MLB expansion: Breaking down eight possible locations for new baseball teams, from population to local clubs

Major League Baseball will expand from 30 to 32 teams in the coming years. The only uncertainties are when the process will formally begin and when the two new franchises to be named will begin play. 

Commissioner Rob Manfred, who recently announced that he would step down from MLB’s most powerful office when his current term expires in January of 2029, recently said the league’s two newest entrants probably won’t be seeing game action while he’s still in office. However, Manfred also told reporters he “would like the process along and [cities] selected.”

So let’s proceed under the working assumption that we’ll know which two cities will be awarded MLB expansion franchises before the current decade is up. As such, it’s high time we probe the leading contenders to become MLB’s 31st and 32nd clubs. While it’s still possible a city not part of the rundown below could emerge as a viable candidate, the guess is that the forthcoming eight destinations are the most realistic contenders. 

Those destinations in alphabetical order are: Charlotte, North Carolina;, Las Vegas (based on the very real possibility that the A’s proposed relocation there does not come to pass); Montreal, Canada; Nashville, Tennessee; Portland, Oregon; Sacramento, California; Salt Lake City; and San Antonio. Five of these cities – Charlotte, Las Vegas, Nashville, Sacramento, and Salt Lake City – are presently home to affiliated Triple-A minor-league franchises. San Antonio has a Double-A team (and there’s a Triple-A team not far away in suburban Austin), and the Portland suburb of Hillsboro is home to a High-A club. Montreal, of course, was home to MLB’s Expos for decades before owner Jeffrey Loria’s calculated efforts to destroy the club and the team’s subsequent relocation to Washington, D.C., where they became the Nationals. Each of these locations also has an advocacy organization working to lure an MLB franchise and in some…