In July 2020, as the baseball world prepared to launch an abbreviated season amid a global pandemic, Dave Dombrowski was gearing up for a different kind of project. He joined Music City Baseball LLC, a company formed with the intent of bringing a major league team to Nashville, Tennessee.
Dombrowski's focus would soon shift.
A conversation later that year with Philadelphia Phillies owner John Middleton helped convince him that expansion was not on the horizon for the league — not in Nashville, not anywhere. The Phillies hired Dombrowski as their general manager in Dec. 2020; he's guided the team to two NLCS appearances since and has the team playing better than any club in 2024.
Read more: MLB Power Rankings: Yankees Struggle, Dodgers Fall, AL Contender Takes Leap
Dombrowski's eagerness was understandable. While MLB has not added any new teams since the Arizona Diamondbacks and Tampa Bay Rays joined the league in 1998, every other major pro sports league in North America has added at least one new team. When will a new MLB franchise join the party?
In the four years since Dombrowski was convinced the Nashville project was a pipe dream, the league apparently hasn't made any progress toward expansion.
"We haven't even started the process, so where it might go is pure speculation," Manfred told the Dallas Morning News.
The league's hesitance to expand is perhaps understandable given its current economic climate.
Manfred has consistently said he would prefer to find long-term stadiums for the Oakland A's and Tampa Bay Rays before committing to bringing any new teams into the league. Both situations remain at least somewhat unsettled.
Next week, municipal leaders in St. Petersburg, Fla. and Pinellas County are scheduled to vote on a new stadium for the Rays that could break ground next year. A vote to proceed would likely end years-long speculation about the Rays relocating from the region after calling Tropicana Field home since their inaugural season.
The A's situation is less straightforward.
Owner John Fisher has publicly committed to moving the franchise to Las Vegas, Nevada, and last year received the necessary votes to do so from the league's other 29 owners. Yet the move has been fraught with delays, from the release of initial ballpark renderings to a legal challenge by a Nevada teachers union that would block public funds from going to the ballpark construction. While progress behind the scenes might be accelerating, public enthusiasm for the project out of Las Vegas seems scant.
Meanwhile, the economic fallout from the bankruptcy of Diamond Sports Group has threatened to upend the cable sports bubble that fueled MLB's economic engine (as well as other leagues that had partnered with the parent company of the Bally Sports regional networks).
Manfred said in the same interview with the Dallas Morning News that "there is potential for a downtick in revenue" as a result of the Diamond Sports situation, "but I think that downtick is going to be relatively modest. The content has fundamental value and we will be back at our peak relatively quickly. And from there we continue to grow."
About the writer
J.P. Hoornstra writes and edits Major League Baseball content. A veteran of 20 years of sports coverage for daily newspapers ... Read more
