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SALT LAKE CITY — Buzz over Major League Baseball expansion resumed this week after the Tampa Bay Rays announced a new stadium deal that will keep the team on the Gulf of Mexico coast for years to come, officially settling one of two questions the league's commissioner said he wants to answer before any possible league growth.
The other could be formally settled soon, as the league is set to vote on the Oakland Athletics' proposal to relocate to Las Vegas in November, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported last week.
And as the conversation returns to what cities the league could grow to next, former Cy Young winner, five-time All-Star and five-time World Series champion David Cone says he foresees Nashville, Tennessee, and Salt Lake City landing expansion clubs.
Cone, who now broadcasts games for the New York Yankees and ESPN, made his prediction Wednesday on his podcast, Toeing the Slab, calling Nashville "probably the lead, No. 1 contender to get an expansion franchise moving forward."
He also said he believes that one of the new cities will be in the West, pointing to the extreme distance between MLB cities throughout the region. And Utah's capital is at the top of his list of Western cities moving into expansion discussions.
"The second one is still probably a little bit up in the air. There's a lot of talk about Portland, Oregon, at one point, but I think Salt Lake City, Utah, might have moved ahead," he said on the show. "That's my handicap right now, but expansion will be on the horizon. We will get two new teams; Nashville will be one, and Salt Lake City will be the other."
He's not alone. Buster Olney, Cone's ESPN colleague, picked the same two cities as his favorites in an episode of the "Baseball Tonight" podcast uploaded Wednesday, calling Nashville a "slam dunk" and Salt Lake City as his best guess for the second team because of its geography and possible ownership.
Sports oddsmaking website Bookies.com created hypothetical odds on the expansion race, listing Salt Lake City as having the third-best odds and best among the West back in April. Its current odds have Salt Lake City second-highest among six likely candidates and any other options not listed, behind only Nashville.
MLB last expanded in 1998 to include the Rays and the Arizona Diamondbacks. Multiple news outlets reported in July that MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said the league would look to form an expansion committee "pretty shortly" after the Rays and A's finalized their future stadium plans. The committee would likely look into issues like league realignment and revenue share.
There's still no definitive timeline for when the league will announce new teams or when they will take the field for the first time.
Salt Lake City is one of several cities publicly vying for a team. A coalition led by the Larry H. Miller Company announced its intent earlier this year, saying it has a "shovel-ready" stadium site picked out in Salt Lake City's forthcoming Power District.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said Thursday that he agrees with Cone's and Olney's assumption. The governor spoke about league expansion during his monthly news conference on Thursday, reaffirming his confidence in Salt Lake City's odds as the process unfolds.
"We really like our chances," he said, noting that he also believes Nashville will receive a team. "We've got the right location. We've got a potential ownership group that's working on that, there's a tremendous amount of work that's being done with that group and we're really proud of what they're doing. Of course, they have the full support of the state behind them and the governor, as well."
