Nashville wants to bring a Major League Baseball team to town.
While the expansion process still has a lot of work to do, Nashville has certainly put itself in position to have a chance at an MLB club.
The latest updates all came on Tuesday in an article from ESPN insider Jeff Passan.
Passan provided updates on four cities: Nashville; Salt Lake City: Raleigh, N.C.; and Montreal.
There won’t be any expansion until a new collective-bargaining agreement is reached, which will (hopefully) happen at some point in the upcoming offseason.
The plan is to have one city toward each coast.
“(MLB commissioner Rob) Manfred has said he wants a pair of expansion cities — one West Coast-based, one East Coast — decided upon by his planned retirement in January 2029, the deadline for candidates has accelerated,” Passan writes. “It’s reasonable to think that by this time next year, an expansion committee could be in place, preparing to consider the viability of bids from cities across the country and beyond before offering recommendations to the wider ownership group.”
Nashville has been working toward this for a while and “has long been considered the front-runner for the East Coast bid,” Passan writes.
Will MLB Expand to Nashville?
It has been the city for a while that MLB has seemed most interested in as its East Coast destination.
“Long considered a distinct favorite to land the Eastern expansion franchise, time was on Nashville’s side to build infrastructure that matched Music City Baseball’s well-constructed Nashville Stars brand,” Passan writes.
Nashville has been home to a Triple-A team, and their budding Music City Baseball group has done its best to prove that an upgrade to an MLB team is in order.
Cause For Concern
Passan notes that Nashville’s group doesn’t yet have an owner in place, or stadium funding, or a stadium site.
“What it doesn’t have is an owner, public financing or a site,” Passan writes. “And those are the sorts of things that matter, especially with local and state governments lukewarm at best on the idea of contributing tax dollars for a stadium. Nashville mayor Freddie O’Connell has said on multiple occasions that he expects a privately funded stadium. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, the overwhelming favorite to win the state’s governorship in November, does not have expansion baseball among her priorities, according to a source.”
This isn’t doomsday for the Nashville expansion bid, but there’s definitely some work to be done.
“All of that can change quickly, of course, with the emergence of an owner willing to pay the expansion fee, cover a plot of land that will cost many hundreds of millions and then build a stadium,” Passan writes. “And politics can be funny, too, with priorities ever shifting. Nashville has much of what it takes to be the Eastern team. It just needs more to cement that status.”
Nashville is the center of the country music universe. Can it add a Major League Baseball team to its stage? That’s a big question, and one lots of people will be waiting to hear answered.
MLB Expansion to Nashville Gets Major Update From ESPN’s Jeff Passan