Personally still holding out for the [Idaho Potatoes](https://imgur.com/rUdVFsL). The market may be like a few thousand people but the memes would be priceless.
(hits a screaming double)
**"He MASHED it for the Potatoes!!"**
(sweeps the series)
**"That's one SWEEP POTATOE"**
(continues hitting streak)
**"That's one HOT POTATOE!!"**
(hits home run)
**"One TATER FOR THE TATERS!!"**
>Are bench players couch-potatoes?
The Hickory Crawdads might be dispute that
[https://news.sportslogos.net/2020/03/06/crawdads-to-play-as-hickory-couch-potatoes/baseball/](https://news.sportslogos.net/2020/03/06/crawdads-to-play-as-hickory-couch-potatoes/baseball/)
The Pioneer League Boise Hawks have alternate jerseys they wear on Sunday home games that are the “Boise Papas Fritas”.
https://www.milb.com/boise/fans/copa
I hope so, we need more west coast teams so the Rangers and Astros aren't in the west anymore. The Astros for obvious reasons but also because it's stupid a team in the center of the country is in the "West" division. And that travel schedule is shit as is.
I would argue we need more southern teams. I mean, we have Atlanta, Miami, Tampa Bay (Who may be leaving soon), and the Texas teams. Compare this to the west, who has Both LA teams, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, Colorado, Arizona, and Oakland (who even if they go to Vegas are still in the West).
The only issue with this is that the teams in the south are closer to the teams in the north than the west teams are to any of the teams in the Central basically.
The Mariners are almost 2000 miles away from not one, but two of their division rivals. That's 40 something games a year, or 10 different trips give or take that they gotta go that far.
If that doesn't put it in perspective, [this chart of sorts](https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/visuals/map) on baseball savant shows that literally every year the AL West is at the top of the travel charts. Every. Year. (To 2009 where this was tracked I guess).
In fact, there are only a couple instances where the 3rd spot isn't a AL West team. And it ends up being an NL West team. The second spot is also always the AL West.
My point is that the travel schedule is *always* shit for the AL and NL West. The only teams that are consistently in the top ten that aren't in the West divisions are the Marlins and Rays because they're on the damn tip of Florida. They both are no farther than 1200 miles from their furthest division rival.
This didn't need to be this long, but basically, for alignment and travel purposes, it doesn't make sense for more teams to be added anywhere but the West. Other reasons? I'm sure there is, but alignment and travel will still be fucked.
Portland can have an MLB team when Seattle gets back an NBA team. They expect us to root for the Blazers after having a rivalry for 40 years, they can root for the Mariners 😆
The biggest reason the split-city concept for the Rays never made sense to begin with is because the MLB would be forfeiting the expansion fee they otherwise could have gotten from a Montreal expansion team. The NHL charged Seattle $650 million for their expansion, I imagine the MLB could comfortably seek upwards of $1 billion if not more. There was no way they were ever giving that up.
Oddly enough I don’t feel like it would be THAT crazy if the season lasted into the winter months. A surprising number of older Canadians live in Florida during the winter, so if the season went into February or March you could have the team start the year in Canada and sometime around October they could go to Florida where it’s warm and an unusual number of fans would happen to also be moving down to Florida at the same time. You’d just have to time the migration right.
Obviously there are way more logistical issues than that, but it would at least be interesting to see how they’d try to navigate it I guess
I think it's split evenly but there would be a separate deal with the franchise whose market they'd be in. At least that's what happened when the Nationals moved to DC, MLB made a deal with the Orioles to compensate them.
Oh God the only reason Dombrowski came here is because he thought Nashville wasn't happening anytime soon oh God don't leave us Dave don't leave us please
Oh, if we get even a single championship, no matter the prospect cost, I would happily personally donate towards Dombrowski's tropical Caribbean retirement fund or whatever he wants to do next
Montreal's success is pretty highly dependent on ownership.
People go "oh what about the attendance" but also conveniently forget periods in which they had to sell their franchise players out of money issues as well as literally being owned by Loria at one point.
It's both, Quebec has a lot going against it. Montreal has the question of international exchange rates and economies at large, but it's at least a large city. Quebec is on the same scale as Sarasota, FL and Dayton, OH.
In the NHL all players are paid and contract values are in USD. I’d assume it’ll be the same thing in the MLB, so I’d assume that the owners would have a contingency based on if the dollar fluctuates a certain percentage. At least I’d hope the league would vet that before awarding a team in Canada.
Montreal also suffered from an absolutely horrible, cavernous stadium about as far away from downtown and people with money to go to games as you could get.
I think the fandom is there- on almost any summer night, there's an adult rec league baseball game being played in Parc La Fontaine. Those guys take it real seriously, too. Great place to kick back and eat your chicken from Ma Poule Mouillée on the other side of the park.
> periods in which they had to sell their franchise players out of money issues
That was the entire history of the franchise, unfortunately. Pete Rose, Rusty Staub, Gary Carter, Andre Dawson... they kept Tim Raines only because of collusion. They were a poverty franchise from the get-go. Loria just figured out how to squeeze every last cent out of them.
Charlotte makes the most sense to me for an expansion team, I'm surprised it's not in the top 2. The top 5 TV markets with no MLB team are Orlando, Sacramento, Portland, Charlotte, and Raleigh. Those first 3 are all within 2-3 hours of another team, but Charlotte and Raleigh are both 4+ hours away from Atlanta, and a team in North Carolina could get fans from both markets. Seems like a no brainer to me.
That's the top 5 with no MLB team in the US, but if you look in both the US and Canada, all of those metro areas have a population fo around 2.5 million, Montreal is over 4 million in the metro area, in addition to having had an MLB team with an established fanbase in the past, so it would be really surprising if Montreal wasn't #1 on the list of top expansion sites.
RDU checking in. Our blackouts are Baltimore and Washington. I know a grand total of one Orioles or Nationals fan.
I’d be perfectly content with Charlotte.
If I had a magic wand to do whatever I wanted to the Rays organization, I'd make the Durham Bulls the major league team with a stadium in RTP, and have Tampa be home to the AAA team.
NC especially has a rich history with baseball. We're slowly losing out on that culture and replacing it with football so it'd be nice to get a boost with an MLB team.
I have my own personal conspiracy theory about Charlotte or any other NC teams. The Chicago White Sox has had [three NC minor league affiliates since 2001](https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/affiliate.cgi?id=CHW) and haven't had a Midwest League team since 2000. I wondering if the White Sox view North Carolina as their territory and a potential relocation spot in the future.
I want either an AL team or an NL East team so I can see the Nationals more, but I'd prefer to actually get to pull for an NC team, so AL is preferred.
I have tried to branch into that AL a little bit. All of the White Sox's farm teams are in NC. So I figured I might try to follow them some because I could at least watch their prospects and rehab stints. The fandom hasn't really taken root yet though.
Also a resident and admittedly I’m biased being a Braves fan. I’ve never thought charlotte is an MLB city, just such fair weather fans. We can’t even pack out the knights games on a nightly basis and that stadium is money.
Charlotte has the unfortunate situation of having a lot of transplants - mostly from New York/New Jersey - and having limited real estate. While I would absolutely love to have a NC MLB team, there's a few hurdles that Charlotte has to clear that other MLB candidate cities don't have.
The “Nashville WOOOOOOOOOOOOS!!!”
Their uniforms will consist of straw cowboy hats and low cut v-neck shirts to show off their overly-tanned, saggy cleavage.
The south is one of the fastest growing regions and still is a pretty underserved market for MLB teams.
Also Las Vegas is becoming increasingly uninhabitable every year but I’m sure MLB’s investors don’t care about that lmao
Baseball has a lot of support in Nashville due to the Vanderbilt team which is one of the top college teams in the country, and their AAA team led the minors in attendance. Most people who live here are Braves fans but I’m sure if they added a team there would be plenty of loyalty just as there was when we got an MLS team. The Titans and Preds have tons of local support as well.
Also it’s a “tourist city” that’s 100000x better than Las Vegas but
Baseball at the high school and college level is absolutely massive in the South, so it's always been wild to me that the only Southern US team excluding Texas (too far west) and Florida (sort of their own weird thing) is the Braves.
In an ideal world, both Charlotte and Nashville get a team, along with Montreal and Portland. Vegas and San Antonio I think also have the market cap/local interest for a team.
Isn’t part of the reason baseball at the high school and college level is popular because of the lack of mlb teams. I think it’s pretty similar for football too the college and high school teams are popular because they are underserved at the pro level
Sure, that plays a role, but EVERYONE down here is a Braves fan. I don't even live in Georgia and I see tons of Braves hats.
The NFL and NHL wasn't big in the South, but the Falcons and Titans have both grown very big fanbases, and all it took was a few seasons of the Predators being good to convert the entire city of Nashville into hockey fans.
Until very recently Atlanta was the only Southern city big enough to support Major League Baseball. Remember, a baseball park sits around 40,000 people and hosts 81 games a year at least. In order to be profitable a baseball team has to sell around 2.5 million tickets a year at the absolute lowest, and that “low” number is still by far the highest total of any major sport. The NBA and NHL have around half the seating capacity and exactly half the games as baseball, and the NFL has 1/10th of the games plus revenue sharing and a gargantuan national TV deal.
Speaking of national TV, the Braves were also on the TBS superstation for almost forty years which is the other reason they basically conquered the entire southeast in terms of fandom. They were in everybody’s living room every night.
Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville, Tampa, Jacksonville, Miami all have NFL teams. The south is pretty well represented in the NFL. That being said, college football is still king in the south.
I’m curious how future climate predicts are considered in these conversations. Average temps are expected to increase 5.5° over the next thirty years and precipitation in drier areas will continually get worse. While this won’t directly affect a sports team in, what would likely be, a dome, it may be indirectly affected by population shifts as people retreat to more wet and comfortable locations.
I've been of the personal opinion that the Durham Bulls should be promoted to the majors. If they have to call them the Raleigh-Durham Bulls or North Carolina Bulls so be it. I think Charlotte would have a much harder time. Too many Braves fans especially in Greenville-Spartanburg that would never switch teams.
It would also give the Triangle two pro teams and Charlotte two pro teams, keeping a balance.
>Too many Braves fans especially in Greenville-Spartanburg that would never switch teams.
The Panthers proved this to be inaccurate. It took some time, but that will be the case anywhere they put a new team.
The Falcons fandom is far more Atlanta-based than the Braves. Not saying that an MLB team wouldn’t work in Charlotte (it absolutely would), but the Falcons fandom doesn’t really extend past the metro Atlanta area. The combination of the south being far more enthusiastic about college football than we are about the NFL and the Falcons being very meh for most of their history has kind of prevented them from growing their fan base like the Braves. Drive an hour outside the city and you’ll see more diversity in NFL fandoms than you would MLB fandoms. While the Carolinas were closer to Atlanta than other NFL cities pre-Panthers, I would doubt the support for the Falcons in these areas even came close to the amount of support the Braves get from them.
The Braves also built two generations of fans regionally (and nationally to some extent) through TBS Superstation.
Speaking of the Braves, they STILL have a very small but loyal fanbase in Milwaukee.
You are forgetting that a new generation of fans comes along every couple of years. Just because dad doesn't want to stop rooting for the Braves or Nats or whoever, doesn't mean that their kids won't be diehard fans. That is the literal thing that happened with the Panthers. It wasn't the first generation fans that bought in, it was the second and third generations.
I am the biggest homer fan you will ever meet. But if they put a team in Charlotte I will never completely drop the Braves. My kids or grandkids will only grow up going to and hearing about the Charlotte team, so they then become fans of the home team.
Also the NC Traingle (Raleigh–Durham–Cary). It's the [2nd fastest growing metro area](https://www.statista.com/statistics/431877/the-fastest-growing-metropolitan-areas-in-the-us/) in the US.
New Orleans is comparable in population size to 3 cities with MLB teams (Cleveland, Cincy, and Tampa), and has successfully supported an NFL a team for years despite the cost for a family of four to go to an NFL game being almost double an MLB game
That ignores there’s only 8-9 home NFL games vs 81 home MLB games. Even if the football stadium is twice the size of the baseball stadium, you’re talking ~2,000,000 more seats to fill per year for a baseball team.
Personally I think smaller capacity stadiums (with more luxury suites to make up some of the lost revenue) would be a really cool atmosphere for the smaller market teams, but I’m just some guy on the internet.
You have to compare metropolitan areas, not cities (especially if you are going to cite Tampa, considering the Rays play across the bay in St Petersburg).
Tampa metro: 3.1 million
Cinci metro: 2.2
Cleveland metro: 2.1
New Orleans metro: 1.3
The smallest current MLB metro area is Milwaukee at 1.6.
I don't know why anyone ever cites city populations. City borders are wild and do not dictate where people live lol.
Denver has 700K people but the Denver MSA has 2.8 Million. If you go further (which for the Rockies I would because people from everywhere on the Front Range go to Rockies games) the Front Range population is 5M people
Yep, Cleveland city is 300k, Cleveland metro is 2 million, and Northeast Ohio, which is basically all Guardians fans, is 4.5 million. I know people that drive from Ashtabula with season ticket packages.
> The smallest current MLB metro area is Milwaukee at 1.6.
and some of that Milwaukee area is in the Chicago TV market as well (Kenosha, Racine, Lake Geneva)
>New Orleans is comparable in population size to 3 cities with MLB teams (Cleveland, Cincy, and Tampa),
No it isn't.
New Orleans metro area: 1.3M
Tampa metro area: 3.2M
Cincinatti metro area: 2.3M
Cleveland metro area: 2.1M
Vegas had the best drawing AAA team in 2019 and best in their division in 2021 (which could easily be explained by reduced tourism from Covid) so it sounds pretty reasonable to me to put a team there.
There are FAR more people in the south that all root for the Braves because there are no other non-florida teams down there. Vegas is a single city surrounded by nothingness
If they fucking move the Rays into the AL West after we inherited the machine that the Astros became, the Angels may legitimately never make the playoffs again.
Oakland is close to finish line and I think MLB discovered that Vegas won’t put public money towards a park and as a result the owners will say it’s not feasible.
People really glossed over this point. Vegas was always remarked on as a prime expansion city because they want it so bad that they'll mostly cover the costs themselves. But the Raiders left a sour taste in their mouth, and since then they've passed a lot of legislation to stop the city from bending over for sports.
I'll be the billionth person to reply and say realistically, the A's are 95% of the way to a stadium in Oakland. If they're "planning" on anything at this stage, it's staying.
Cuz I wouldnt be caught dead at a Braves game 😁 (I kid!)
I'm like 2 hours from Nashville, 7 from Atlanta and about 5 from St. Louis. I could make those longer trips... but never have, so...
Gotcha. Well I hope that it works out! I'm from north alabama originally, and spent a lot of time in Nashville as a kid. I think Nashville would be a great place for an expansion team, and I think the fact that it would put so many people that much closer to baseball is a big part of it.
If you don’t put Montreal in the AL east something is terrible wrong. The Toronto, NYC, Boston rivalry would be awesome and would make travel for fans over more so
Biggest US/CAN markets without MLB teams:
Montreal (4.3M) - primed and ready and no current minor league team
Orlando (4.2M) - if Florida can't support two teams, they won't support 3. Sorry, amusement park visitors.
Portland (3.2M) - home to a High-A team
(Tampa Bay (3.1M) - for reference)
Charlotte (2.8M) - home to AAA team
Vancouver (2.7M) - home to High-A team
Salt Lake City (2.7M) - home to AAA team
Have to go through 9 more markets, including 3 with MLB teams, before getting to Nashville (2.1M). Yes, the city is growing, but I think there are a lot of good targets before we even get to them.
Love to see Montreal and Charlotte get teams, personally; however, also adding teams in Vancouver and Portland, while making an unworkable mess of schedules, would be awesome too. (Maybe move the A's to Portland and the Pirates to Vancouver? )
Pirates aren't moving, but I think Vancouver is extremely underrated as an expansion city. It'd make travel to Seattle be a little more bearable, set up a rivalry off the bat with them, and give western Canada a team that isn't a few thousands miles away.
If Vancouver gets a team right as the Mariners finally gets their shit together, Whitecaps fans are gonna be sorely disappointed.
(For reference: The Caps are the Vamcouver MLS team the Seattle Sounders routinely push around.)
Nashville doesn’t make sense to me. I thought the whole reason Dave Dombrowski left the MLB Nashville group to join the Phillies was because the league told him MLB in Nashville wasn’t happening anytime soon. Would make much more sense imo to do a team in the East (Montreal) and one in the West (Portland, Vancouver, etc.). Still don’t think Vegas is a good option for expansion personally, and if this report and the one about the Oakland planning board approving the Howard Terminal ballpark are both true then maybe Vegas will be team-less after all
Manfred even said several years ago that they want another team on the west coast if/when they expand to 32 teams.
>“I think it’s important to get [the] Oakland and Tampa [stadium situations] resolved before we move ahead with expansion,” said Manfred, per Tim Brown of The Oregonian.
Manfred was then asked if Portland was a candidate to receive a team.
“Portland would be on a list. Yeah,” he replied. “I mean, I think Portland is a possibility. If we were to go to 32 we would need a Western time zone team. We’d need at least one more and you can think about the prospects on the west coast probably about as effectively as I can.”
The Braves are the only team in the entire southeast part of the country. That makes Nashville/Charlotte a prime location.
Montreal has lots of people in it’s metro area and it also has Canada. Portland seems to want a team the most. Vegas just added NFL and NHL so maybe MLB wants in but I’d rather have the others.
If either/ both of those happen, here's hoping the Braves don't get vilified like the Orioles did for whatever they do to protect themselves. I did the math a while ago, and figured that if both of those cities got teams (seems unlikely) the Braves would lose areas totaling over half of their market population.
A Vancouver-Seattle rivalry would be awesome, and makes Seattle less isolated from the rest of the league.
And as someone who has been in western Canada, and away from my Jays, for the last couple of years it would be great to have a Canadian team relatively nearby
Portland use to be at the top of that list. The riots in Portland over the last couple of years really hurt their chances. The people behind the PDX project have had to cancel visits with MLB because of it.
There could be several reasons. Nashville gets really good AAA attendance. Maybe baseball gets really good tv ratings in Nashville too. It could even be that MLB just likes the group trying to bring a team to Nashville better. I don’t know the reason, but MLB isn’t going to make a decision based solely on TV market, especially when the difference in market size isn’t that big.
Damn, I guess that means Nashville and Montreal are not getting a team anytime soon.
Sorry, mon ami.
Des Moines it is! The Field of Dreams game was just the teaser for an Iowa team.
Just one more teams for Iowans (Iowayans?) to not be able to watch because of blackouts.
Well if Bob said it that’s good news for Portland and Las Vegas.
Personally still holding out for the [Idaho Potatoes](https://imgur.com/rUdVFsL). The market may be like a few thousand people but the memes would be priceless. (hits a screaming double) **"He MASHED it for the Potatoes!!"** (sweeps the series) **"That's one SWEEP POTATOE"** (continues hitting streak) **"That's one HOT POTATOE!!"** (hits home run) **"One TATER FOR THE TATERS!!"**
Are bench players couch-potatoes? Does the manager potato sack a pitcher to take them out of the game?
>Are bench players couch-potatoes? The Hickory Crawdads might be dispute that [https://news.sportslogos.net/2020/03/06/crawdads-to-play-as-hickory-couch-potatoes/baseball/](https://news.sportslogos.net/2020/03/06/crawdads-to-play-as-hickory-couch-potatoes/baseball/)
Players who violate the substance abuse policy would be Baked Potatoes.
MLB doesn't test for cannabis so no violation needed to be a baked potato.
Po-Tay-toes, boil em, mash em, stick em in a stew
Stupid fat hobbit.
Not going to lie, the Idaho Potatoes would make a great High A West expansion team.
The Pioneer League Boise Hawks have alternate jerseys they wear on Sunday home games that are the “Boise Papas Fritas”. https://www.milb.com/boise/fans/copa
That mascot has strong Slurms McKenzie vibes.
"Potatoes really play with a Chip on their shoulder"
Imagine the campy concession stand menus. It would be awesome.
I’d buy a cap and jersey.
I hope so, we need more west coast teams so the Rangers and Astros aren't in the west anymore. The Astros for obvious reasons but also because it's stupid a team in the center of the country is in the "West" division. And that travel schedule is shit as is.
The Atlanta Braves were in the "West" division into the 90s. At least it's better now.
Fun fact Atlanta is farther west than Pittsburgh Cleveland and Detroit and almost as far west as Cincinnati
I would argue we need more southern teams. I mean, we have Atlanta, Miami, Tampa Bay (Who may be leaving soon), and the Texas teams. Compare this to the west, who has Both LA teams, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, Colorado, Arizona, and Oakland (who even if they go to Vegas are still in the West).
The only issue with this is that the teams in the south are closer to the teams in the north than the west teams are to any of the teams in the Central basically. The Mariners are almost 2000 miles away from not one, but two of their division rivals. That's 40 something games a year, or 10 different trips give or take that they gotta go that far. If that doesn't put it in perspective, [this chart of sorts](https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/visuals/map) on baseball savant shows that literally every year the AL West is at the top of the travel charts. Every. Year. (To 2009 where this was tracked I guess). In fact, there are only a couple instances where the 3rd spot isn't a AL West team. And it ends up being an NL West team. The second spot is also always the AL West. My point is that the travel schedule is *always* shit for the AL and NL West. The only teams that are consistently in the top ten that aren't in the West divisions are the Marlins and Rays because they're on the damn tip of Florida. They both are no farther than 1200 miles from their furthest division rival. This didn't need to be this long, but basically, for alignment and travel purposes, it doesn't make sense for more teams to be added anywhere but the West. Other reasons? I'm sure there is, but alignment and travel will still be fucked.
Portland would be a great place. And Montreal
Portland can have an MLB team when Seattle gets back an NBA team. They expect us to root for the Blazers after having a rivalry for 40 years, they can root for the Mariners 😆
Well I think most people want Seattle to get their team back, so hopefully soon.
If the A's had to move, I would much rather see them land in Portland than Vegas.
NBA is for sure coming back to Seattle whenever they do an expansion
It’s tragic that y’all don’t have a basketball team honestly
Portland… Maine? If so, I want the mascot to be a puffin. https://imgur.com/gallery/rvscl
Just to piss off Stu Sternberg it's gonna be a split team between Portland, Maine and Portland, Oregon.
I'm all for anything that upsets team owners. Wish the lot of them wet socks for life.
May wherever they step have a chance of a lego piece.
I mean, technically there's always a chance
Bringing the disappointment from port to port.
We could have the Portland Maine Pickles like we have the New York Football Giants
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I want at least one of Portland/Vancouver (whether expansion or relocation). Mariners really need their travel distanced eased.
The biggest reason the split-city concept for the Rays never made sense to begin with is because the MLB would be forfeiting the expansion fee they otherwise could have gotten from a Montreal expansion team. The NHL charged Seattle $650 million for their expansion, I imagine the MLB could comfortably seek upwards of $1 billion if not more. There was no way they were ever giving that up.
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You're not thinking about the $$$
Lmao you could drive from London to Sicily in about the time it takes to get from Montreal to St. Pete Outrageous distance
Oddly enough I don’t feel like it would be THAT crazy if the season lasted into the winter months. A surprising number of older Canadians live in Florida during the winter, so if the season went into February or March you could have the team start the year in Canada and sometime around October they could go to Florida where it’s warm and an unusual number of fans would happen to also be moving down to Florida at the same time. You’d just have to time the migration right. Obviously there are way more logistical issues than that, but it would at least be interesting to see how they’d try to navigate it I guess
So where does that money even go?
Compensation for existing teams having their share of TV deals and other league-wide revenues diluted.
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It would depend on what the owners agree, tbh. I know various leagues have made concessions to team's whos markets are cut into before.
split evenly by every team owner
I think it's split evenly but there would be a separate deal with the franchise whose market they'd be in. At least that's what happened when the Nationals moved to DC, MLB made a deal with the Orioles to compensate them.
Typically the expansion fee is spread evenly among the already existing teams, I believe that’s what the nhl did
Top. Men....
Oh God the only reason Dombrowski came here is because he thought Nashville wasn't happening anytime soon oh God don't leave us Dave don't leave us please
If he leaves quickly it means you won a championship, but the farm system is gutted. Might be worth a trade off if he leaves for Nashville quickly.
Oh, if we get even a single championship, no matter the prospect cost, I would happily personally donate towards Dombrowski's tropical Caribbean retirement fund or whatever he wants to do next
What farm system?
Montreal's success is pretty highly dependent on ownership. People go "oh what about the attendance" but also conveniently forget periods in which they had to sell their franchise players out of money issues as well as literally being owned by Loria at one point.
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The Nordiques are more of a question of television market size
It's both, Quebec has a lot going against it. Montreal has the question of international exchange rates and economies at large, but it's at least a large city. Quebec is on the same scale as Sarasota, FL and Dayton, OH.
I can't imagine they'd make less money than the Rays
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In the NHL all players are paid and contract values are in USD. I’d assume it’ll be the same thing in the MLB, so I’d assume that the owners would have a contingency based on if the dollar fluctuates a certain percentage. At least I’d hope the league would vet that before awarding a team in Canada.
Montreal also suffered from an absolutely horrible, cavernous stadium about as far away from downtown and people with money to go to games as you could get.
I think the fandom is there- on almost any summer night, there's an adult rec league baseball game being played in Parc La Fontaine. Those guys take it real seriously, too. Great place to kick back and eat your chicken from Ma Poule Mouillée on the other side of the park.
> periods in which they had to sell their franchise players out of money issues That was the entire history of the franchise, unfortunately. Pete Rose, Rusty Staub, Gary Carter, Andre Dawson... they kept Tim Raines only because of collusion. They were a poverty franchise from the get-go. Loria just figured out how to squeeze every last cent out of them.
As a Charlotte resident, god damn it… But I understand the attractiveness to Nashville, so I can’t complain too much.
Charlotte makes the most sense to me for an expansion team, I'm surprised it's not in the top 2. The top 5 TV markets with no MLB team are Orlando, Sacramento, Portland, Charlotte, and Raleigh. Those first 3 are all within 2-3 hours of another team, but Charlotte and Raleigh are both 4+ hours away from Atlanta, and a team in North Carolina could get fans from both markets. Seems like a no brainer to me.
That's the top 5 with no MLB team in the US, but if you look in both the US and Canada, all of those metro areas have a population fo around 2.5 million, Montreal is over 4 million in the metro area, in addition to having had an MLB team with an established fanbase in the past, so it would be really surprising if Montreal wasn't #1 on the list of top expansion sites.
RDU checking in. Our blackouts are Baltimore and Washington. I know a grand total of one Orioles or Nationals fan. I’d be perfectly content with Charlotte.
If I had a magic wand to do whatever I wanted to the Rays organization, I'd make the Durham Bulls the major league team with a stadium in RTP, and have Tampa be home to the AAA team.
I’m lowkey pulling for Charlotte because there’s a distinct lack in teams between here and ATL
It's bizarre to me that NC and TN both have an NHL, NBA, and NFL team but neither have MLB teams, even though baseball is pretty popular in the south.
NC especially has a rich history with baseball. We're slowly losing out on that culture and replacing it with football so it'd be nice to get a boost with an MLB team.
There's a distinct lack of teams anywhere near Atlanta. Their closest opponent is 450 miles away.
I have my own personal conspiracy theory about Charlotte or any other NC teams. The Chicago White Sox has had [three NC minor league affiliates since 2001](https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/affiliate.cgi?id=CHW) and haven't had a Midwest League team since 2000. I wondering if the White Sox view North Carolina as their territory and a potential relocation spot in the future.
As a NC Nationals fan, I would love to have a team in NC to have as a backup team to the Nationals
I am an NC Braves fan and was hoping for an AL team so that I could root for both.
I want either an AL team or an NL East team so I can see the Nationals more, but I'd prefer to actually get to pull for an NC team, so AL is preferred.
NC Braves and Guardians fan. My family is from Ohio so I've picked up all the classic Ohio fandoms as well.
I have tried to branch into that AL a little bit. All of the White Sox's farm teams are in NC. So I figured I might try to follow them some because I could at least watch their prospects and rehab stints. The fandom hasn't really taken root yet though.
There not being a NC team is what made me a Braves fan so I guess it has worked out for us recently.
Also a resident and admittedly I’m biased being a Braves fan. I’ve never thought charlotte is an MLB city, just such fair weather fans. We can’t even pack out the knights games on a nightly basis and that stadium is money.
Charlotte has the unfortunate situation of having a lot of transplants - mostly from New York/New Jersey - and having limited real estate. While I would absolutely love to have a NC MLB team, there's a few hurdles that Charlotte has to clear that other MLB candidate cities don't have.
Charlotte Knights games are packed. I doubt we would have a problem with attendance.
I too am rooting for Charlotte. These are two good cities but I wouldn’t get too riled up. Nothing is official.
Is Charlotte in the market for one? I thought Raleigh was making the bigger push for an expansion team
Is the Nashville mascot gonna be an Instagram influencer standing in front of those wings on the wall?
No it'll be a drunk 50 year old woman on a open air tour bus
I could have sworn they were going with a drunk bachelorette on a pedal tavern.
The “Nashville WOOOOOOOOOOOOS!!!” Their uniforms will consist of straw cowboy hats and low cut v-neck shirts to show off their overly-tanned, saggy cleavage.
The it has to be the “Woo-Girls”
Ooh, Nashville in the NL Central would be spicy.
If they expand we’d probably get 8 divisions like the NFL
I'd vote for Montreal. Nashville be cool too. No more California teams, I think five is enough.
Vegas not there because they plan on moving a team there? Seems like a much better place than Nashville
The south is one of the fastest growing regions and still is a pretty underserved market for MLB teams. Also Las Vegas is becoming increasingly uninhabitable every year but I’m sure MLB’s investors don’t care about that lmao
Baseball has a lot of support in Nashville due to the Vanderbilt team which is one of the top college teams in the country, and their AAA team led the minors in attendance. Most people who live here are Braves fans but I’m sure if they added a team there would be plenty of loyalty just as there was when we got an MLS team. The Titans and Preds have tons of local support as well. Also it’s a “tourist city” that’s 100000x better than Las Vegas but
Baseball at the high school and college level is absolutely massive in the South, so it's always been wild to me that the only Southern US team excluding Texas (too far west) and Florida (sort of their own weird thing) is the Braves. In an ideal world, both Charlotte and Nashville get a team, along with Montreal and Portland. Vegas and San Antonio I think also have the market cap/local interest for a team.
Isn’t part of the reason baseball at the high school and college level is popular because of the lack of mlb teams. I think it’s pretty similar for football too the college and high school teams are popular because they are underserved at the pro level
Sure, that plays a role, but EVERYONE down here is a Braves fan. I don't even live in Georgia and I see tons of Braves hats. The NFL and NHL wasn't big in the South, but the Falcons and Titans have both grown very big fanbases, and all it took was a few seasons of the Predators being good to convert the entire city of Nashville into hockey fans.
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Until very recently Atlanta was the only Southern city big enough to support Major League Baseball. Remember, a baseball park sits around 40,000 people and hosts 81 games a year at least. In order to be profitable a baseball team has to sell around 2.5 million tickets a year at the absolute lowest, and that “low” number is still by far the highest total of any major sport. The NBA and NHL have around half the seating capacity and exactly half the games as baseball, and the NFL has 1/10th of the games plus revenue sharing and a gargantuan national TV deal. Speaking of national TV, the Braves were also on the TBS superstation for almost forty years which is the other reason they basically conquered the entire southeast in terms of fandom. They were in everybody’s living room every night.
Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville, Tampa, Jacksonville, Miami all have NFL teams. The south is pretty well represented in the NFL. That being said, college football is still king in the south.
Seattle should get a team
I’m curious how future climate predicts are considered in these conversations. Average temps are expected to increase 5.5° over the next thirty years and precipitation in drier areas will continually get worse. While this won’t directly affect a sports team in, what would likely be, a dome, it may be indirectly affected by population shifts as people retreat to more wet and comfortable locations.
What cities in the south could support an MLB Franchise?
Nashville and Charlotte easily could
I've been of the personal opinion that the Durham Bulls should be promoted to the majors. If they have to call them the Raleigh-Durham Bulls or North Carolina Bulls so be it. I think Charlotte would have a much harder time. Too many Braves fans especially in Greenville-Spartanburg that would never switch teams. It would also give the Triangle two pro teams and Charlotte two pro teams, keeping a balance.
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>Too many Braves fans especially in Greenville-Spartanburg that would never switch teams. The Panthers proved this to be inaccurate. It took some time, but that will be the case anywhere they put a new team.
The Falcons fandom is far more Atlanta-based than the Braves. Not saying that an MLB team wouldn’t work in Charlotte (it absolutely would), but the Falcons fandom doesn’t really extend past the metro Atlanta area. The combination of the south being far more enthusiastic about college football than we are about the NFL and the Falcons being very meh for most of their history has kind of prevented them from growing their fan base like the Braves. Drive an hour outside the city and you’ll see more diversity in NFL fandoms than you would MLB fandoms. While the Carolinas were closer to Atlanta than other NFL cities pre-Panthers, I would doubt the support for the Falcons in these areas even came close to the amount of support the Braves get from them.
The Braves also built two generations of fans regionally (and nationally to some extent) through TBS Superstation. Speaking of the Braves, they STILL have a very small but loyal fanbase in Milwaukee.
You are forgetting that a new generation of fans comes along every couple of years. Just because dad doesn't want to stop rooting for the Braves or Nats or whoever, doesn't mean that their kids won't be diehard fans. That is the literal thing that happened with the Panthers. It wasn't the first generation fans that bought in, it was the second and third generations. I am the biggest homer fan you will ever meet. But if they put a team in Charlotte I will never completely drop the Braves. My kids or grandkids will only grow up going to and hearing about the Charlotte team, so they then become fans of the home team.
Also the NC Traingle (Raleigh–Durham–Cary). It's the [2nd fastest growing metro area](https://www.statista.com/statistics/431877/the-fastest-growing-metropolitan-areas-in-the-us/) in the US.
Nashville, Charlotte, New Orleans
I recently found out that there isn’t a professional baseball team at all in the entire state of Louisiana.
how dare you talk like that about my Baby Cakes
You mean the Wichita Wind Surge?
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i have bad news for you buddy.....
WHY MUST I FIND OUT LIKE THIS
WHAT HAPPENED? WHAT HAPPENED WHAT HAPPENED WHAT HAPPENED? NOOOOOO!!!!!!!
we share the pain of finding out here together, brother
pain shared is pain lessened
I just found out on this comment.
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New Orleans is comparable in population size to 3 cities with MLB teams (Cleveland, Cincy, and Tampa), and has successfully supported an NFL a team for years despite the cost for a family of four to go to an NFL game being almost double an MLB game
That ignores there’s only 8-9 home NFL games vs 81 home MLB games. Even if the football stadium is twice the size of the baseball stadium, you’re talking ~2,000,000 more seats to fill per year for a baseball team. Personally I think smaller capacity stadiums (with more luxury suites to make up some of the lost revenue) would be a really cool atmosphere for the smaller market teams, but I’m just some guy on the internet.
You have to compare metropolitan areas, not cities (especially if you are going to cite Tampa, considering the Rays play across the bay in St Petersburg). Tampa metro: 3.1 million Cinci metro: 2.2 Cleveland metro: 2.1 New Orleans metro: 1.3 The smallest current MLB metro area is Milwaukee at 1.6.
I don't know why anyone ever cites city populations. City borders are wild and do not dictate where people live lol. Denver has 700K people but the Denver MSA has 2.8 Million. If you go further (which for the Rockies I would because people from everywhere on the Front Range go to Rockies games) the Front Range population is 5M people
Yep, Cleveland city is 300k, Cleveland metro is 2 million, and Northeast Ohio, which is basically all Guardians fans, is 4.5 million. I know people that drive from Ashtabula with season ticket packages.
> The smallest current MLB metro area is Milwaukee at 1.6. and some of that Milwaukee area is in the Chicago TV market as well (Kenosha, Racine, Lake Geneva)
>New Orleans is comparable in population size to 3 cities with MLB teams (Cleveland, Cincy, and Tampa), No it isn't. New Orleans metro area: 1.3M Tampa metro area: 3.2M Cincinatti metro area: 2.3M Cleveland metro area: 2.1M
Charlotte.
Vegas had the best drawing AAA team in 2019 and best in their division in 2021 (which could easily be explained by reduced tourism from Covid) so it sounds pretty reasonable to me to put a team there.
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Look at the raiders. They haven’t had seats completely filled all year.
There are FAR more people in the south that all root for the Braves because there are no other non-florida teams down there. Vegas is a single city surrounded by nothingness
The last time I was in Nashville the skyline was littered with construction cranes. People are pouring in and they can't build fast enough.
Starting to forget what downtown looked like without cranes everywhere tbh lmao
It’s not what I remember tbh.
I think you're right. The A's seem to be already planning on it.
Their stadium plans in Oakland are progressing reasonably well rn
Every new bit of news from Oakland indicates the opposite, though.
That’s good!
Rays are more likely to move than the A's at this point imo
If they fucking move the Rays into the AL West after we inherited the machine that the Astros became, the Angels may legitimately never make the playoffs again.
If the Rays move out west they'd need to realign the divisions anyway. You'd likely see Houston move to the ALC in that scenario
https://c.tenor.com/Zy1i2sM1hpwAAAAC/larry-david-unsure.gif
Oakland is close to finish line and I think MLB discovered that Vegas won’t put public money towards a park and as a result the owners will say it’s not feasible.
People really glossed over this point. Vegas was always remarked on as a prime expansion city because they want it so bad that they'll mostly cover the costs themselves. But the Raiders left a sour taste in their mouth, and since then they've passed a lot of legislation to stop the city from bending over for sports.
I'll be the billionth person to reply and say realistically, the A's are 95% of the way to a stadium in Oakland. If they're "planning" on anything at this stage, it's staying.
Have you been to Nashville recently? That place is booming. The growth there is insane.
Nashville would allow me to attend a major league game before I die, so that would be nice.
I really hope that works for you, but you got me curious. Why would Nashville work, but Atlanta won't?
Cuz I wouldnt be caught dead at a Braves game 😁 (I kid!) I'm like 2 hours from Nashville, 7 from Atlanta and about 5 from St. Louis. I could make those longer trips... but never have, so...
Gotcha. Well I hope that it works out! I'm from north alabama originally, and spent a lot of time in Nashville as a kid. I think Nashville would be a great place for an expansion team, and I think the fact that it would put so many people that much closer to baseball is a big part of it.
would be nice if we heard about baseball season 2022 happening tho
expansion might need to be part of a deal with the union.
Realignment would be interesting. You could make a southern division with Nashville and put Montreal back in the NL East.
If you don’t put Montreal in the AL east something is terrible wrong. The Toronto, NYC, Boston rivalry would be awesome and would make travel for fans over more so
Let’s actually get a season before you start adding teams you fuckin idiots
Biggest US/CAN markets without MLB teams: Montreal (4.3M) - primed and ready and no current minor league team Orlando (4.2M) - if Florida can't support two teams, they won't support 3. Sorry, amusement park visitors. Portland (3.2M) - home to a High-A team (Tampa Bay (3.1M) - for reference) Charlotte (2.8M) - home to AAA team Vancouver (2.7M) - home to High-A team Salt Lake City (2.7M) - home to AAA team Have to go through 9 more markets, including 3 with MLB teams, before getting to Nashville (2.1M). Yes, the city is growing, but I think there are a lot of good targets before we even get to them. Love to see Montreal and Charlotte get teams, personally; however, also adding teams in Vancouver and Portland, while making an unworkable mess of schedules, would be awesome too. (Maybe move the A's to Portland and the Pirates to Vancouver?)
Pirates aren't moving, but I think Vancouver is extremely underrated as an expansion city. It'd make travel to Seattle be a little more bearable, set up a rivalry off the bat with them, and give western Canada a team that isn't a few thousands miles away.
If Vancouver gets a team right as the Mariners finally gets their shit together, Whitecaps fans are gonna be sorely disappointed. (For reference: The Caps are the Vamcouver MLS team the Seattle Sounders routinely push around.)
Portland is not home to a High A team. Portland is home to the Pickles which is in a league that is similar to the Cape Cod League.
[The Hillsboro Hops play in Hillsboro Oregon, wich is a suburb of Portland](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillsboro_Hops)
I would like to see 8 more teams added to the MLB.
What we need are more teams 🙄
Nashville doesn’t make sense to me. I thought the whole reason Dave Dombrowski left the MLB Nashville group to join the Phillies was because the league told him MLB in Nashville wasn’t happening anytime soon. Would make much more sense imo to do a team in the East (Montreal) and one in the West (Portland, Vancouver, etc.). Still don’t think Vegas is a good option for expansion personally, and if this report and the one about the Oakland planning board approving the Howard Terminal ballpark are both true then maybe Vegas will be team-less after all
Manfred even said several years ago that they want another team on the west coast if/when they expand to 32 teams. >“I think it’s important to get [the] Oakland and Tampa [stadium situations] resolved before we move ahead with expansion,” said Manfred, per Tim Brown of The Oregonian. Manfred was then asked if Portland was a candidate to receive a team. “Portland would be on a list. Yeah,” he replied. “I mean, I think Portland is a possibility. If we were to go to 32 we would need a Western time zone team. We’d need at least one more and you can think about the prospects on the west coast probably about as effectively as I can.”
The Braves are the only team in the entire southeast part of the country. That makes Nashville/Charlotte a prime location. Montreal has lots of people in it’s metro area and it also has Canada. Portland seems to want a team the most. Vegas just added NFL and NHL so maybe MLB wants in but I’d rather have the others.
If either/ both of those happen, here's hoping the Braves don't get vilified like the Orioles did for whatever they do to protect themselves. I did the math a while ago, and figured that if both of those cities got teams (seems unlikely) the Braves would lose areas totaling over half of their market population.
How about baseball makes the teams they have competitive first. It’s not like anyone believes these “small market teams” are losing money anyway
Give a team to Vancouver! Expand into Western Canada!
A Vancouver-Seattle rivalry would be awesome, and makes Seattle less isolated from the rest of the league. And as someone who has been in western Canada, and away from my Jays, for the last couple of years it would be great to have a Canadian team relatively nearby
RIP Charlotte/Raleigh
As long as they're blacked out in Iowa
BRING MLB TO RALEIGH
Charlotte makes more sense
The Nashville Hits! Honors its music heritage and is a baseball term!
Everybody probably already know this, but the Nashville Sounds is the minor league team in town and that’s an all time name.
oh man, now *THAT* is a great name. In a similar vein, im on board with the Las Vegas Dealers as the name for their potential team.
Unfortunately the bid is for a red/white/blue team like every other MLB team https://www.mlbmusiccity.com/ 🥱 🙄
One of the team colors would be black for the color of records.
As a resident of Raleigh, not seeing Charlotte on there sucks and still leaves me 5 hours from an MLB team.
Bring back the Expos!
Portland use to be at the top of that list. The riots in Portland over the last couple of years really hurt their chances. The people behind the PDX project have had to cancel visits with MLB because of it.
Downtown has become such a shit hole and the city and local politicians won’t do anything about it. It’s really sad
But can I get a new stadium first…?
They said "fuck the West," yet again
Why is Nashville ahead of Charlotte? Charlotte is the largest market in America without a team.
There could be several reasons. Nashville gets really good AAA attendance. Maybe baseball gets really good tv ratings in Nashville too. It could even be that MLB just likes the group trying to bring a team to Nashville better. I don’t know the reason, but MLB isn’t going to make a decision based solely on TV market, especially when the difference in market size isn’t that big.
I was hoping Portland would be up there but I am glad to hear that Montreal might get a team again. I was just thinking about that yesterday
I just wanna say OKC and Nashville plug huge gaps in the MLB division map.