Utah’s Baseball Hopes Rise With MLB Expansion Chatter
It’s been no secret that Utah and Baseball are looking to strike a relationship as soon as possible.
The flirtations, although one sided for now, have been present as far back as April 2023 when the The Larry H. Miller Company, the previous owners of the Utah Jazz, announced they were forming “Big League Utah”.
Big League Utah’s purpose is within the name itself, to bring the “big league” to the beehive state.
Salt Lake City is absolutely booming.
The Jazz have demonstrated a powerful Utah fandom and support system their whole existence in the NBA.
Yet they have proven it even more so the past couple of years as the team has struggled tremendously, but still fills the Delta Center on a nightly basis.
Like a Mammoth itself, the NHL’s presence in Utah has been massive, full of gravitas and excitement, proving to be a smash hit as they head into year two with full momentum and community support.
Baseball seems like the next pro sport puzzle piece to connect in the Wasatch Mountains.
Big League Utah and the Miller group have been active in their push to land a squad, even going as far as trying to “rent” the homeless Athletics while they wait for their Vegas stadium to be completed before seeing them land in a temporary Sacramento home.
Despite it feeling “right”, expansion can be a long drawn out sluggish process, just ask the NBA.
In fact, the MLB hasn’t expanded since 1998.
But despite the time gap, Utah has seemingly emerged as a perennial front runner to land a squad according to recent chatter.
Bob Nightengale of USA Today, a longtime, influential columnist, recently penned these words:
"Major League Baseball believes the strongest two expansion markets remain Salt Lake City, Utah, and Nashville, with no plans to put an expansion franchise back into Oakland." ( Bob Nightengale, USA Today)
This snippet was from his “Around the Basepaths” segment at the tail end of his article of “18 biggest questions for MLB second half.”
The segment blast through a bunch of tidbits of what’s going on with teams, players and the like in the majors, and the Utah/Nashville morsel was relevant enough to make the cut.
Unfortunately it doesn’t elaborate, it doesn’t give more detail, it provides no timeline or when one can expect future updates.
Nightengale just leaves that in the footnotes and moves on to what prospect the Diamondbacks are set to call up.
There may be no additional information to be had and it may be a while before we hear more, but to hear from a reputable source that Utah sits atop the MLB’s list for a new squad is the most promising of news.
That helps turn the scenario from a “maybe” to a “when” and as someone who wants to see America’s pastime in SLC, I will settle for information like that any day.