Baseball Expansion discussion, 2025 edition

[1776]

Tom Dundon, owner of the Carolina Hurricanes, has made a deal to buy the Portland Trailblazers. Dundon is the loudest voice in this area for getting a major league team to locate to the Carolinas. He prefers the Raleigh-Durham area. 

[romad1]

7 hours ago, 1776 said:

Tom Dundon, owner of the Carolina Hurricanes, has made a deal to buy the Portland Trailblazers. Dundon is the loudest voice in this area for getting a major league team to locate to the Carolinas. He prefers the Raleigh-Durham area. 

Western North Carolina fans promise to purchase season tickets with half down now and half in 5 years when they get the money from their cousin who has some money coming from their sister. 

[tiger2022]

If an expansion draft were to take place this off season, I would recommend the Tigers to not protect Chris Paddock.

[chasfh]

On 8/16/2025 at 6:17 PM, Motor City Sonics said:

Well, I feel like Las Vegas has kind of peaked, hasn't it?    I know the population exploded the last 30 years, but isn't that tide turning or about to turn?   Especially with sports gambling being league in so many states now (and more are coming). 

I hate sports gambling, even though I took about $600 from Bet MGM a couple years ago on hockey bets  (I never bet more than $10 and always picked an OVER on a 5.5 goal total and won at least 2/3rds of the time,  then 5.5's started disappearing). 

Does Vegas have that juice it once had?   And adding an A's game to a tourism package - does that even move the needle?   Sure when they play Ohtani or Aaron Judge, but what about most of the games.   Most regular people couldn't name a single A's player from the past 5 years if you put a gun to their head.   Do they think FIsher is suddenly going to try to sign a bunch of superstars?   I don't think Casino owners are giving him money to sign players to have fans spend nights away from their Casinos.      That Sphere thing, though really cool, has been a massive money-loser.    You have to have a massive artist play there and there aren't that many of those.   

The A's would be way better off playing in front of a bunch of tech nerds in San Jose.   

the hockey team works because their first year they went to the Stanley Cup Final - so they set themselves up for the next few years and then won it again, so it's stayed hot.  Plus it's two games a week in the winter.   

Raiders do well because they have a national following and only 8 or 9 home games a year - and on a weekend mostly

I think the NBA would do very well in Vegas because there is only 41 teams and players would probably love to play there.   

But baseball?   81 games a year?   Team that hasn't been good in 20 years and hasn't had a bankable star in that whole time?   Not seeing it.   Not unless they book big concerts for right after the game (which they might try).  

Nashville - I get.  Not big, but little competition.    Charlotte is kind of like that too.    

Who knows what team payrolls are even going to look like after the 2027 strike. . 

 

There will probably be packages promoted for certain markets for when the team playing near there is in Vegas, but for the most part, It won’t be really be about who’s playing. It’ll be about the in-game sportsbook experience. Plus there will probably be a couple of huge casinos attached to the stadium, anyway, so anyone who gets bored or doesn’t like baseball can do something else. And with the stadium on the strip, people don’t even have to stay for the entire game. They can leave after the second inning if they want. The baseball won’t really be the point.

[Tiger337]

13 minutes ago, chasfh said:

There will probably be packages promoted for certain markets for when the team playing near there is in Vegas, but for the most part, It won’t be really be about who’s playing. It’ll be about the in-game sportsbook experience. Plus there will probably be a couple of huge casinos attached to the stadium, anyway, so anyone who gets bored or doesn’t like baseball can do something else. And with the stadium on the strip, people don’t even have to stay for the entire game. They can leave after the second inning if they want. The baseball won’t really be the point.

That sounds like a stadium I won't be visiting.  

[tiger2022]

I wonder if mlb is considering Mexico City for a franchise.  Definitely has the population and probably the interest but there are other factors that may be roadblocks.

Putting a team in the Caribbean would also be a challenge, but there would be the interest for sure.

 

 

[chasfh]

51 minutes ago, tiger2022 said:

I wonder if mlb is considering Mexico City for a franchise.  Definitely has the population and probably the interest but there are other factors that may be roadblocks.

Putting a team in the Caribbean would also be a challenge, but there would be the interest for sure.

 

 

If Montreal is considered too poor for a big league franchise, then no way is Mexico City coming in, The travel would be at least as difficult as it is for Seattle, and with an elevation way higher than even Denver, either there would either be a 70-home-run hitter there every year, or the entire team would bat .320. Just try getting any free agent pitcher to sign up to play there. And players would get nose bleeds all game long.

Besides, that's a soccer town, not a baseball town. If you really want a Mexican city to have a big league, go with Monterrey, which is still too poor for an MLB franchise, but at least is richer than Mexico City, the elevation is tolerable, and it's a baseball town to boot.

[tiger2022]

The wealth issue was one of the roadblocks, but one of the posters on here would have went into lunatic mode and called me racist for pointing that out just like when I said Detroit had a high homicide rate so I decided to spare him the emotional trauma.

[tiger2022]

I would think Nashville and N Carolina are the two most logical places.

With Salt Lake City not far behind.

I wonder if the Albuquerque area would support a team.  I have never been to New Mexico so I am not sure what it is even like.

[lordstanley]

1 hour ago, tiger2022 said:

I wonder if the Albuquerque area would support a team.  I have never been to New Mexico so I am not sure what it is even like.

Last I checked Albuquerque had a real meth problem. Even high school teachers and fast food managers were enmeshed in it.

[tiger2022]

It can be difficult for an expansion baseball team because you have 81 home games, and the majority of them are weekday evenings.  Most people don't follow baseball that closely, and not many people want to go to 81 baseball games (or can afford it). 

It's not like the NFL where you can stick a team pretty much anywhere and people will go to the games.

And if the team sucks, look at the Tigers the last decade, no one goes.

It seems like you could relocate teams like the Pirates or Marlins, but that isn't going to happen.  And you end up getting guys like Paul Skenes forced to toil for some awful franchise that doesn't even try to win.

[monkeytargets39]

1 hour ago, lordstanley said:

Last I checked Albuquerque had a real meth problem. Even high school teachers and fast food managers were enmeshed in it.

Yeah but Los Pollos Hermanos Stadium has a nice ring to it

[RedRamage]

On 8/16/2025 at 2:21 PM, casimir said:

Which is why once I become emperor of the world, my first order of business, well.... maybe second, is geographical realignment of MLB.

Okay, now I've got to see what that looks like.

[RedRamage]

On 8/16/2025 at 7:17 PM, Motor City Sonics said:

But baseball?   81 games a year?   Team that hasn't been good in 20 years and hasn't had a bankable star in that whole time?   Not seeing it.   Not unless they book big concerts for right after the game (which they might try).  

I think you'd need an indoor stadium there too, which will be more expensive. When three of months of the season average in triple digits you're not gonna get a lot of fans hanging out outdoors.

[RedRamage]

On 7/6/2025 at 1:08 PM, HeyAbbott said:

Won't expansion be a great destabilizing influence for MLB? Baseball is in great danger of becoming like watching the Harlem Globetrotters versus the Washington Generals. The league is in danger of becoming pure entertainment, like professional wrasslin' in my estimation, with nary any true sport in sight   Granted we are not there yet, but when there is basically 4 teams and 26 dwarves,  competition suffers.

Part of me agrees with you, but part of me also says 2025 doesn't agree with you.

If the playoffs happened right now:

Blue Jays - 5th
Tigers - 17th
Astros - 7th
Red Sox - 12th
Mariners - 16th
Yankees - 3rd

Brewers - 23rd
Dodgers - 2nd
Phillies - 4th
Cubs - 10th
Padres - 9th
Mets - 1st

(Payroll source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2025/04/02/2025-mlb-team-payrolls-highest-lowest/82751012007/)

There's more variation there than I would expected there to be going into the 2025 season. Having said that I would still prefer to a more level playing field in terms of payroll. I mean when the top spending team is spending close to five times as much on payroll as the bottom team more often than not that's going to make a huge difference in term of record.

Now, on a side note: Maybe expansion is the perfect time to enact some level of media revenue sharing. Given that media is where the big dollars are, that gives a major market team a leg up, and smoothing out this discrepancy could go a long way to helping keep the league from falling into 4 vs 26. You could offer the big market teams a larger share of the expansion dollars in return for new rules for heavy sharing of media money.

[tiger2022]

Only 3 of the top 12 teams by payroll are missing the 12 team playoff.

6, 8 & 11 are missing and 16, 17 & 23 are in.  This seems about what would be expected.  Especially since it was only possible for 11 of the top 12 teams to make the playoffs since 7 of the top 12 are in the NL.

Teams that spend the money have a better chance of making the playoffs.

[lordstanley]

1 hour ago, monkeytargets39 said:

Yeah but Los Pollos Hermanos Stadium has a nice ring to it

Fair point. And really, as a team sponsor, would Saul Goodman & Associates be that much of a step down from Fieger Law?

[chasfh]

5 hours ago, tiger2022 said:

I would think Nashville and N Carolina are the two most logical places.

With Salt Lake City not far behind.

I wonder if the Albuquerque area would support a team.  I have never been to New Mexico so I am not sure what it is even like.

You'd have to go pretty deep on the market list—past Vegas, past Jacksonville, past Birmingham Alabama and Oklahoma City and Norfolk, and past Grand Rapids-Kalamazoo-Battle Creek—to get to Albuquerque.

If Baseball believes they have a market-size and -capitalization minimum, then there really aren't a cornucopia of candidates for an expansion team. I think the long list is Orlando, Sacramento, Charlotte, Raleigh, Portland, Indianapolis, Nashville, Salt Lake, San Antonio, Hartford, Austin, Columbus, Greenville, West Palm, and Vegas, and that's that. Vegas is a #40 market, so no way they go below that.

Only the last two on that list are smaller than Cincinnati and Milwaukee; and I don't see Orlando, Sacramento, the other of Charlotte/Raleigh, Indianapolis, San Antonio, Hartford, Austin, Columbus, Greenville, or West Palm getting teams, mainly because their populations are either too geographically-diffused, or they are so close to a current big league city that a new team there would eat into their TV markets or even attendances.

So I think the entire list, the short list, for new big league teams are Sacramento; one of Charlotte/Raleigh; Portland; Nashville; Salt Lake; and Vegas. Even with two new franchises awarded, that would still leave four viable markets to threaten current big league municipalities with to beat them out of publicly-funded stadiums.

[Shinzaki]

3 hours ago, monkeytargets39 said:

Yeah but Los Pollos Hermanos Stadium has a nice ring to it

More likely the deeper pockets of Madrigal Electromotive would get the rights

[tiger2022]

Just seems like a tough sell to expand while there are 3 or 4 teams where the fan base just doesn't care.  Pittsburgh, Tampa, Miami, Cincinnati, Minnesota 

Miami is the real crime. Get better ownership in that city and they would thrive 

[lordstanley]

1 minute ago, tiger2022 said:

Just seems like a tough sell to expand while there are 3 or 4 teams where the fan base just doesn't care.  Pittsburgh, Tampa, Miami, Cincinnati, Minnesota 

Miami is the real crime. Get better ownership in that city and they would thrive 

Few fanbases more than Cincinnati, IMO.

[1776]

6 minutes ago, tiger2022 said:

Just seems like a tough sell to expand while there are 3 or 4 teams where the fan base just doesn't care.  Pittsburgh, Tampa, Miami, Cincinnati, Minnesota 

Miami is the real crime. Get better ownership in that city and they would thrive 

Regarding Pittsburgh… is it the fan base that doesn’t care or is it the owner that doesn’t care?

[tiger2022]

The issue is usually the owner.

Look at Detroit when Ilitch Sr took over.  He didn't really try to win for the first 15 years.  Most people stopped caring or following them.  I grew up in the mid 90s and didn't care about baseball at all even though I played a year in college.  He started investing in talent and people started following the team again. 

Pizza Jr didn't try to win for 10 years or whatever.  Most people stopped caring about the team.  The last year and a half the Tigers started winning and people started caring again.  The league should really crack down on trash owners and force them to actually try.  Not sure what metric to use but they could do something.  Maybe tie tv money into their effort?

 

[monkeytargets39]

3 hours ago, lordstanley said:

Fair point. And really, as a team sponsor, would Saul Goodman & Associates be that much of a step down from Fieger Law?

Probably a step up, if the commercials include Huell

[monkeytargets39]

1 hour ago, Shinzaki said:

More likely the deeper pockets of Madrigal Electromotive would get the rights

Don’t assume Vamanos Pest Co. is out of play