Nashville is not close to getting an MLB franchise.
The people who want to bring Major League Baseball to Nashville have a logo and are selling baseball hats. Music City Baseball picked out the team name, the Nashville Stars in 2019, and six years later there is a hat and logo. There is still no indication that Major League Baseball plans to add two teams in the near future. The move of John Fisher’s Athletics franchise from Oakland to Las Vegas has hit a number of roadblocks and Stu Sternberg’s Tampa Bay Rays franchise pulled out of stadium-village deal with municipal partners, the city of St. Petersburg and Pinellas County, Florida. MLB has maintained that it would not expand until stadium situations in Oakland and the Tampa Bay market were resolved. The problems remain and there are stadium issues that have cropped up in Chicago, White Sox ownership wants a new stadium, Kansas City and Phoenix.
In December, 2024, the mayor of Nashville, Freddie O’Connor threw cold water on the possibility that his city could take on a Major League Baseball expansion franchise or go after an existing franchise that might be on the market. O’Connor appearing on a local radio show told host George Plaster that Nashville does not have the ingredients to take on an MLB business. Music City Baseball is led by John Loar but O’Connor seems to think that Loar’s group lacks some sort of credibility. O’Connor talked about one of the ingredients that would be necessary for Nashville to land a team. The city needs a baseball stadium. If someone wants to build a stadium and is willing to pay for the structure and the land needed for the facility, he would listen and possibly work with the group. Nashville is not paying the freight for an MLB venue. It is still early in the MLB expansion process but Music City Baseball has a baseball cap.
