In July 2020, as the baseball world prepared to enter a shortened season amid a global pandemic, Dave Dombrowski was preparing for a different kind of project. Joined Music City Baseball LLCa company formed for the purpose of bringing a major league team to Nashville, Tennessee.

Dombrowski’s focus will soon change.

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 has guided the team to two NLCS appearances since then, and the team is playing better than any club in 2024.

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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 professional 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 became convinced the Nashville project was a pipe dream, the league has apparently made no progress toward expansion.

“We haven’t even started the process, so where it might go is pure speculation.” said Manfred Dallas Morning News.

The league’s reluctance to expand is perhaps understandable given the current economic climate.

Manfred has consistently said he would prefer to find long-term ballparks for the Oakland A’s and Tampa Bay Rays before committing to bringing new teams into the league. Both situations remain at least somewhat unstable.

Next week, municipal leaders in St. Petersburg, Florida and Pinellas County are scheduled to vote on a new ballpark for the Rays that could break ground next year. A vote to go ahead would likely end years of speculation about the Rays relocating from the area after calling Tropicana Field home since their inaugural season.

A’s situation is less clear.

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 other 29 owners of the league. However, the move was fraught with delays, from the release of initial ballpark odds to a legal challenge by a Nevada teachers union that would block public funds from the transition to the construction of the park. While progress behind the scenes may be accelerating, public enthusiasm for the project outside of Las Vegas appears to be thin.

Meanwhile, the economic impact from the bankruptcy of Diamond Sports Group; has threatened to topple the cable sports bubble that fueled MLB’s financial engine (as well as other leagues that had partnered with regional network parent Bally Sports).

Manfred said in the same interview with the Dallas Morning News that “there is a potential for revenue to decline” as a result of the situation at Diamond Sports, “but I think that decline will be relatively modest. The content has fundamental value and we will return to our peak relative quickly and from there we continue to grow.”