West Sacramento Makes Its Pitch: MLB Expansion Team Bid Is Official

It’s happening. After years of quiet planning and strategic positioning, West Sacramento is officially throwing its hat into the ring for a Major League Baseball expansion team. Mayor Martha Guerrero made the announcement during the city’s State of the City address, confirming what insiders have been whispering about for months: the region isn’t content with hosting the Athletics on a temporary basis—it wants a permanent seat at baseball’s biggest table.

Here’s what makes this moment significant. West Sacramento isn’t approaching this as a long shot. The city has already purchased a nearly 3-acre property near Sutter Health Park, the Athletics’current home, and identified the Bridge District as the ideal location for a future stadium. This isn’t idle dreaming—it’s a calculated, infrastructure-backed play. Mayor Guerrero emphasized that the effort is a full regional collaboration, with Sacramento Mayor McCarty and city councils from both communities working in lockstep. She specifically thanked the mayor and his team“for the great teamwork in making pitches to boost attendance and the level of sponsorships,”signaling that they’re not just banking on baseball’s popularity—they’re building the ecosystem an expansion franchise would need.

The Athletics themselves are all in. D’Lonra Ellis, the team’s chief legal officer and head of the Sacramento transition, called the community response overwhelming.“This community has shown in spades that they are absolutely ready to be a Major League Baseball town, and we are 100 percent behind them,”he said. More than polite support, his words reflect genuine surprise at how quickly the region has embraced the team. Ellis noted the visible markers of that embrace—Sacramento script jerseys at games, kids getting their first-game certificates, surprisingly robust Tuesday night turnouts. The team has become something bigger than a temporary tenant; it’s become Sacramento’s team, even if the arrangement is scheduled to end after next season.

That timeline is actually the wild card here. The Athletics are contractually set to depart West Sacramento after one more year, yet they’re simultaneously helping build the case for why a permanent franchise should take root in the region. Ellis put it bluntly:“While we are here, we are going to make sure that whether it’s Mayor McCarty or Mayor Guerrero, we show up big as the Athletics. And when we show up big as the Athletics, that will be able to bring a spotlight on to Sacramento and the region.”It’s a fascinating dynamic—a temporary tenant helping construct the foundation for something permanent.

The real reveal comes May 28, when city officials plan to unveil renderings of what a potential new stadium could look like. That’s when the pitch stops being abstract and becomes visual. That’s when Sacramento sees whether its vision matches MLB’s appetite for expansion. For now, the city is staying tight-lipped on specifics, but the momentum is undeniable. West Sacramento has moved from exploring the idea to actively pursuing it, and that’s a very different thing.