Rob Manfred hints at when MLB expansion could happen

Main League Baseball has not expanded since including the Tampa Bay Rays and Arizona Diamondbacks within the 1998 season.

However on Tuesday, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred advised that one other spherical of enlargement could possibly be on the horizon.

Manfred stated that enlargement talks may begin taking place “rapidly” after the league settles stadium disputes with the Rays and Oakland Athletics.

Oakland and Tampa Bay are the 2 most dire stadium conditions within the league and are clearly front-burner points for the commissioner. The Oakland Coliseum and Tropicana Subject are persistently rated among the many worst stadiums in baseball. The A’s are already making an attempt to safe a stadium deal and relocation to Las Vegas. 

Main League Baseball has not had a workforce relocate for the reason that Montreal Expos moved to Washington and have become the Nationals for the beginning of the 2005 season. 

As for enlargement, there can be no scarcity of potential choices.

Las Vegas would nearly definitely be on the record if by some likelihood the A’s stay in Oakland, whereas Nashville, Portland and maybe Austin, Texas, could possibly be on the record. A return to Montreal would even be an attention-grabbing risk, as would a possible workforce in Mexico. 

Within the best-case state of affairs, an enlargement would nonetheless in all probability be a number of years away. Not solely due to the time it’d take to settle the stadium conditions in Oakland and Tampa Bay, however the enlargement course of itself can even take a number of years from awarding a metropolis to getting every little thing in movement to get them enjoying.

Nonetheless, it looks as if baseball has a critical curiosity in transferring to 32 groups and that it may be taking place sooner fairly than later.