Kansas City Royals: 3 reasons team shouldn’t move downtown

This one might sound like a no-brainer, but there’s already a baseball team — and a stadium for it — in the Kansas City metropolitan area.

Relocating a baseball team is one thing. Relocating it within the same city is.. something else.

Portland, Los Angeles and Montreal have been name-dropped in conversations about potential destinations for either expansion franchises or current teams relocating. If John Sherman is indeed interested in moving the Kansas City Royals away from Kauffman Stadium (not confirmed), uprooting them and starting fresh in another city would be a hot topic of conversation.

Luckily for the franchise, Sherman has a deep love for Kansas City and probably wouldn’t ever let that happen. Instead, though, a move to the downtown area would keep the Royals pretty close to where they’re already at. Is that worth it?

This is the most simple of the three reasons to not make this move. It’s entirely common for teams with outdated facilities to undergo renovations in an effort to keep up with the times. Twelve years ago, Kauffman Stadium made those exact kinds of improvements. When it’s time to decide whether or not to renew the team’s lease at Kauffman in 2031, those improvements will be nearly a quarter-century old, though.

On the other hand, as the old saying goes: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The current location seems to be working just fine, is surrounded by multiple major highways and offers plenty of parking options for fans. Going through the entire relocation process just to leave a fully-functional location for a place less than 30 minutes away may be viewed as a waste to some.