Rob Manfred won’t expand MLB while it needs new cities as stadium leverage

Rob Manfred would love to expand Major League Baseball. He brings it up all the time, and he even has three cities in mind that he once again mentioned while taking questions before Monday’s Home Run Derby: an MLB return to Montreal, an MLB club in Mexico City (or somewhere else in Mexico), and the rare mention of a United States city without a team, Charlotte, North Carolina.

Expansion would be exciting, it would make baseball money, it would create more jobs both on and off the field, and that’s before even getting into how many more minor league players would exist because of the addition of another couple of clubs. However, MLB is not going to expand just yet, not until it gets a few things off its plate, as Manfred himself explained:

I think for us to expand we need to be resolved in Tampa and Oakland in terms of their stadium situations. As much as I hope that both Oakland and Tampa will get stadiums, I think it would be difficult to convince the owners to go forward with an expansion until those situations are resolved.

The key item there is the need to fix what’s wrong for the Rays and A’s before any new teams are added. And while it could be interpreted as Manfred saying that it wouldn’t be right for MLB to start a new venture (or ventures) while its current teams and owners have problems that need solving, we can narrow the focus here even further, especially since Manfred even said the word “stadiums” in the quote.

It’s not just about making sure that Tampa/St. Pete and Oakland get new stadiums. It’s about making sure MLB doesn’t eliminate any potential leverage it has with those cities while it attempts to extract tax dollars from them to build those new stadiums.

If the A’s aren’t going to be able to move to San Jose because of the Giants’ territorial claims, and they’re losing the fight to stay in Oakland in a brand new park, then they need a place to threaten to move to, like Charlotte. Charlotte will get all excited about adding an MLB team, Oakland will start to feel pressured to keep the A’s around, and either they do move out east or Oakland caves and helps pay for the A’s to stay in town.

Do you know how Tropicana Field, home of the Rays, was built? It was actually meant to be used to lure an MLB team to the area — they didn’t even have a specific team in mind when construction began in 1986. Eventually, the White Sox were the ones nearly lured from their home ... until Chicago got itself a new stadium to keep the Pale Hose where they already were, and the former Florida Suncoast Dome stayed MLB-free until the Rays moved in at the end of the 90s.

Given all that, it’s not difficult to imagine a scenario where a city like Charlotte trips over themselves to lure the A’s or Rays away from their homes to become a baseball city. And that’s why you won’t see MLB using up these potential expansion destinations until it knows that the futures of the A’s and Rays are secure in their current territories.

We’ll eventually get MLB expansion, but it won’t be until Manfred and Co. have squeezed a new stadium out of one city or another to get the A’s and Rays up to speed. Of course, by the time they figure out what’s going on with Oakland and Tampa Bay, maybe another team will decide they don’t like their stadium, and we’ll have to begin the process anew.

It doesn’t take long for this sentiment to appear: The Braves just replaced Turner Field before it served as their home for even 20 years, the Rangers unveiled new stadium plans last spring because Globe Life Park opened all the way back in 1994 when there was only one wild card per league, and the D-Backs are currently complaining about their stadium, Chase Field, which opened in 1998.

So ... OK, maybe we won’t get MLB expansion, but we’ll get those international teams because American cities stop paying up for new parks every 20 years. Sorry: if they stop paying up for new parks every 20 years. Either way, expansion is for after stadium situations are resolved, and you’re seeing these places named in case they need to be used as leverage against current big league towns. That’s not as exciting as thoughts of a return to Montreal or putting a team in the most populated city in North America, but it is the reality of this situation.