Rob Manfred's Comments on MLB Expansion and What They Mean for Sacramento, Oakland

With the Athletics deciding to leave Oakland, fans in the city and the surrounding area have been holding out hope that they will somehow be granted an expansion team when the league decides to add two more teams in the coming years.

MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred spoke on the topic of expansion recently, and there was one part at the end that stood out that could be bad news for Oakland, but potentially good news for Sacramento.

Here are his full comments on expansion.

"You've got to decide that you're willing to expand. That decision, how easy or hard it is, depends in part on how much central revenue you generate, right, and how the owners are going to react to creating two additional shares of that that central revenue.

"Assuming you get over that hump, that they want to expand, then it's where, right? What two cities do you take in? You have to get through that.

"Then once the cities are in place, you can start thinking about, really, I see two big issues. One is travel. 162 games in 186 days with all the travel that goes along with that, particularly with the schedule we're playing now."

With that comment, he's setting up for baseball's realignment, which would effectively get rid of the American and National Leagues. It was at this point that Manfred was asked about the timing of a possible expansion of the league.

"I'd like to when I think about the things I'd like to get, there's no way we're getting two more teams on the field before I'm gone. I'd like to pick the teams before I'm gone." Manfred has said that he will retire when his current contract runs out in 2029.

It's that last bit that is the most interesting for fans in California. After a messy breakup where Manfred disparaged the Oakland fan's boycotts (both actual and reverse), the thought seems to be that he would not be willing to consider bringing The Town back into the fold, no matter who was involved in the ownership group that was looking to land a club.

It's been a horribly kept secret that Golden State Warriors and Valkyries owner Joe Lacob had a standing offer to buy the A's to keep them in Oakland, but Manfred stuck by John Fisher, who not only drug his own team, but the entire league through the mud as he left Oakland.

If Manfred wants to be the person in charge of picking the locations of the franchises, that doesn't bode well for Oakland.

On the flip side, that could also be Sacramento's only hope for landing an expansion team. While it's unlikely there was any firm deal in place that hosting the A's on their journey to Las Vegas would grant the capitol city a team of its own, if there is one person that would be grateful for that happening, it's Manfred.

With the commissioner worried about travel, there is likely to be one team on the east coast and one on the west added, and the two cities in the west that are making a push are Salt Lake City, UT, and Portland, OR.

Between the two, Salt Lake City is the presumed favorite at the moment, but with years until a decision would have to be made in any official capacity, there is plenty of time for things to change. The team in the east will presumably land in Nashville, TN.

The big question for Sacramento's expansion bid would be if they could cobble together an ownership group that could rival Portland and Salt Lake, and if so, where that money would come from. There isn't a huge appetite for public spending in Sacramento at the moment, so that would have to change, too.

There are plenty of hurdles involved in actually getting a full-time team in Sacramento, but if Manfred has shown us anything these last few years, it's that if he makes up his mind one way, he's not going to waver.