Rob Manfred’s Three Expansion Cities
Rob Manfred seems intent on expanding Major League Baseball’s footprint north and south of the contiguous United States, and he again stated that desire during the All-Star break as reported by CBSSports.com’s Dayn Perry.
When asked about expansion he reiterated to reporters his support of Montreal and Mexico City as candidates and added a domestic option in Charlotte. Said Manfred:
As much as I hope that both Oakland and Tampa will get stadiums, I think it would be difficult to convince the owners to go forward with an expansion until those situations are resolved.
Once they’re done, I think we have some great candidates. I know the mayor of Montreal has been very vocal about bringing baseball back to Montreal. It was not great when the Expos left. The fact of the matter was baseball was successful in Montreal for a very long time. Charlotte is a possibility. And I would like to think that Mexico City or some place in Mexico would be another possibility.
Baseball is currently in the midst of its longest expansion drought in the modern era. The sport has not grown since admitting the Diamondbacks and Rays in 1998. Eventually, in order to grow business, new markets are required. And there are significant untapped markets remaining in North America. Baseball would figure to jump from 30 to 32 teams, which would also help on a number of logistical fronts.
So if this is a game of musical chairs — three cities for two spots (though Las Vegas, Portland, and San Antonio might also be among the domestic candidates) — let’s examine the cases of the three cities Manfred cited.
Montreal
Metro population: 4,098,927
City population rank in North America: 8th
Elevation: 122 feet
GDP per capita: $38,867 (2013)
Nearest MLB cities: Boston, 220 nautical miles; Toronto, 273 nautical miles
Montreal seems to be the most serious about bringing the sport back to the city, and unlike any other candidate, it has hosted a major-league team before, bettering 2.1 million in attendance four times in its history. Montreal would give the sport a new geographic footprint, a natural rival for Toronto, and a new language (French broadcasts!). The recent exhibition games played in Montreal have been well supported.
According to The (Toronto) Star investors have already met conditions put forth by MLB to return a team to the city.
“I can tell you we are no longer looking for investors and that we believe we have all the ingredients to be able to welcome a team, be it an expansion one or one that already exists,” the person said on condition of anonymity.
Montreal also seems to have the political support and financial means for a new stadium.
The source said the investors have a solid financial setup, support from two levels of government, various potential locations for a stadium as well as at least five different designs for the venue.
“We are not going to say we favour one site or another,” the source said. “But it’s crucial for the (eventual) site to be well served by public transit.”
Montreal seems to be a frontrunner for an expansion team.
Charlotte
Metro population: 2,474,314
City population rank in North America: 43rd
Elevation: 751 feet
GDP per capita: $55,802 (2013)
Nearest MLB city: Atlanta, 197 nautical miles
Among oft-cited domestic expansion candidates, only San Antonio is home to more Fortune 500 companies (5) than Charlotte (4), a major business center home to Bank of America’s corporate headquarters. Charlotte is home to NFL and NBA franchises, and its Triple-A team leads the International League in attendance. Charlotte is one of the fastest-growing cities in the country and the Carolinas represent one of the fastest-growing regions. The Carolinas have long supported minor-league and college baseball. Charlotte would fill in a geographic void on the Lower 48 map, and create a natural geographic rivalry with the Braves just down I-85.
One significant issue is that Charlotte’s new downtown stadium for the Triple-A Knights cannot be reconfigured to host a major-league team, according to The Charlotte Observer.
The $55 million, 10,200-seat BB&T BallPark uptown that the Charlotte Knights opened in 2014 cannot be retrofitted to accommodate major-league specifications. Even if it could be, density and traffic uptown would be another challenge: Major League Baseball schedules feature 81 home games, including many on weekdays.
On one hand, that seems like poor planning on the city’s part; on the other hand, Atlanta and Dallas have had no issue scrapping post-Camden-Yards-constructed parks for new homes.
Chris Mitchell produced a deep dive on expansion several years ago and ranked Charlotte as only the eight most desirable domestic candidate, largely due to demographics. Chris’s series is well worth a read.
Mexico City
Metro population: 20.999 million
City population rank in North America: 1st
Elevation: 7,380 feet
GDP per capita: (city proper $47,396, metro area $29,258 — data from a Princeton study from 2010)
Nearest MLB cities: Miami, 1,109 nautical miles; Houston, 1,138 nautical miles; Dallas 1,157 nautical miles
Manfred has spoken about Mexico City as an expansion candidate since at least 2015, and in many ways, Mexico City is the most intriguing candidate — the city with the most upside, if you will. It’s also the location with the most challenges and downside.
For starters, there’s the challenge of geography and topography. If you think Coors Field warps the game to too great a degree, consider that Mexico City is 2,000 feet higher in elevation. Moreover, there is no major-league city within 1,000 miles from Mexico City. (Seattle is the current extreme, within 1,000 nautical miles of just two AL teams — the Athletics and Angels.) There are also potentially greater safety issues in the country.
However, the upside is enormous, as Manfred noted in an ESPN
piece last year on the topic of exploring Mexico as an expansion candidate. Beyond having the largest population of any North American city, there’s the prospect of tapping into a TV market covering an entire country.
“No. 1, a team in Mexico opens up the Mexican television market, which is significant in ways that are much broader than the arrangements that we have there now,” Manfred told Stark. “No. 2, I think that a team in Mexico would help us continue the process — it’s not an absolute necessity — but it would help us continue the process of improving our relationship with the Mexican leagues.
“I think making a full-time commitment in Mexico would be very important. It would help us improve our relationship professionally. That would in turn help us improve the flow of Mexican players into Major League Baseball. The combination of those two factors, that is the media in Mexico and the flow of players, I believe would help us in the Hispanic market in the United States.”
Mexican-American star Adrian Gonzalez had some interesting thoughts in the piece.
“I think all of Mexico would travel to wherever the team is,” said Gonzalez, a five-time All-Star. “It would be a team for the whole country. I think for the most part, people from all over the country would make their way just for the games.”
One misconception about Mexico City is its economic health. The city proper’s GDP is approaching $50,000, which is in line with many U.S. cities, as Nate Silver noted in making a case for Mexico City over London on the NFL’s expansion preference list.
***
Logistically, the addition of two teams would allow MLB to end constant interleague play and balance divisions evenly with eight- or four-team divisions. Presumably in the interest of creating as many races as possible, Manfred has indicated MLB would shift to eight, four-team divisions.
What would a 32-team MLB look like? It would make logistical sense to combine expansion with realignment, which I explored earlier this year.
At some point, baseball will expand again. It seems also that, at some point, baseball ought to expand into the Spanish-speaking world, where the game is a passion and where there are untapped markets. Whether Mexico City is a serious candidate for the next round of expansion or at some point down the road remains to be seen, but if the commissioner had his way, it could be sooner rather than later.
A Cleveland native, FanGraphs writer Travis Sawchik is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Big Data Baseball. He also contributes to The Athletic Cleveland, and has written for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, among other outlets. Follow him on Twitter @Travis_Sawchik.
Twins in the AL “South”?
It’s tough to find a perfect fit to accommodate all of the central-based teams … but Dallas is not that much further than Cleveland from Minneapolis
It really should be ST Louis that goes to the south, but no one want to split up the Cubs and Cardinals?
Cubs, Cardinals and Pirates should not be split up. The three of them have been together since 1900.
So, things to have to be just because they have been.
Taking the Orioles out of the AL east is almost as bad.
Wouldn’t the White Sox make more sense than the Twins?
Love the new AL East though.
Why not just split it back to two divisions of eight per league? Then teams won’t have to swap from NL to AL and vice versa. Or do you think Manfred would be against having too many teams in one division to keep playoff hopes more exciting for fans? Although you could potentially add more Wild Card slots, or just do it like in the NBA where the top however many teams make the playoffs in each league. But yeah, I think having two divisions per league would be less “uprooting” for clubs.
I like the larger divisions too; there’s definitely a balancing act of “teams may be eliminated sooner in an 8-team division / no one wants to be 32.5 games out on August 1” versus “no one really wants to see an 80-game division winner” which could well occur with 4-team divisions (witness the occasional 7-9 NFL division champion).
I admit I also wondered about this. If it was renamed “AL Central” it would work…..As a Twins’ fan, not sure how I feel about them not having much natural rivalry anymore, if they really have one now. OTOH, more games in the same time zone is very nice (well, if I still lived in MN). Some teams will lose/gain in this move, and I’m guessing the teams destined to lose the most are not found on the coasts where the power is…..
As a Twins fan living in central Texas, I heartily endorse this realignment.
I propose a three team swap: Twins to AL North, Brewers to NL North, and Cincinnati to AL South (it’s basically in Kentucky anyway, right?)
I would LOVE to see a new Montreal team in a reconfigured AL East. Vive les Expos!
Good luck to Montreal ever making the playoffs in the same division with both the Yankees and Red Sox. It’s a division designed to keep Canada from ever making the playoffs.
The Jays, Rays and Orioles have all managed.
Travis,
I am curious as to why the Montreal team would be in the American league and the Orioles would shift to the National League. Is this to create a rivalry between Toronto and Montreal? To deepen the divide between the Orioles and the Nationals?
Also, if you like runs, imagine Coors Field with designated hitters!
I was wondering this too. It seems like it would be best to keep Baltimore, Toronto, New York and Boston all in the AL East together. Those teams all seem like they are all rivals with each other.
As a Boston fan I would absolutely love to have Montreal in the al east. The Red Sox and Yankees might be baseballs best rivalry and I think it would be awesome to pair that with the potential for a Canadian rivalry.
Yeah, the Canadian cities would almost have to be in separate leagues.
Have to take flight times into account as well. I can’t find many intra-division road trips that would involve 4+ hour flights, but Milwaukee, Boston, Minneapolis, Seattle are all 6ish hour trips to Mexico City. Add in getting used to the elevation and the road trips might be a bit brutal.
The elevation is no joke. MMA events in Colorado regularly feature unprepared fighters who get tired very quickly at altitude. The Mexico City shows tend to be worse as they sometimes tire out fighters that train in Colorado. It’s going to be a difficult road trip.
The safety issues in Mexico City are real, although I hear it’s gotten better since I was last there about a decade ago. When I was there fake taxicabs had a habit of kidnapping people and forcing them to withdraw money from an ATM before dumping them somewhere. As a foreigner, my local contacts kept telling me not to walk under bridges (!) because of kidnappings there too.
I heard that sometime between 2008 and 2012 Mexico City started cleaning things up. It has to be better now, and I have no idea what it’s like now, but I can only imagine ballplayers would be an inviting target. You’d need some pretty good security details.
On the other hand, I’ll say that Mexico City–even with the crime–was one of the most beautiful cities I’ve been to. And the Mexicans I know would die with happiness if they got a team. While I only know a few people in a metro area of 20 million people, Gonzalez’s description of the enthusiasm rings true to me.
Hard to imagine any non residents wanting to plant roots and bring their families to Mexico.
I’ve worked there last year for a Spanish company, and you’d be surprised to know how many Spanish (European in general, but mostly Spanish for obvious reasons) expats are keen on going living in Mexico DF, with family and everything
I actually wonder if the Venezuelan and Dominican players might be fine with Mexico City because they would be living in a Spanish-speaking country, or whether they would be down on it because it’s not America. Could see it going either way.
I think the O’s and Nats would likely be in different leagues.
Proposal – eliminate divisions entirely, leagues play every team in league evenly
You are proposing a 174 game season (three games home and away against 29 other teams). That becomes a 186 game season with a two team league expansion.
Additionally, how would one go about seeding playoffs?
Don’t play only 3 game series, then. Mix in enough 2-gamers to get to 162. I’m not sure his use of the word “evenly” meant numerically even. I think he just meant play everyone every year without a huge divisional preference. But I’m just guessing.
Seed the playoffs by record. Best two teams are 1 seeds in opposite brackets, and so on and so forth.
no idiot, AL plays all AL equally. with the rotating interleague that we have now. its exactly the same #games. READ MUCH
DAMN YOU PWNED HIM BROSEPH
I one sees large-attendance sports as a civilized sublimation of inter-city warfare, then it makes sense for teams from cities that are near to each other to play together more often than those from cities that are far apart.
Divisions made sense in 1900…when the only way to travel was a train.
we got planes now, travel is no big deal.
No, have to disagree especially for a league that routinely plays on back-to-back days in different cities. For example, travelling from Chicago to Milwaukee or St. Louis (or Cincinnati or Pittsburgh) is not at all the same as travelling from Chicago to the West Coast.
There’s a reason that that the MLBPA “made scheduling and start times a priority in the labor talks, in an effort to reduce the wear and tear of travel and sleep deprivation”, and therefore got some new provisions regarding game times on get-away days in the new CBA ( http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/18292221/mlb-new-labor-deal-requires-earlier-start-s-getaway-days ).
My proposal is that all games be scheduled by an algorithm that includes distance between stadiums, google searches, and Vegas betting lines. It would be funny, if totally unfair and irrational, when the Cubs have to play everyone evenly but the Marlins and Rays have to play each other 100 times.
Extremely unlikely, whatever the merits might be such as balancing schedules for wild card competitors. Playing division rivals more often helps drive fan interest and attendance (i.e., revenue).
It makes more sense to have the Montreal team come to the NL and leave the Orioles in the AL. I’d assume baseball would still institute interleague rivalries so Toronto and Montreal would play two series per year.
I think there is a reason that all of the metro areas with two teams have one in each league. No reason to have Washington and Baltimore in the same league.
As a Braves fan, I could only hope that the Charlotte team is run by morons, and perhaps we could win another 14 straight division titles in what would most likely be the weakest division year in and year out.
Dave Stewart is available and looking for a new team to run into the ground
I wonder if the MLBPA would have anything to say about Mexico City. Beyond concerns about being forced into living in Mexico (which I personally would welcome, but I’m guessing many would not), an 81-game road schedule where you are always starting off by flying over 1,000 miles and most the destinations are much worse, and then an even worse altitude effect than Denver (which FG covered earlier this year) would just be brutal. Also, there might be some tax consequences, too, that would be unfavorable. There’s a lot of room for this ending in disaster. I’d wager that baseball, being as conservative as it is, would rather see another primarily-U.S.-based sport put a team in Mexico first and see how it goes.
Best thing about the new AL West would be the Green and Gold against the Purple and Black. Would make for some colorful games.
It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Signed, a Minnesotan who hates football.
It’s mentioned in passing, but it might be interesting to see a comparison for Portland as well. I know the city isn’t huge, but it would seem like a logical landing spot for the A’s if they were to relocate. It would also bridge the distance gap for Seattle, and create a more regional rivalry with the Mariners.
Except that Oregon is already M’s territory, so the issue the A’s already have wrt being unable to come to an agreement with an incumbent team that controls lucrative eyeballs they covet (ie the Giants and San Jose) just rears up again. There’s also the question of whether baseball can thrive in Portland, which got rid of its AAA park to make room for an MLS team, and seems more geared toward offbeat millennial 21st century interests than traditional-but-aging 19th century pastimes.
It seems like all the fangraphs writers and all the analytic types are in Oregon. So we could have a team! Sss
Love the idea of the Oriole and the Nats being in the same division!
They were division rivals until the Senators bolted for Texas.
And since they draw big crowds for most of their inter-league games, it makes a lot of financial sense too.
But I’d prefer if it was the Nats moving to the AL East, since both cities have historically been American League teams.
That would be an expensive division to compete in: Nats, RSox, Yanks, and Orioles… But I agree that norther DC Nats fans would happily drive 30 minutes to see a game in Baltimore (and vice versa).
It takes a little bit longer than 30 minutes for me and I live about 10 miles north of Washington D.C.
But you’re right: it would be an expensive division to compete in. But the Senators and the Orioles were the poor boys of the AL East anyway when it was a six team division.
And there are lots of transplanted Boston and NYY fans in the D.C. area.
I hate this idea, mainly because I hate American league baseball.
You mention Portland as a potential west coast option, but I’d throw Vancouver out there as well. Vancouver metro area has over 2.4M people and is really booming right now
Vancouver belongs to the Blue Jays, along with the rest of Canada. Montreal may be a special case just because of the history (and Quebec goes its own way all the time anyway) but I wouldn’t be surprised if Rogers covertly throws wrenches in the gears every chance it gets to prevent a team returning to Montreal also.
I mean, imagine if the English Premier League expanded with just one team in the US — and it was owned by Disney, which not only owned ESPN but also Verizon and Comcast. And they did everything they could to brand that team “America’s Team.” How willing would they be to see another EPL team arrive in the US?
Vancouver may belong to the Blue Jays, but it’s half a country away. This is practically saying, “Can’t put a team in Seattle, that’s Pittsburgh’s territory.” I get it, Toronto is a much bigger city than Pittsburgh, but Rogers should be able to allow a second Canadian team to exist, especially one that’s about 2,500 miles away.
(I still prefer an Expos revival, though.)
Portland is too small. Vancouver would be marvelous; it’s a beautiful city.
The Blazers routinely have elite attendance numbers, and I don’t see that changing. They went like 20 years selling out every game. That has changed in recent years, but it’s a passionate fan base. They were like the Thunder or Warriors before there were Thunder and Warriors.
I gave some thought to and did some writing about this last year. Of all of the municipal areas that I had heard under consideration for expansion, here is how I ranked them in terms of viability (leaving aside issues of existing teams’ claims to geographical areas, politics, or actual likeliness – the is just based on overall logicalness based on factors like distance from existing teams, revenue possibilities, and fan population bases):
1. Brooklyn, Newark, East Rutherford NJ, Edison NJ, New Haven CT, and/or Hartford CT
— There are more people and is more money in New England, New York, and New Jersey than is the appropriate prorated share for just three teams (NYY, NYM, and BOS), so another team is warranted. Even two new teams from this list of locations might work. Might be great to have a New Jersey team and/or a Connecticut “state team”. People in San Jose wear Sharks jerseys even if they’re not that into hockey, as a way of showing regional pride. Same thing with the NBA teams in Portland, Oklahoma City, and Salt Lake City. I imagine that an MLB team anywhere in Connecticut or New Jersey might generate some of the same spirit.
2. Charlotte or Raleigh-Durham
3. Portland, Oregon
4. Monterrey, Mexico
— Huge city, closer to the US than Mexico City and with more of a baseball-friendly altitude, would draw live, TV, and merchandising fans from all over Mexico.
5. Montreal
— Obviously a top choice, but the metro area is comparatively small, so would need to draw fans from all of Canada to the East of Montreal to have a large enough support base.
6. Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga, or San Bernardino
— Third LA area team, positioned as far from Chavez Ravine and the Big A as possible. The Dodgers and Angels are among the richest teams in MLB; they could use another team down there.
7. Nashville
— Small metro area, but distant from MLB cities, and many popular minor league teams nearby, so we know that there are fans in area that are into it.
8. San Antonio, Austin, or Oklahoma City
9. Salt Lake City
— Altitude might make things weird, like Denver.
10. Las Vegas
— Could also function as a third “LA area” team, instead of #5.
11. San Jose, Puerto Rico
— Not many people on the actual island, but might draw TV and merchandising fans from other Caribbean/Latin nations, and Caribbean/Latins in diaspora.
12. Vancouver
— Too much overlap with Seattle. Still, Canada has about 35 million people, and currently only one team, and Vancouver is farther from Toronto than Montreal is.
13. Mexico City
— Huge population and lots of rich sponsors in the waiting, but a long flight from the US, and air quality issues – both pollution and altitude complications like Denver.
14. Albuquerque or El Paso
— Not enough population.
15. Columbus OH, Indianapolis, or Louisville
— Strong minor league attendance, but too close to existing teams.
16. Orlando
— Florida is having a difficult time supporting two teams right now, maybe might not be able to fully support even one.
Having recently moved to Portland, OR, I’m not sure it’s big enough to support a MLB team. Especially because the stadium would almost certainly have to be way out in the Western suburbs, and if you think traffic is BAD now, wow!
I am still baffled why people think a third team would do well in the NYC area. The Giants and Dodgers did not leave together because it was working out great for them. We do have 3 hockey teams but the Islanders are regularly in and out of financial trouble. Until recently they were all the way out is Nassau on Long Island which was too far away for most New Jersey residents to attend, which left the New Jersey market open. Baseball does not have that issue.
Newark had an independent baseball team with a nice stadium. It went bankrupt and the stadium is vacant. Newark is not a place people are naturally inclined to visit.
Until this year, Hartford had not had a minor league baseball team since 1952. The city is also near bankruptcy and the state in general is in the middle of an economic crisis. No one would put a team there.
There are already three teams in LA. The third is San Diego. That has not been working out all that great. Las Vegas might work, but it should not expect much help from LA’s population.
Years ago I saw numbers for how big the fanbase is for each team. Haven’t been able to find the post again, but I do remember that the numbers seemed outsized for the NY and LA teams (as well as the Phillies and Red Sox).
If you takes the 2017 salaries of the Dodgers plus Angels and divide by three, you still get a number higher than the budgets of fifteen of the other teams. Same with Yankees, Mets, and twelve other teams.
From what you say, sounds like Newark and Hartford themselves may be bad choices. But people do make it out to The Meadowlands for the NFL, so I imagine there is some location outside of NYC proper that would work.
I don’t think many people go down to San Diego from LA for ballgames except for Dodgers games. Also, Petco (and downtown SD) is pretty far South in SD County; it’s a long drive. Also, from what I’ve seen, Camp Pendelton creates a psychological barrier between the two metro areas, to have them feel even further apart than they are.
Also it took me a while to look at the SoCal ecosystem to notice how central LA is to Vegas’ tourist population.
Why do you call Montreal’s metro area small, but rank it after Portland and Charlotte, which are about half the size?
Perhaps I’m subconsciously biased by remembered photos of big blocks of empty seats at the Big O in the later years of Les Expos. And I do imagine that a team anywhere in the Carolinas would draw fans from all over both states. Good point about Portland vs Montreal though.
Portland would need a dome stadium
Why? It almost never rains in the summer, 28 straight days now this year, for example and looking like it will go much longer still. It’s also warmer than most northern cities. And domed stadiums are the WORST. I mean, do you know much about Portland weather? BTW, does Seattle have a dome?
Seriously, if you remember how many days its been since it has last rained then it rains a lot. I used to live in Eugene I know plenty, (why the fuck are you asking is a better question?) the rains sucks and it rains all the time dude get real. BTW how old is the Seattle stadium? older than the idea of global warming, right, so yea things change.
No. They have a retractable roof, though.
Safeco in Seattle has a roof. You usually don’t need it in July, but without it when do you make up the dozen rain-outs from April? And if you have any hope of a competitive team, what do you do about rain-outs through the postseason? October is wet.
I tether Vancouver overlap with Seattle issue, but Seattle is four hours dive away. The Mid-Atlanic has four teams inasimilarstretch.
Regarding ideas #1 and #6, I’m highly doubtful that a 3rd team will be added to either the greater New York or greater L.A. market.
The existing teams in those markets would obviously fight tooth and nail against that idea.
The economics also look like a challenge given how important local cable TV revenue has become for most franchises. We’ve already seen pushback against high cable TV carriage fees for markets with several RSN’s – the Dodgers are the most prominent example. So I think that not only would the incumbent franchises fight against it, but the owners of a hypothetical new MLB franchise in New York or L.A. would face the challenge of figuring out just how much local TV carriage and revenue they could get as the third MLB franchise in markets where the existing two franchises would obviously have big advantages such as historical fan bases, as well as likely fielding significantly better teams than an early years expansion franchise.
Those factors would also be a challenge for the new team’s attendance and ticket prices. Add it up, and I’m highly dubious that the business case for being the new, third team in those markets is actually better than being the only team in a smaller expansion market.
I suppose I should note here that sports expand not only to grow their business, but to keep out possible competitors. The original expansion was because MLB had ignored a number of growing large cities allowing the Continental League to become a true threat with teams in Denver, Minneapolis, Toronto, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, and the NL evacuated New York. (Also, Buffalo, the city that always seemed to get involved in these schemes.) When the original American Association came into being, it had large cities like Philadelphia, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and later New York to exploit because the National League was fiddling around in places like Troy and Worcester and, of course, Buffalo rather than camping in all the large cities. I suppose one of the reasons the Federal League failed was partially because there were no great markets free to exploit, the “no competition” cities being the large but repeated failure Baltimore, the very marginal Indianapolis, the not quite grown up yet Kansas City, and, of course, ubiquitous Buffalo. There’s a reason why MLB does not feel motivated to put a team in Buffalo besides the economics. Any league that puts a team there is doomed.
Is there a situation now where there are enough un-serviced cities to make a competing league? I don’t think the MLB is all that concerned about XLB featuring Montreal, Charlotte, Las Vegas, Portland, Vancouver, San Antonio, Mexico City (which would probably have sketchy ownership in this sort of venture), and the inevitable Buffalo. If MLB thinks it is a money maker they will expand, but until then they do not really have any motivation to do so given that many of these markets could be relocation/extortion locales for struggling teams.
MLB is exempt from anti trust. I dont think they’re worried about competitive leagues given they have AA and AAA teams in pretty much every decent city.
If Mexico City got a team, it would almost have to be in the same division as the Astros & Rangers. Move the Twins from AL South to AL North, move Cleveland from AL North to AL East.
I think Charlotte is a better option than Montreal, so Charlotte naturally goes to the NL South.
I don’t think the Orioles are going to be happy about losing all their longstanding division rivalries, but I like how compact some of the geographic clusters are.
The playoff structure is more difficult with 4 divisions.
I know it’s purely speculative, but it’s hard to see the O’s accepting that move. The Rays I could see moving both cities and divisions at once, but it seems much more likely Montreal ends up in the NL East, no?
If the next new city to get a team (by relocation or expansion) isn’t Montreal, there is no justice in this world.
When the city ends up being Vegas, I’m sure every MLB player will not say “justice for the Canadians!” but instead “Vegas Bitches!”
Coors Field gets the designated hitter.
I don’t understand, per MLB’s blackout rules there are already four “local” teams for the Charlotte area. And the Blue Jays have all of Canada covered. So we should really be talking about Alaska, Hawaii, and dunno … maybe Iceland?
I love this reply, Okra. Love it.
I’d go to games in Reykjavik. From MN it’s cheaper to get to than Mexico City, and the flight time is about the same.
Plus you can relax in hotsprings afterwards.
And Reyjkavik makes for a shorter flight to the Finnish leg of a road trip.
http://www.fangraphs.com/community/53-things-about-a-53-second-finnish-baseball-video/
Out here in Bend Oregon I’m blacked out from Mariners, Giants and Athletics because we are so close and all. In Vegas they block out those teams but also add the Rockies and Dbacks.
The thought I keep going back to about an expansion team in Latin American has to do with competitive balance. I know there are a lot of Latin American players. (A quick Google search says about 25%.) It appeared that there was a lot of pride involved in the Baseball World Classic from the Latin American players involved. So I wonder – would a team in Latin American end up having a huge free agency advantage with Latin American players wanting to play there? Combine that with a team in a city like Mexico City that would be flush with cash, and it could be a pretty bonkers team, pretty quickly. As well, I would foresee a Latin American team having a leg up on scouting and player development.
If I were a current MLB team owner, would I want an expansion team in Latin America? (The flip side is, of course, that the money it would bring in would be huge, and revenue sharing, revenue sharing, revenue sharing.)
I appreciate that you kept St. Louis, Chicago, and Pittsburgh together. They’ve been together for 100 years, breaking them apart would be a travesty.
In the proposal at the end, I would rotate 4 teams, personally: rotating Minnesota to AL North, bumping Milwaukee to NL North, bumping St. Louis to NL South, and lastly bumping Tampa Bay to AL South. Then none of the four have to change leagues, and the geographies make a bit more sense (to me).
Well, the MN timezone and TB timezone things make more sense with Travis’ proposal. And, it’s not that far to TX from MN.
Depends on which part of TX. It’s a big state. El Paso is roughly as close to San Diego as it is to Houston.
Swapping Montreal and Baltimore makes much more sense, as well.
I’ve long argued for Monterrey over Mexico City. It’s not as a big but still well over a million population and the per-capita income and wealth is higher. It’s closer to Texas and thus the other MLB cities. And it is at only 1700′ so no crazy super-Coors effect. Unfortunately it is no longer as safe as it was a decade ago (but then that’s true of much of Mexico).
How about we go with four divisions for the purposes of minimizing travel (ie you play the teams in your division more than the others in your league) but just have the top four teams in each league go on to the postseason. No wild cards, no division “pennants.”
They probably want to switch to top 8 teams in each league like the NHL and NBA.
That’s too many. You might have five with a play-in game between the bottom two, but no way could you go to eight. The World Series wouldn’t end until near Thanksgiving. And half the league shouldn’t qualify for the postseason every year anyway, which is why it’s impossible to take the first round of the NHL and NBA playoffs seriously.
On a purely geographic basis, it seems like expansion into Mexico would be best done as a multi-year, multi-city plan. Or I guess you could just have a few teams pack up and move there in the way they added much of the western US.
One problem with the proposed divisions is that the NL South would immediately become the “nobody cares” division. The Marlins, Rays and Braves are relatively unpopular, and the expansion 2 team would likely be less popular than Montréal.
If only the political (and therefore economic) situation in Cuba hadn’t been so sketchy over the last 50 years, Havana would otherwise have been quite literally the best candidate. Baseball is more important to Cuba than it is to America, and of course Havana is much closer to the US…. alas, tis not to be
In a different history that would be some great baseball.
Great article, as expected from Travis, and a great discussion, too. But the 500-lb gorilla in this room is the fact that the Rays and A’s are in untenable stadium situations and might have to move. That means we’re potentially looking not at two new MLB cities, but four. That changes the tenor of the discussion and any potential realignments, too.
Intriguing article. But…”nautical miles”?
Minor point — Something’s wrong with the listed distances from Mexico City. It’s obviously much closer to Houston and Dallas than to Miami. I find flight distances listed around 750 miles to Houston, 930 to Dallas and 1,280 to Miami.
Thank you for covering this. Here’s another proposal for a 32 team major league.
N.L. West: SF, LA, SA, AZ // N.L. Central: Col, Mil, StL, Chi // N.L. South: Wsh, Cin, Atl, Mia // N.L. East: NY, Pit, Phi, Montreal
A.L. West: Vancouver, Sea, Oak, Ana // A.L. Central: KC, Tex, Hou, Min, // A.L. North: Chi, Det, Cle, Tor // A.L. East: Bos, NY, Bal, TB
Expansion would be in Montreal and Vancouver. (Btw, Chris Mitchell’s study rates Vancouver as a slightly better candidate than Montreal. It’d also give Sea. a great geographic partner.)
3 different schedule suggestions:
A) Play your division rival 22 times for 66 games. Play the other 12 teams within your league 8 times for 96 games. No inter league.
B) Play your division rival 18 teams for 54 games. Play the other 12 teams within your league 8 times for 96 games. Play 12 inter league games.
C) Play your division rival 18 times for 54 games. Play the other 12 teams within your league 7 times for 84 games. Play 24 inter league games.
Note: In small divisions, I’d hate to drop below playing the other division teams 18 times.
Suggestion for post-season: Still 5 teams per league in play-offs. The 4 division winners and one wild card (best-second place team) Weakest division winner and the wild card team play the wild card game.
Final post-season note: In case of a fluke year in which an entire division is weak, I’d add this: In the event a division is won by a team with a sub .500 record that team must give up its play-off spot to the second-best second place team. (Yes, I’m assuming there will always be at least 5 teams over .500 in a 16 team league.)
(Longer term expansion should include south of the border, as a team in Mexico City would be great. Perhaps after some years of 32 teams in 8 divisions of 4 teams, baseball would look at 36 teams in 6 divisions of 6 teams. Many of the cities cited in Chris Mitchell’s study could be considered. By then, maybe Charlotte or a city in Texas or a city on the West Coast could be added to Mexico City.)
(Thanks again; I love this topic — I first wrote about it back in 1993 for the now defunct Elysian Fields Quarterly.)
Anyone know why they wouldn’t think about expanding to Cuba or Puerto Rico? Seems like the distance would be similar and fan bases would be big.
You need fans to be able to pay MLB type ticket prices and the team to generate nice television contracts. Puerto Rico is currently bankrupt and the per capita income is roughly two-thirds of Mississippi. The Montreal in San Juan experiment did not work all that great either.
Cuba is an economic mess and, no matter which number you use, makes Puerto Rico look rich in comparison. There is also the matter that the average monthly wages in Cuba is roughly $20 which is not going to permit a lot of trips to the ballpark. Probably the only way you could make it work is for the Cuban government to own the team and charge nominal admission prices, which then means the team is basically a propaganda arm of a foreign country. I could see the MLB going for something like that if they wanted to put a team in, say, China, but not Cuba. Keep in mind that this is a country where 5% of the people have access to the Internet.
If you had to choose Mexico City which, for all its faults, does have lots of things going for it, and either San Juan or Havana, you would pick Mexico City every time. It’s not even a debate.
Chris Mitchell’s criticism of Charlotte was it was too black and too many women. In the meantime, it is second in growth only to Austin and as said has the best attendance of AAA. For good or for ill, public funding would come from Charlotte(they just offered millions to MLS )
Speaking of Austin….2M metro area, rich, growing, and if you put a stadium on the south side, its only a 90 minute drive from San Antonio…
San Antonio and Austin are only about an hour apart. A stadium somewhere in-between the two would have a market size of 5+ million! And both cities are among the fastest growing in the nation.
San Antonio/Austin and Montreal are by far the best bets.
I agree! I think MLS looked into a team in New Braunfels. Climate works too. Get a high speed rail and you’re in business.
That would work, and San Antonio is currently the larger of the two metros, though Austin is growing faster and has higher income levels. I think the stadium would probably be closer to Austin, because of the income levels and past attendance figures of Round Rock and San Antonio. I would guess somewhere around Buda or Kyle.
I don’t see the “stadium drawing from both the San Antonio and Austin markets” as a viable option for an MLB team. There are too many home games, particularly too many weekday night games, for a team to count on drawing from both markets on a game-to-game basis.
Describing the cities as “about an hour apart” is highly optimistic, particularly for trying to make a 7:05 pm or 7:35 pm weekday baseball game. Downtown Austin to downtown San Antonio is about 80 miles, and I-35 is notoriously congested, especially when dealing with outbound commuter traffic at evening rush hour.
As for the counties in between, they’ve grown fast but still don’t have that many people in MLB market terms. Hays County has just over 200,000 people, and Comal County has about 135,000 people. A stadium truly “in-between” San Antonio and Austin would almost certainly have by far the lowest population within 10 miles of any MLB stadium, and would therefore be a big bet on people in one of those two cities routinely being willing to make a lengthy drive out to games. It’s very easy to foresee a Rays-like situation where a poor stadium location is a major explanation for low home attendance.
Realistically, an MLB team would need to pick one city or the other as its true home market driving game-to-game attendance. Sure, go ahead and try to market to both metros to get a few die-hards on weekdays and people willing to make the drive sometimes on weekends, but that’s more of a bonus than a key driver of why the team is viable. The NFL could probably make it work with only 8 home games, mostly during the day on Sundays, but that’s a very different schedule. For example – how much do people travelling from Austin help drive Spurs home game attendance? Not much, and the NBA schedule is a decent analogy for MLB.
I do see value in the combined total markets for local TV revenue, though that revenue potential is also a reason that I’m pretty sure that the Rangers and Astros would both fight hard against an MLB team in San Antonio or Austin.
BTW, for anyone who may initially think of the Rangers and Dallas-Ft. Worth as an analogy, the distances aren’t comparable. Downtown Dallas to downtown Ft. Worth is about 30 miles, compared to about 80 miles between downtown Austin and downtown San Antonio.
There would probably have to be light rail between the two to make it truly viable to get consistent traffic. I agree that it would be unsustainable to put the park truly “in-between”, but in the southern suburbs of Austin would work. And even if San Antonio doesn’t provide a huge boon, at the rate Austin has been growing for the last 10+ years, the Austin metro alone will be bigger than Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and St. Louis by 2030 and has great demographics for a MLB team.
I don’t exactly understand why teams would change leagues in the realignment. AL teams have millions in payroll for a DH – I doubt they willingly sacrifice their team construction without significant incentive.
In the “modest proposal” realignment – you could easily move the O’s in the AL East, Montreal in AL North, Brewers in NL East. Also move TB to AL South, Minnesota to AL West, Rockies NL South.
MLS looked at putting a team between Austin and San Antonio. It’s the fastest growing corridor in the nation and you could conceivably pool from 2 explosively growing metro areas.
Given this is probably a long play (2-3 years for the As and Rays to resolve their issues, 2-3 years after for expansion), this could work. Especially if a high speed rail ever happens.
Wild idea (thumbs down if you hate dreamers): A new ‘South’ division in either AL or NL (with teams shifted to the other league as appropriate). All expansion teams.
It would include:
Mexico City
Santo Domingo- Largest city in the Caribbean and has produced 1 or 2 decent baseball players.
Another Mexican city: Monterrey ($) or a Yucatan team (people).
A U.S. member: San Juan, PR or San Antonio (or Miami if you want to destroy my all expansion team idea)
A team to be temporarily located in New Orleans until it will be permanently moved to…………..Havanna.
Say what you will about the downsides of this division (And yes realignment on a crazy scale would have to occur), you gotta admit they would have the most fun games in baseball and many of us would try to hit up many of the stadiums in that inaugural season.
Yes, realistically, MLB will expand by two teams when/if it expands. 32 is a perfect number to divide into 4 or 8 divisions. You have to consider that the A’s will likely move eventually, probably to Sacramento if they are not allowed to go to San Jose. I don’t think MLB (or existing MLB teams in those areas) are interested in letting any metro area have more than two teams. So that leaves us with the following cities as good candidates in my view:
1) Montreal – has enough population and the baseball history.
1a) Austin/SA – huge untapped market. Austin has great demographics and income levels, and is the fastest growing major city. By 2020, the Austin and San Antonio metro areas will have 5+ million people combined and are roughly an hour apart.
2) Charlotte – 3+ million population, has the advantage over Portland because of surrounding population bases within driving distance.
3) Portland – 3+ million population in the area, but has some caveats.
With 32 teams, what I’d do is have two divisions of eight teams in each league. The two division winners get byes to the Division series, while four wild-card teams play to earn their way to the Division series. (I’d favor only two wild-card teams, but I doubt MLB is going to pass up this income source and go back.) I’d also minimize league switching of existing teams, but did switch two (Toronto and Miami) to allow for regional rivalries.
Divisions:
AL West
Seattle
LA Angels
Texas
Houston
Austin*
Minnesota
Kansas City
Oakland/Sacramento
AL East
NY Yankees
Baltimore
Boston
Miami
Tampa Bay
Chicago White Sox
Detroit
Cleveland
NL East
Atlanta
Philly
Washington
NY Mets
Toronto
Pittsburgh
Montreal*
Cincinnati
NL West
Colorado
Arizona
LA Dodgers
SF Giants
SD Padres
Chicago Cubs
St. Louis
Milwaukee
I’ve always wanted Hawaii to have a team like in Bases Loaded. They could divide their seasons into quarters and just go home for a quarter, away for a quarter, home for a quarter, away for a quarter. Sure it would suck for the players and their families, but that time at home will be in Hawaii.
they should wait for the current stadium issues to be either resolved or not & then look into moving some of the least profitable teams if possible rather than expanding. oakland will never have a fair competition with giants for profits or attendance bc the territorial rights & demographics therein effect the cable contracts & are so favorable to sf.theyd do well to just handle that like they shouldve done 10yrs ago but idk the giants pretty much tell the league what suits them & thats how it is so far as we know. may as well just move the oakland team if they arent going to address the ridiculous inequity that other 2team markets dont have,at least on paper.
sucks for anyone in a division with mexico city.would it
be fine to just combine current geographic divisions of each league? like al/nl west and have the home teams play their leagues style of ball.youd probly be able to get a extra division of texas ,hou, col,az,&maybe twins and brewers this would make travel schedules more equal esp. for west coast teams,create geographic rivalries & retain some league tradition. the world series is already nothing special bc of interleague.
A couple of years ago, Hardball Times did an analysis of potential expansion cities. According to their research, the ingredients needed for a successful baseball city aren’t the ones most people think of (e.g. high population). The analysis focuses only on US cities, but there is a discussion at the end of the article about Montreal and Mexico City. Not to spoil the article, but the author makes pretty compelling arguments as to why neither city is particularly attractive for baseball. As for Charlotte, it ranks 8th on the list.
It’s good to talk about Mexico for publicity, but there is no way they are deliberately putting a team there with stuff like this going on: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/02/17/world/americas/mexico-city-sinking.html
I know I’m late to the discussion, but I don’t think anyone has mentioned Nashville (unless I missed it in one of the 200 comments). (1) Forecasted GDP of $58,000 in 2018. (2) Geographically situated well, between St. Louis, Cincinnati, Atlanta. (3) Political and investor interest in expanding major league sports in Nashville (bid for MLS team). (4) Similar population growth as Charlotte (2%/year over 6 years). Admittedly Nashville might be a better city for relocation than expansion (Tampa Bay…) but it should definitely be in the conversation at the very least.
As I’ll explain in detail below, I’m pretty sure that the actual “buying power in dollars” of Mexico City GDP per capita is only something like 40% or 50% of the figures cited in this article. That matters quite a lot for a hypothetical MLB franchise in Mexico City, because it would generate a lot of its revenue in pesos (home ticket sales and local TV revenue, for example) but pay a lot of its major expenses in dollars (player salaries, for examples). Mexico City is a very large metro area, so perhaps there’s a large enough population of higher income people able to pay MLB-level ticket prices, but I’m almost certain that the stated comparison of GDP per capita is misleading on that point.
While I understand that Mexico City has a large amount of wealth/income/economic activity, it’s not stated whether these GDP per capita numbers for Mexico City are at nominal market exchange rates or at purchasing power parity (PPP). Neither the Nate Silver story nor the Princeton link (which isn’t a “Princeton study”, by the way, but rather just the summary of a Wikipedia article hosted at a princeton.edu domain) are explicitly clear on the that point, but these figures appear to be calculated at PPP based on the total GDP that the Wiki article cites for the nation of Mexico as a whole.
That distinction might seem esoteric, but it makes a big difference in analyzing the ability to pay MLB level ticket prices. By way of background, GDP at purchasing power parity is calculated at the volume of goods and services regardless of the fact that many services are cheaper in lower-income countries. The classic example is that, for PPP purposes, a haircut in Mexico (or China, etc.) is calculated to equal a haircut in the U.S., even if the price is much different in dollar terms.
To give some idea of the difference, the World Bank’s estimate of GDP for Mexico in 2016 is just over $1 trillion USD at market exchange rates ( http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD ) but about $2.3 trillion at purchasing power parity ( http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.PP.CD ). It may well be somewhat closer in Mexico City as I assume that the price level is higher than in Mexico as a whole, but the simply math of $1 trillion divided by $2.3 trillion is that nominal per capita GDP in dollars – i.e., buying power for MLB players paid in dollars – is only about 43% of GDP per capita at purchasing power parity.
This calculation also helps highlight just what a big bet a Mexico City franchise would be making on relative exchange rate stability between the peso and the dollar. Over the past 10 years, the trading range for the peso has ranged from about 10 to the dollar to about 21.5 to the dollar ( http://www.macrotrends.net/2559/us-dollar-mexican-peso-exchange-rate-historical-chart ). That’s a massive range, implying that at some times local Mexican peso revenue has only about 50% of the buying power in dollars (i.e., for player salaries) as at other points.
Toronto (or any other Canadian MLB team) also has to deal with the question of exchange rate, but the variance has been less historically. Over the past 10 years, the Canadian dollar has ranged from a high point of roughly parity with the U.S. dollar to a low point of about 1.4 to the U.S. dollar ( https://tradingeconomics.com/canada/currency ).
You start with an illogical premise (tickets pay for player salaries) and then proceed perfectly logically to an illogical conclusion (Mexico city won’t work).
Broadcast is where the money is. Any need to have cheaper ticket prices will be offset by the cheaper cost of stadium maintenance. The bidding war for the broadcast of Mexico’s MLB team will more than pay for a competitive MLB team. (Note: the problem with the Blue Jays isn’t exchange rate or something, it is that the broadcaster owns the team and thus they can’t get a more lucrative deal. They may blame exchange rate issues, but it is all about ownership in that case.)
I suspect Austin would also be considered (in competition with San Antonio for the region). The city is huge and growing, has no professional sports franchise to compete with the new team, and is wealthier than San Antonio. You might be able to split the difference by placing the stadium South of Austin, which isn’t too far from San Antonio for people to drive.
Austin is a fairly logical market on paper, though I wouldn’t count on many people regularly driving from San Antonio to Austin for a baseball game or vice versa, as I discuss in detail in a comment above.
That said, I see a couple specific local factors making it unlikely that Austin gets an MLB franchise, or other major sports franchise.
First, it’s not likely that the city of Austin would agree to provide public financing for a stadium. That’s largely how the local minor league baseball and hockey teams ended up in facilities with public financing in the suburbs of Round Rock and Cedar Park, respectively. I’m pretty sure, though, the public financing that an MLB franchise would want for a stadium goes beyond the financial capacity of any of the suburbs near Austin. So Austin wouldn’t put public financing toward a stadium, and no nearby suburb would be able to afford the cost.
Second, Austin in a sense already has a “professional” sports franchise: the revenue sports at the University of Texas. That probably feeds into the first point as there’s a sense that the University of Texas, which has a fair amount of local clout including lots of boosters and alums, isn’t going to like anything that results in competition for ticket sales and sponsorship dollars. MLB is at least a less direct competitor schedule-wise than the NFL would be, but I suspect that the university even discreetly opposing this idea would just exacerbate the issue of public financing for a baseball stadium.