MLB has announced the intention of relocating the Oakland Athletics to Las Vegas sometime in the next five years.
Likewise, they also appear to have resolved the issue regarding the Tampa Bay Rays and their new stadium, announcing plans to build a new one (with a more modern design) in St. Petersburg.
These plans aren’t 100 percent official yet, but they should be in due time.
With the future of the A’s and Rays apparently resolved, the league can go back to planning a future expansion.
That has been the idea for years, as both former Commissioner Bud Selig and current one Rob Manfred have discussed the possibility of going to 32 teams.
There are several possibilities, but an MLB analyst discussed two places that could be getting MLB teams in the not-so-distant future, per Toeing The Slab.
David Cone thinks Nashville and Salt Lake City could be getting expansion teams pic.twitter.com/i37Aofl3DP
— Toeing The Slab (@ToeingTheSlab) September 20, 2023
As David Cone states, Nashville has been one of the favorites to land an expansion franchise for a while.
He also names Salt Lake City as a potential location to host an MLB team.
Both have presented interesting projects, are located in areas with a lot of people with a lot of interest in baseball.
They are not alone, though: many cities have stated their intentions of having an MLB club.
Orlando is a clear example.
Other cities make sense as potential candidates for an expansion team: New Orleans, Portland, Charlotte, and others.
It will be up to the league to pick the two best projects.
The last expansion in Major League Baseball took place in 1998, when the Rays and the Arizona Diamondbacks joined the league.
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