Don’t Let the Rays Go To Montreal

Sure, Montreal deserves to have a Major League Baseball team. But not this way.

If you’re a baseball fan in Tampa you have to be very nervous about a proposed plan to move half of the Rays games to Montreal.

Generally speaking, you’re not thinking of taking some of the games away from one market if you’re not eventually going to take all of the games away from the market.

For the most part, major league baseball teams have been stagnant. Take away a period from 1952 to 1971 when teams primarily followed the population shifts in the country at the time in an era when ticket sales meant more than television revenue and Major League Baseball’s antitrust laws have generally kept teams at bay.

There’s only been one team move since 1971. Prior to that, take away the 1952–71 period and one has to go back to 1903 to find a franchise relocation in MLB.

This is in large part to the fact so much of baseball’s television revenue makeup, where big markets are rewarded and can receive a lion’s share of the revenue. Sure, there are luxury taxes and the like, but big market teams often have no problem in paying them.

And it’s going to be that way until real revenue sharing or a salary cap is instituted.

While Montreal didn’t deserve to lose their team back in 2004, you could see the writing on the wall as soon as the Expos started playing select games in San Juan.