Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred dropped a bombshell during last week’s MLB Little League Classic game in Williamsport, implying in an ESPN interview that a significant geographical realignment and expansion to 32 teams was imminent.
Baseball writers, commentators, and podcasters from all over the world hurried to suggest their own fictitious geographic four-team divisions in a future 32-team MLB structure the day after Manfred’s comments. Manfred was thought to be referring to eight divisions of four teams instead of two divisions of eight teams in the east and west conferences, but whatever. Nashville was also listed as one of the most likely expansion franchises in the majority of plans. The Cubs and White Sox, the Angels and Dodgers, and the Mets and Yankees were all in the same division in many of them.
In the dog days of August, it all made for fantastic baseball fodder, but it’s crucial to realize that none of this will ever occur.
Manfred has expressed a longing for baseball to grow to a more evenly distributed 32 clubs, similar to the NFL, since he took over as commissioner from Bud Selig in 2015. It seems as though he would like that to be his legacy accomplishment. Manfred has stated in recent years that any discussion of expansion had to wait until the stadium issues with the Oakland A’s and Tampa Bay Rays were settled. However, despite the fact that neither of them has been, Manfred made the odd decision last week to bring up the topic of expansion as though it might not be that distant. Why?
Could it perhaps be related to the Players Association’s negotiations for a new labor agreement, where the owners are reportedly putting a lot of pressure on them to set a pay cap? Would the possibility of generating 50 more jobs be enough to soften the players’ resistance to a cap? That is the strong notion that underlies Manfred’s motivation from the previous week. If so, however, this gesture is ineffective, and here’s why:
First, there isn’t much of a desire for expansion in baseball at the moment. According to a senior baseball executive, there are currently too few talented players, particularly pitchers, to go around. All we need are another fifty to sixty Triple-A players posing as major leaguers. With twelve teams currently drawing fewer than 30,000 per game, it is difficult to argue for more teams. Wouldn’t the owners still like receiving those expansion fees, I said, putting that aside? He responded, “Remember, two million dollars is roughly equivalent to one player in today’s baseball.”
In addition to benefiting the players, Manfred argued that geographical realignment would save the owners millions of dollars in travel expenses. However, it would also probably result in the end of the American and National Leagues as we know them and completely undermine the distinctiveness of natural rivalries like the Yankees and Mets. They could never meet in a World Series, for example, and would now have to play in the same eastern conference or, heaven forbid, even the same four-team division. They would also probably play each other twice as often rather than in two home-and-away three-game series.
But there’s a lot more.
The A-to-Las Vegas deal is unlikely to happen, but nobody in baseball, including Manfred, is discussing it. The construction of the proposed 33,000-seat ballpark in Vegas, which would be the smallest in baseball, is expected to cost $1.75 billion, and it is expected to soon surpass $2 billion, according to a devastating article published in The Guardian on July 2. There is a significant (pardon the pun) gap for the ballpark that will have to be paid for out of pocket by A.S. owner John Fisher, whose family founded the Gap, who has loans from Goldman-Sachs and Aramark in addition to public funds totaling about $855 million. No one thinks he will continue to risk his family’s wealth on a project that makes little financial sense.
Fisher needs to understand that he is essentially trying to play out the string in order to save as much of his reputation as possible. The Guardian report cited JC Bradbury, an economist who specializes in the financing of sporting arenas.
In fact, nothing has happened since a fake groundbreaking ceremony for the new stadium was held in June with Manfred and several local Nevada lawmakers. Although the MLB owners were initially concerned about the move from the sixth-largest TV market in San Francisco/Oakland to the 40th-largest in Las Vegas, they authorized the arrangement despite the fact that Las Vegas’s entertainment and casino revenues are also significantly down at the same time.
One former MLB owner informed me that they should never have approved this agreement. Las Vegas never made sense to me. It’s a little town with a tiny market, full of rival entertainment options, and the A’s have no fans there—no one has ever heard of them.
Regarding growth, there are significant problems with Nashville, the 26th-ranked TV market and the most conjectured-about possible city. Another MLB executive has expressed the following opinion: What’s the motivation to grow in Nashville? The Braves and Reds, who are 250 and 273 miles away from Nashville, respectively, are fiercely opposed to the city, and it has been noted that the Tennessee Titans routinely rank near the bottom in NFL attendance.
So much for Kyle Tucker, who followed Juan Soto into the $600 million+ stratosphere as the top free agent of the upcoming winter. Tucker’s two-month slump in which his power stroke had vanished to the extent that manager Craig Counsell had to sit him down for a reset last week was baseball’s most perplexing riddle. Tucker only disclosed that he had been playing with a hairline fracture in his right hand since June after that incident. The Cubs right fielder, 28, made the admirable decision to play through it despite rumors that he was under pressure from his upcoming free agency. We just know that Tucker is striking.148 with an August OPS of.381 and no home runs since July 19, his market worth has surely fallen. As of Friday, even the struggling Yankees’ Anthony Volpe had three more RBI and as many home runs (18) than Tucker. Tucker’s ground ball rate increased by 50% in August compared to 33.8% in July, suggesting that his stroke may be the source of his issues. However, he hasn’t been able to adapt for some reason. “There is no doubt that it has affected him when you look at his numbers,” stated Jed Hoyer, president of baseball operations for the Cubs. He simply hasn’t slugged in a long time. The exit velos aren’t high, and he hasn’t thrown many balls into the air. A lot of it is mechanical, in my opinion. I believe that his swing is less connected and, thus, less powerful now than it was early in the year. Top catcher prospect Samuel Basalloto has signed an eight-year, $67 million contract deal with the Orioles. They acknowledge that Adley Rutschman has not developed into the franchise player they had hoped he would be when they selected him with the first overall pick in the 2019 draft, just days after promoting him to the major leagues. Despite being selected as an All-Star in 23 and 24 and finishing second in the 2022 Rookie of the Year voting, Rutschman’s offensive numbers have been mediocre; he is only hitting.227 this season and is also being limited by injuries. After a few years away, it was satisfying to see Graig Nettles, who celebrated his 81st birthday on Wednesday, return to Yankees Old-Timers Day. Nettles told me last year that he couldn’t figure out why the Yankees hadn’t been asking him to return, but now that they have, maybe they’ll go one step further and give him a worthy monument park plaque. With his power and outstanding defense, Nettles, a five-time Yankee All-Star, is without a doubt the best (clean) Yankee third baseman of all time. He also ranks 11th on the team’s all-time home run list with 250. In addition, he is the only previous Yankee captain who is not inscribed in Monument Park (since Lou Gehrig). Note to Hal Steinbrenner: Before it’s too late, you should pay this great Yankee what he deserves. Nettles had one of the greatest applause during the Old-Timers Day introductions, and it wasn’t by chance.
