Last Friday, I was driving to Milwaukee, a city I absolutely adore (I say when describing it in August as opposed to in February) when new reports came out that suggested that the Milwaukee Brewers would be entertaining the possibility of relocation if they did not receive adequate public funding for major renovations on American Family Field, a stadium that opened the same year that Albert Pujols debuted, which is not a very long time ago considering I’m comparing a stadium to a guy who retired last year.

This is a familiar move. Milwaukee, the smallest media market in Major League Baseball, will inevitably fear relocation. They’ve already lost MLB teams twice, largely for reasons having nothing to do with fan support, but unlike, say, if the Yankees threatened to leave New York, there are enough fairly lateral moves for the Brewers that a threat does not seem empty.

Below I will go through each team in Major League Baseball one by one to determine whether a team should relocate from its current market:

Arizona Diamondbacks: Phoenix is a rapidly growing city and for the first time arguably ever, it plays host to a young and exciting team. The city may become uninhabitable due to its heat eventually, but for now, they have a good thing going. NO

Atlanta Braves: For all of the many cultural issues surrounding the Braves’ organization and culture, Atlanta is a major city with an enormous geographical pull. The Braves are fundamentally the baseball team for a huge region and abandoning the southeast is a ridiculous premise. NO

Baltimore Orioles: Bring the Browns back hom…nah, it’s fine. Baltimore has proven very adept as a fan base when the team gives it something to applaud and this season is a golden example. NO

Boston Red Sox: A huge city with a region-wide audience, a storied franchise with as much lore as any non-Yankees franchise in baseball, and the most storied active park in the sport? This might be the single easiest pick on the list and consider the ground that that covers. NO

Chicago Cubs: Look, I don’t want to make a habit out of complimenting the Cubs, but they have outrageously loyal fans (one of the most objectively untrue bits of recent memory is Cardinals fans who claimed Cubs fans jumped on the bandwagon in 2015) and Wrigley Field is, alongside Fenway, a cathedral which must be preserved. NO

Chicago White Sox: Even if the Cubs have a larger fan base than their crosstown rivals, the White Sox aren’t exactly ignored, enjoying a large fan base in the city of Chicago as well as in the southern suburbs. Also, if you sliced the Chicago MSA in half, you’d get two metro areas among the top dozen in the country. Chicago certainly can and does support two baseball teams. NO

Cincinnati Reds: Last year, the Reds tried to shame their fans who dared to complain about their fire sale. This year, they played a lot better and attendance increased. Turns out attendance isn’t a problem in Cincinnati when you give the fans something to applaud. NO

Cleveland Guardians: After a few seasons of treading water attendance-wise, it might be tempting for some to claim the franchise grew stale, but Cleveland once had the longest consecutive sellout streak in baseball. In the 2016 World Series, their crowds were every bit as passionate as those at Wrigley Field. This is a great market when you give them something to celebrate. NO

Colorado Rockies: Did you know the Rockies have a top-half attendance in baseball despite being the Colorado Rockies? This is nothing new: Denver loves to show up for the team. It’s usually because people just like to hang out at the stadium, but what difference does that make? If you don’t like Coors Field, and I don’t, make them build a dome next time but don’t deprive their loyal fans. I may want Denver’s NBA and NHL teams catapulted to the Moon, but the Rockies are all right by me. NO

Detroit Tigers: The olde English “D” should be lumped in with Fenway and Wrigley as institutions that must be protected at all costs by Major League Baseball. Also there’s the whole part where Detroit is entirely too large to be without a team and they fill the stadium when the team is good. NO

Houston Astros: They’re a major attendance draw in America’s fourth biggest city, a rapidly expanding and extremely diverse city for which the Astros are a galvanizing force. Maybe you hate the Astros organization and that’s fair but they are admirable as heels. NO

Kansas City Royals: The bitter Rams fan in me wants to see Kansas City put their money where their mouths are and galvanize around the Cardinals as Team Missouri, but the responsible citizen in me knows that blaming random sports fans down I-70 is not the reasonable course of action here (blaming random rich guys is!). Kauffman absolutely rocks when the team is good and it’s not the fault of their fans that this is not presently the case. The Royals will be back and so will the fans. NO

Los Angeles Angels: Although they often take a back seat to the Dodgers, a metro area as spread out and vehicle-congested as Los Angeles does kind of need two teams (at least) to satisfy demand. Frankly, I would rather they change their name back to Anaheim and embrace their identity as denizens of Orange County during an era in which suburban Los Angeles forges an identity beyond its identity at the franchise’s beginning (white flight, mostly). Rename, sure. Relocate, no. NO

Los Angeles Dodgers: If I’m going to spare the Angels, obviously I am going to spare the Dodgers. They are easily the second-most beloved team in America’s second-largest city, and Dodger Stadium is my choice for the most aesthetically pleasing stadium in the sport. NO

Miami Marlins: There was a time when I was more susceptible to corporate sports media that I saw poor Marlins attendance as a reflection on a lack of support from the fans of Miami, but now I see an organization that, from 1997 to 2003 to 2017 is singularly obsessed with tearing itself down to the studs. Any time the Marlins start to build something that could create lifelong fans, they destroy it. The Marlins had eight consecutive seasons with at least 1.5 million fans and then they sold off Giancarlo Stanton and company to save a buck. Take Major League Baseball away from South Florida? I say let’s give Major League Baseball to South Florida, just to see how it would do there if they ever got a team. NO

Milwaukee Brewers: Prepare for a bunch of nonsense. Prepare to hear about how Wisconsin is a football state, as though fandom for the Milwaukee Bucks hasn’t been fervent once they put a good team out there for the fans to support. Prepare to hear about how the growth of southern markets, as though Milwaukee has not consistently supported the Brewers, topping 2 million in every non-pandemic season (2020 and 2021) since 2004 and topping three million in 2008, 2009, and 2011. Milwaukee isn’t about to have pressure applied to them because of their own shortcomings; they’re about to have pressure applied to them because the American sports franchise system encourages the most vulnerable markets to be continuously exploited. NO

Minnesota Twins: The Twins haven’t won a postseason game since Joe Mauer’s rookie season and haven’t won a postseason series since the year Major League Baseball threatened to contract them. The Twin Cities in the summer is a gorgeous place to catch a ball game, and although attendance has lagged somewhat in recent years, it has bounced back a bit this season–showing a desire to win by signing Carlos Correa long-term helps. Showing you care tends to bring out the fans. NO

New York Mets: With nearly 20 million people in the New York Metropolitan statistical area, no city more obviously deserves two teams than New York. Even beyond the personal appeals to Mets fans, it simply wouldn’t make business sense to not have a massive operations base in a city so large that it could split in half and form the second and third biggest cities in the country. NO

New York Yankees: See above but add “it’s the friggin Yankees”. NO

Oakland Athletics: The Oakland Athletics play at an intentionally dilapidated stadium, by far the biggest pop cultural imprint the franchise has had stems from their refusal to spend money, and the organization is actively trying to move to a city not out of a sense that the people of Las Vegas will love the Athletics more, but to court rich tourists. If any St. Louisans are thinking the answer here is “yes”, I am absolutely imploring you to spend three minutes on self-reflection. NO

Philadelphia Phillies: Are their fans annoying? Yes. Am I sick of the whole self-aggrandizing Philly sports thing, where we treat puking on fans or throwing batteries at players as some sort of charming reflection of passion? Yes. Am I going to pretend that Philadelphia, which has consistently filled Citizens Bank Park during seasons in which they were not actively trying to be the worst team in the sport, should not have a Major League Baseball team? NO

Pittsburgh Pirates: You remember how crazy PNC Park was in the early 2010s, with the legendary “Cueto” chants rattling the Cincinnati Reds as the two contested a Wild Card Game in 2013? And you know how fan support for the Steelers and Penguins, which have aside from very brief windows been extremely successful, has been robust well beyond the city’s unremarkable size? This could be the Pirates. This probably should be the Pirates. NO

San Diego Padres: The sport’s lone one-sport city is San Diego, and they have been a truly fascinating experiment in how to build a culture. This season, the Padres have been underwhelming, and it hasn’t hurt attendance at all. Fans see a beautiful stadium in a beautiful climate and they see an influx of stars like Juan Soto, Manny Machado, and Fernando Tatis Jr., and they want to be a part of what is happening. NO

San Francisco Giants: Since they moved into their baseball-only stadium in 2001, the San Francisco Giants have been one of the most supported teams in the sport. Last season saw their lowest non-pandemic attendance (though it would be fair to say, particularly given the political environment of San Francisco, there may have still been some pandemic influence) and they still hosted nearly 2.5 million fans. This is a team that nearly moved to Tampa Bay in the early 1990s, partially because the big team of the Bay Area was playing in Oakland. This is a metaphor. NO

Seattle Mariners: Seattle is famously isolated as far as MLB teams go, but I think this is all the more reason to keep them. They are the convenient option for fans from Portland, from western Canada, and it’s not like Seattle is some small town in the first place. NO

St. Louis Cardinals: Forget the attendance, above three million in every non-pandemic year since the current Busch Stadium opened. Forget the regional draw, serving as a popular team in reasonably sized cities without MLB presences across the Midwest and into the Southeast. Forget that St. Louis is a city of absolute sports sickos that pack stadiums for any team that is not actively, publicly trying to relocate. The central problem is that the St. Louis Cardinals are God’s Team, and MLB ought not invite the wrath of an angry higher power even if there were a few quick bucks available. NO

Tampa Bay Rays: Tropicana Field is located more than 20 miles away from the primary population center of Tampa, Florida, which is particularly burdensome when you’re expecting fans to commute on a daily basis. The Lightning and Buccaneers do just fine on attendance while playing in the actual heart of the city center. Then again, those teams also spend money, while the Rays do not. Ultimately I think I’d rather root for a team that is good (which the Rays are) than a team that spends money, but it’s also impossible to pretend that their lack of effort to improve further via spending doesn’t turn fans off from spending money to drive that far to see a game in an ugly stadium played by a roster of guys who will get sold off as soon as they make more than league minimum. Installing a smart front office is the hard part and you did that–now just build a stadium in Tampa and put forth a competitive payroll and profit. NO

Texas Rangers: The Metroplex is an underrated baseball market, routinely keeping a fairly high floor on attendance despite the suburban stadium problem (though they keep building new ones there so I guess they’re fine with it). They’ll eventually get their World Series title and it’ll be really cool when they do. NO

Toronto Blue Jays: A cool ripple effect of the last franchise relocation, the Montreal Expos, is that Toronto fully became Canada’s team. Their games are shown nationwide and even most fans, say, in Vancouver are Jays fans. Forget that Toronto is a large metro area with 6.7 million people; Canada has nearly 40 million people. NO

Washington Nationals: When I was a kid, the capital of the United States did not have a Major League Baseball team and I just…kind of accepted it. Why would I do that? How did that feel even the least bit normal? Let’s never speak of that era again. NO

Well there it is, a comprehensive run-down of every MLB team and whether it ought to be relocated. So you can go ahead and take the “YES” answers and wishcast your favorite vacation city or whatever to get a team. And if you have more cities than you have “YES” franchises, keep in mind that the talent pool in professional baseball has never been higher and could certainly sustain at least a few more MLB teams and also that publicly financed sports stadiums are immoral grifts. Thanks for reading!