The Inevitable: Major League Baseball Expansion

In 1998, Major League Baseball expanded to thirty teams, the Tampa Bay [Devil] Rays and the Arizona Diamondbacks and has not expanded the league in the 18 years since. This is the longest the game I love dearly has gone without a new team since expansion began in 1961.

Why not mix things up a little bit and add two more teams to the league? Which cities would be most deserving of its first — or perhaps rejuvenated — baseball franchise? Should any teams be moved from their current homes?
I think baseball should strongly consider adding two more teams to the game and restructuring its current playoff and divisional systems. While it’s unlikely that this will occur in the aftermath of a brand new Collective Bargaining Agreement with the Player's Union and other subtle changes to the game, here is a blueprint that league officials should pin to the corkboards in their home offices and ponder often...

First of all, Montreal, Quebec, Canada is getting a team when baseball expands, no question about it. They have a LARGE fanbase, they have a logo, and they have an incredible baseball writer named Jonah Keri, who I am honored to have conversed with on Twitter about Montreal baseball numerous times.

Which teams might get moved?
The 3 likely candidates for relocation are:

• The Tampa Bay Rays
• The Oakland Athletics
• The Texas Rangers

The Rays struggle to draw fans to the Trop every single season, even in years that they are quite good at baseball. Part of this is because the team is in Tampa Bay, and it takes half an hour to drive from downtown Tampa Bay to the stadium without traffic. Since there are really only two bridges that connect Tampa & neighboring St. Petersburg that make sense for driving to the games, there is a lot of traffic. If the City of Tampa Bay wanted to keep the team in town, I’d recommend dropping a shiny new stadium in between I-4 and the Selmon Expressway south of Ybor city. It would be near both major highways, the Amtrak line, light rail, and close to many excellent restaurants, bars, and art galleries. Or maybe drop it in the middle of Encore, a very wealthy neighborhood in Tampa Bay. I know that there are plans for that part of town, but...baseball, you guys.
Neither of these things are going to happen. In this scenario, the Rays are gone. This is mainly because Florida just doesn't give a flying you-know-what about baseball, even though they tried [and failed hysterically] to swipe the Mariners away in the late 1980s.
Maybe the Texas Rangers seem a bit odd to you, but consider that both the Oakland and Texas end their current stadium leases in 2024. That convergence — along with the necessity to prepare teams for its new homes and cities for its new teams — opens up an interesting window of possibility for baseball. The troubles with the Athletics, their attendance [or lack thereof], and Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum are well-documented. The threat of the Rangers moving to Dallas, while less known nationally, continues to grow. However, I have always said this about Oakland/Bay Area sports fans, they may not be high in number but they are definitely high in team spirit, so they will not let their Athletics skip town without a fight.

Here are my picks for the 2024 Major League Baseball expansion:

Austin, Texas and Portland, Oregon!

• If you want to talk about the demographic that Major League Baseball wants to bring back into the game — millennials — then these are two of the hottest cities on the planet right now. Both are among the fastest-growing cities in the country, and both sport interesting cultures that are underrepresented by professional sports.
• Austin has no professional sports team. While they do host the Texas Longhorns, who are arguably as dominant as the Buckeyes when it comes to supremacy over a state capitol, the city is loaded with private equity and startup money. If you stuck it a little bit south of the Colorado River, residents of San Antonio could conceivably make it to several games per season, or even scoop up partial season ticket packages.
• Portland has the Trailblazers in basketball and the Timbers in American Soccer, but also a long tradition of hosting minor league and independent league baseball teams [the Portland Beavers are the most well-known baseball team in state history]. Its TV market is comparable to Pittsburgh's, and even though they don’t fluoridate their water, it also gives the Mariners a team somewhat closer to avoid a few more long flights every year.

Discuss in the comment box below! I’d love to hear your ideas about this brave new baseball world. I guarantee you this, though: I will be creating this new baseball world using Out of the Park Baseball.

A Modest Proposal

Can we call the World Series the "MLB Finals" at this point, please? The reason being that, since 1994, their have been exactly ZERO teams outside of the United States in the so-called "World Series" If Major League Baseball wanted to make it a true "World Series", they should make the country that is number one in the world according to the International Baseball Federation [for example, the Cuban National Team or the best team in the Japanese League] the team that the MLB team has to face in October. I'd rather see this than the format that MLB currently has in place, where it's one team from the American League & one team from the National League.