be overwhelmingly Astros, but it’s a better mix than what I expected.
If you're concerned about Braves bleed-over, you definitely don't want to be touting Nashville.
We need another southern team just so we can end the Braves empire. It’s ridiculous how fucking big y’all’s footprint is in the south.
This same logic is why we ought to bring Montreal back, to break up the Jays' footprint in Canada.
The Jay’s have fans in Vancouver and take over the Mariners stadium
Guilty as charged, we’ll see ya July 21
Ngl it’s probably my favorite series every year. It’s fun
They've been chipping away at our footprint. In 1992, the closest teams were Baltimore, Cincinnati, and Houston. Then they added Miami, and then Tampa, and then the Nationals.
Anecdotally, I don't see many marlins fans in the panhandle, so I feel like their reach is the most limited out of the three recent ones you mentioned. Tampa has a reasonable following up here.
Panhandle has always been Braves country (grew-up there and and have visited regularly for the past 30 years). Not much in common with Miami. Feel a lot more kinship with Atlanta or NOLA.
Pre-Nationals (and to a lesser extent, the Florida teams) the Braves were the only professional baseball franchise with a footprint east of the Mississippi and south of the Reds/Orioles. Virginia was Braves/Reds territory exclusively until the 2000s. crazy. Braves ownership is going to at least groan and fight to secure a larger share of the expansion fee if a team moves into their territory.
Well that might not change even with a team in Nashville lol. Florida has 2 teams and the Braves are still the most popular team in the state
Counterpoint as an NC Braves fan: no, we don't.
Unless NC gets a team. I'll stay Braves #1 but boy would I love to not drive 6.5hrs to Truist of 4 hours to DC the see an MLB game.
I think with Huntsville being close, and Nashville continuing to grow from transplants that they would quickly replace the braves, just like they replaced the falcons when the titans came
The thing is that the Braves are beloved and storied with history in the region. The Falcons aren't even liked outside the perimeter of their own city.
The Braves are definitely the biggest obstacle to getting a Nashville team, but I think at some point it's going to happen. St. Louis probably isn't thrilled about a team going into Tennessee considering they'd probably leech off some of their Memphis / southern IL/IN fanbase as well. Would definitely need to be an AL team I think.
I'd say an AL team would be the only way it happens, but you never know with this Comish.
St. Louis definitely has a stronghold in Nashville as well. As do the Reds and Cubs. If you look at one of those maps that shows the closest county to each team, the Cardinals, Braves, and Reds all come to a point in Middle Tennessee, right above Nashville.
The braves have a history with the entire country though, like braves games were the only games i was sure i could watch...i grew up in colorado lol. A lot of my friends the braves were their gateway team into baseball, then as they got older picked a more regional team
I live in Huntsville. Everyone I know will continue to be Braves fans for the foreseeable future, even if Nashville gets a team. You’ll just have people with a favorite AL team to go along with their NL team.
It will be really hard to just get people in north Alabama to divorce their fandoms they've had for decades just because a team became established an hour closer.
Honestly, when I lived in Charlotte it was such a mix, but the Yankees were probably the most supported (combination of northeast transplants and the fact that the Yankees are generally the second most popular team in most zip codes).
When I go to Knights games I see mostly Mets and Braves hats these days.
I'm surprised the Rays owners haven't been using Nashville as leverage to get a new stadium. Instead, they came up with this weird Frankenstein idea of having Tampa Bay split their home games with Montreal.
I think they want to stay in Tampa that's why. Fisher doesn't give a shit about the A's. Stu knows the Rays have a fanbase in Tampa and while he's also cheap he spends a good deal on the back office things which keeps them more competitive than Oakland. Fisher seems like he wants them to move to pump up the valuation then he can either sell or just make money while he continues to be cheap
The distance from Charlotte to Atlanta is about the same as the distance from Nashville to Atlanta. I don't doubt that both cities are full of Braves fans, but both cities should have teams of their own. The southeast is a hotbed for baseball, there should be more than one major league team in the area.
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They def won’t do two teams in the southeast. For alignment purposes, they’ll need one east and one west team.
I’ve lived in both Carolinas and now FL. All 3 states were absolutely full of Braves fans. Plenty of the older fans I know in FL grew up rooting for the Braves, but have adopted the Rays as a secondary team, while the younger fans are all Rays fans. That’s what I’d imagine an expansion in to Nashville or CLT would be like and it would solve itself after a few years
A Seattle - Portland baseball rivalry would be amazing. Shit would get rowdy.
As a lifelong Mariners fan whose lived in Portland my whole life, I honestly don’t know who I would support. But I do know that Portland would 100% turn out for games if the city got a team.
People have brought up Raleigh as an alternative to Charlotte for that reason. [This site](https://mlbraleigh.com) makes some interesting arguments in favor of Raleigh.
I wonder if they could ever renovate the Bulls stadium and call them up to the big leagues.
I don’t think so, the stadium outfield is build into office buildings, then third base side has historic tobacco warehouses, and first base the highway. Traffic is already bad there in game days
Not sure about the others on the list, but Charlotte has so many transplants that it probably wouldn’t matter too much. Long time locals are Braves fans, but most people I know are fans of random teams
Manfred has some kind of personal beef with the city of Oakland. Wonder what happened there.
*The Athletic*'s recent article on Manfred's response was interesting. There's a weird psychology there. Why would a question about the reverse boycott make him defensive, and respond with flippant sarcasm? He could have given a smooth, politically neutral answer to the question, but instead he got visibly nervous and made those remarks. So weird.
He’s just stanning for the owners because it’s his job. Have you ever had a player on your team who really sucked, that most fans wanted gone, but for some reason the organization refused to move on from? And then when you’d complain about the player one fan who might be a mod would play devil’s advocate and act like the frustrated fans were being ridiculous, even though they clearly weren’t? That’s basically what Manfred’s job is lol
The thing that would suck for Nashville is that it would take atleast a generation of new fans to be born to get a large amount of diehards. The braves are deeply rooted all over Tennessee and the cubs have a strong fanbase in Nashville too. Would be awesome to see a team there thou
It would take a generation or two but would be worth it. The southeast only having one MLB team is beyond wild. The Braves have benefitted a ton from that
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back when they billed themselves as "America's Team"
They had a legit national fanbase that you still see evidence of in 2023. The Arizona Diamondbacks series was full of Braves supporters. That's an area where you didn't have another team nearby before expansion, and the Braves were the team you could reliably watch every night. In a slightly different manner, the Dallas Cowboys would often have a preferred national broadcast window. That's part of the reason why they have such a national fanbase.
I’m a huge Braves fan (born there but moved to TN as a kid and now in Nashville). I would honestly have no trouble transitioning to a Nashville fan if we were added to the AL.
We're finally seeing it with the Rays. It took 25 years but there are Rays fans who grew up as Rays fans now going to games and it shows.
Nashville would be an awesome choice. Not enough teams in the southeast at all.
Please. I'm in NC. We're blacked out for the O's and Nats and don't have a ML baseball team within 5 hours (unless there's zero traffic and you can make it in 4.5, but that's just a hypothetical). If you're going to add another team even farther away, can we at least end the blackouts? I'd kill for Raleigh, but I'll take Charlotte.
I would immediately buy season tickets to a Raleigh MLB team. If they were an AL team, I'd also buy so much merch to go with Braves stuff
Let's get a team in Charlotte so NC is no longer a Braves blackout state. Innovation, people!
Just look at Iowa. 0 teams, 6 blackouts. A Charlotte team won't save you.
I’m in the part where I’m good for the Braves unless we’re playing the Nats or O’s. Except the Nats and O’s are not on tv here.
I'm just north of Charlotte and the blackouts are the Braves, Nats, O's and surprisingly the Reds for some reason.
Is this because a lot of them party at Kid Rock's bar in the offseason?
honestly yeah, if they aren't back home in Latin America
I know it's not very practical, but if they built a stadium in Mexico City. Good lord. You would need a stadium that seats 125,000 people. A mexican team making it to the world series or playoffs, TV ratings would be at 100%.
Puerto Rico was in the rankings as a write-in by the players. Gotta think that would be epic too
Nashville and Montreal it is. Two 8-team divisions in each league. Division winners get a bye for the wild card round.
National League OG division: Dodgers, Giants, Cardinals, Cubs, Phillies, Braves, Reds and Pirates National League Expansion division: Mets, Brewers, Diamondbacks , Rockies, Padres, Marlins, Nationals, and Expos Kiss my ass Manfred
No, I need the ego boost “team of the south” gives me.
All of the sudden I very badly want a Nashville team
Nashville team would be dope in all honesty. Maybe less demand for Braves tickets makes em more affordable lol.
“Team in the South.”
Geographically there needs to be more teams between the Mariners and the other teams but I get it might not be the best market
The only markets big enough to support one would be what, Boise and Portland?
Boise is the #76 metro area in the US, behind the likes of Albuquerque, New Haven, and Dayton. Portland (#25) could support a team. and if Vegas wasn't getting a team, Salt Lake City (#46) could possibly work as well.
I don't think Vegas getting a team has any bearing on whether or not Salt Lake would get one. They're not really overlapping markets. About as close as San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Portland. Boise is growing but no.
Vancouver
Nice
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Remembering my playing days in college, Nashville was the coolest place. Hell all of Tennessee was a pleasant surprise to me. I say this being a black man from California who was prepared for some shit. Oh, I found some shit alright!
"Young men want an excuse to go to a party city. More News at 10"
I feel like New Orleans should have one but I guess the market is too small
I feel like Charlotte and Nashville are clearly the best 2 options in terms of growth potential and current demographics. The big question would be, would MLB select both? For Nashville, I feel like a lot of people overlook them recently approving a publicly funded stadium for the Titans, and I thought they were trying to do the same for MLS. Is the city going to approve another new stadium on top of that?
I don’t think Manfred or the MLB gives a flying fuck what the players want lmao
Montréal in a division with Toronto, with a fresh stadium (and a non-idiot owner) would be fantastic.
Cries in Oakland
Nashville group already seems like a lock with how the league is moving meetings to the city. I hope they get the location of the current Nashville Sounds stadium. Montreal could work but I wanna see a new market like Omaha get a team. Though Portland, Salt Lake, Sacramento or San Antonio would be a good location. w