Welcome to Baseball Expansion’s 3 December 2023 edition of This Week in Baseball Expansion. This week we will look at:
The Oakland A’s move to Las Vegas and what that means for MLB’s expansion timetable
The inside story of Nashville’s attempts to win an expansion franchise
A preview of this week’s winter meetings
WHAT DOES THE A’S VEGAS MOVE MEAN FOR EXPANSION?
MLB owners voted unanimously to allow the Oakland A’s to relocate to Las Vegas during their annual meeting on 16 November. But that is far from the final chapter in this saga.
The A’s are scheduled to be moving into a new Las Vegas ballpark in 2028. The question of where they will play in the meantime is covered in this Athletics Nation piece which points out that the supposed ‘Plan A’ of splitting time between San Francisco’s Oracle Park and Vegas’s Triple-A stadium is unlikely to work. But for expansion, the even bigger unknown is whether they will move to Vegas at all.
MLB’s owners have given John Fisher, the A’s owner, permission to move his franchise. But Fisher has not yet raised the money he needs to finance his Vegas ballpark and a Nevada group called Schools over Stadiums are gaining traction with a commitment to pursue “every possible path to stop the use of public funds to subsidize a billionaire’s stadium.” These two barriers have received surprisingly little attention and both have the potential to throw a huge spanner in the works.
For a long time Major League Baseball have been clear that they will not pursue expansion until the Rays and A’s stadium sagas are settled - partly to prioritise the energy of the commissioner’s office and partly to avoid taking any of the two franchises’ options off the table by giving markets they could relocate to an expansion team. While the ownership’s approval of the A’s relocation is a big step towards this goal, there remains plenty to do. KNPR concisely summarised the key questions in an interview with Nevada-based reporter Howard Stutz (which is worth a read in full):
The stadium could cost $1.5 billion. Nevada is giving the A’s owner and billionaire John Fisher $380 million. What happens if Fisher can’t get loans or private investors for his $1.1 billion share of the expense?
And what happens if the teacher union-backed Schools Over Stadiums referendum goes on the ballot in 2024? Will the promised public funding go away — which could mean a reversal of the $300-million MLB relocation fee waiver on top of added financial responsibility for Fisher?
Until these questions are answered, there is no guarantee that the A’s have secured a long-term home. And until the A’s have secured a long-term home, Major League Baseball is very unlikely to expand.
Some - like John Loar of Nashville’s Music City Baseball - have branded 2024 a “big year” for expansion and it’s still possible this will turn out to be the case. But if the A’s saga drags on - with, for example, Schools over Stadiums successfully forcing a referendum in 2024 or Fisher struggling to find loans or investment for a good chunk of the $1.1bn he is on the hook for - then the prospects of 2024 being characterised by anything other than delay diminishes substantially.
INSIDE MUSIC CITY BASEBALL
The Tennessean have published an interesting piece about Nashville-based Music City Baseball’s attempts to win an expansion team. They rightly highlight the group’s exceptional public relations efforts, which have created the industry-wide consensus that they are the favourites to receive one of MLB’s two new teams. But, as they put it:
The groundswell for MLB in Nashville carries so much momentum that it has become easy for outsiders to overlook two massive questions that need to be answered:
Where are they going to play?
Who is going to be able to pay for all of this?
The question of ownership is particularly pertinent. One of the most important factors deciding whether a city wins an expansion team is whether MLB thinks they have a suitable owner - one they can trust, both personally and to spend the money necessary to field a Major League ballclub. If the existing owners don’t warm to the person (or people) they would be welcoming into their exclusive club, they are unlikely to win a team.
So while Nashville are the favorites, there remains a lot of uncertainty about their bid. John Loar, managing director of Music City Baseball, told The Tennessean that he thinks “there will be a lot of people interested in being involved in this opportunity in Nashville.” He is probably right, but finding a mega-rich owner is only the first step. Whether the existing owners like and trust them is also a crucial part of the process.
WHAT WILL HAPPEN WITH EXPANSION AT THE WINTER MEETINGS?
MLB’s annual winter meetings are currently taking place, aptly in Nashville at the Marriott-owned Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Centre. It is unlikely that there will be too many headlines about expansion, with more on-field matters - like where Shohei Ohtani will sign - dominating proceedings.
But if Rob Manfred is asked about expansion, it will be interesting to see what his response is. He has previously said that expansion would proceed “shortly” after the A’s and Rays found themselves new homes. It will be interesting to see if he adds more detail to that pronouncement.
And as a note, for those in Nashville, the Baseball Career Conference are hosting an interesting event on Monday (4 December) at 10:30am local time looking at “The Future of Expansion in the MLB”. With a stellar panel of journalists Maury Brown and Dan Szymborski, and attorney Kelley Franco, it should be an interesting watch.