Tag: expansion

Notes: A’s and Vegas, Nashville, and front office unionization

More on the A’s and Las Vegas, the next step in expansion, and a look at the why and what of front office unionization.

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The A’s are likely going to play baseball in Las Vegas as soon as their lease with the city of Oakland is up following the 2024 season, but then again, maybe they won’t. All of that is pretty unsettled at the moment, with all kinds of negotiations for public subsidies and tax dollars still occurring, which will happen for at least another month until Vegas’ current legislative session ends. “The A’s move to Las Vegas” is probably the most-likely scenario, but there’s also “the A’s stay in Oakland, sell, and current owner John Fisher takes over an expansion team that will go to Vegas instead” as well as “the A’s and Las Vegas don’t agree on anything in time but Oakland won’t renew the lease, leaving the A’s to play their games in a Triple-A stadium while they argue over public funding for years, again.”

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Rob Manfred mentioned MLB expansion again. However…

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“I would love to get to 32 teams,” Rob Manfred recently told ESPN’s Don Van Natta Jr. in a lengthy story. You don’t really need to read the whole thing unless you really want to, as it’s kind of what you’d expect: you don’t get to do a long interview with the commissioner of Major League Baseball if there are going to be a lot of tough questions and pushback. Still, though, Van Natta Jr. got Manfred to mention expansion during their talk, which was one of the early things he discussed back in his first term as commissioner, after taking over for Bud Selig:

No matter how they see the CBA’s fine print, owners seem thrilled with Manfred’s job performance. And why wouldn’t they be? Despite its array of problems, league sources say baseball has grown into a $10 billion-plus-a-year sport, up from $8 billion when Manfred became commissioner. Owners also loved Manfred’s reorganization of the minor leagues in 2020, and in the past decade, franchise valuations have more than quadrupled. Not surprisingly, billionaires want in, and expansion is coming. “I would love to get to 32 teams,” Manfred tells me.

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