Major League Baseball in Salt Lake City is pitched as a home run, but... 

• Big League Utah
• Concept renderings of a proposed Major League Baseball stadium in Poplar Grove along the Jordan River.

How fast is the Wasatch Front growing? So fast, that the announcement in mid-April that a powerful coalition called Big League Utah is seeking to bring a new Major League Baseball franchise here was not met with guffaws.

Salt Lake City may not rival Los Angeles or New York City anytime soon, but by the end of this decade, we could be hosting the Dodgers and the Mets at a brand new ballpark in the newly coined Power District, a 100-acre Rocky Mountain Power property just south of the Utah State Fairpark and west of the Jordan River Parkway.

Jay Jaffe, a senior baseball writer for the analytics website Fangraphs, graduated from East High in 1988. His first reaction to the baseball bid was skepticism—his little old hometown?—but once he considered the details, he took it seriously.

The most significant factor for Jaffe is the involvement of the Miller family, who are heading up Big League Utah. Late Jazz owner Larry Miller and his heirs steered Salt Lake's NBA basketball team to considerable success, winning the second-most games in the NBA during the first 30 years they owned the team. "History shows the Miller family can get things done," Jaffe noted.

Salt Lake joins a short list of other North American cities clamoring for a pro baseball team, along with Nashville, Charlotte and Portland, plus a rough second tier of Montreal, Vancouver and Louisville. (Las Vegas has long been at the head of the list, but appears poised to be the new home of the As, who will likely leave Oakland in the next few years.)

Jaffe's research shows that the Salt Lake City area compares favorably with those cities, whether you look at regional population or TV markets. Also, we're the fastest growing of the bunch, along with Nashville. He says with the Miller family's involvement, Salt Lake's bid has the wealthiest and most experienced ownership group of the bunch. That may matter most to the billionaires that own MLB teams, who will make expansion decisions.

So, yes, there's room for optimism for Salt Lake baseball fans. But before you oil that mitt to catch a foul ball and practice the lyrics to "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," let's ask a few critical questions.

The Home Team

Larry Miller's wife, Gail, is a philanthropist celebrated for her commitment to health care, education and homelessness. A decade after her husband, Larry, passed away in 2009, she sold the family's biggest assets—its car dealerships and the Utah Jazz franchise.

That made Gail Miller the richest person in Utah, reportedly worth more than $4 billion. That's more than enough money to own a Major League Baseball expansion team.

But let's be blunt for a moment: Gail Miller will turn 80 this year, and no one lives forever. When Gail Miller steps away from direct involvement in the Larry Miller Co., will it continue to want to invest billions into Major League Baseball? Will it maintain its strong political connections? Three of Miller's sons—Steve, Greg and Brilliant—are currently on the company's board of directors. Close observers of the Jazz may recall that after Larry Miller died, Steve and Greg Miller assumed prominent leadership roles in the family company. But then, in 2015, both resigned citing personal reasons, with Gail Miller reasserting her control.

The Larry Miller Co. is likely to be a force in Utah for decades to come. But if Gail Miller is no longer the face of Big League Utah, will the bid lose some of its juice?

Proponents of the bid are confident that Utah will open its arms to a pro baseball team. They point to the relative success of the Salt Lake Bees, which drew just under 5,800 fans per game last year, according to the website The Baseball Cube. That ranked 18th out of 120 teams in minor league baseball, putting Salt Lake behind the minor league teams in Nashville, Charlotte and Las Vegas, but ahead of Portland.

Jaffe said an MLB team should draw at least 2 million fans per year, an average of roughly 25,000 for each of 81 home games between April and September. Given that the Jazz draw 18,000 fans per game for more expensive tickets, maybe Utah would hit that target easily. However, the average baseball fan is older than those of other sports, and Salt Lake is one of the youngest cities in America.

But that may not matter: The real money in sports comes from TV, and Utah is a fast-growing media market adding tens of thousands of eyeballs every year. Even if we're lukewarm to baseball, that may not affect the economics of the team very much.

"It is more of a basketball and football area," observed Jaffe. "But I'm not sure how much that matters."

It raises the prospect of a Salt Lake team that earns plenty of money—like nearly all pro sports teams seem to—but that routinely plays in front of half-empty stadiums, especially during summer's scorching heat.

Throwing a Heater

Should Salt Lake fight to land a team? One reason national observers are optimistic about Salt Lake City's proposal is that a diverse array of elected officials—from Gov. Spencer Cox to Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall to legislative, city council and neighborhood leaders—expressed initial support when Big League Utah made its announcement. That support also came despite the fact that no one has said how much it might cost and, more importantly, who will pay for it.

Cox has been cagey on the topic. He told The Salt Lake Tribune that he is "not a big believer in subsidizing billionaires with taxpayers' dollars to build stadiums." But he went on to say that "there are things we can do to help alleviate that burden."

Folks, hold on to your wallets. Economists disagree about plenty, but here's an area of consensus: Sports stadiums are a terrible investment of public money. "The universal finding is that there is a very limited economic case for building a stadium," said J.C. Bradbury, an economist at Kennesaw State University who studies the issue.

Those "things" that Cox mentions will cost many, many millions in direct or indirect aid. The governor mentioned "tax increment financing" and infrastructure costs as potential areas of public support and those, Bradbury said, are subsidies—which Cox allegedly opposes.

"One of the strategic elements of a stadium campaign is to engage in fiscal illusion," Bradbury said, "to hide the public funding."

For example, there's the tax increment scheme: It would collect sales taxes from a special district around the ballpark to pay back the state or city for stadium financing.

But here's the problem: Money spent in the stadium district isn't new money. The research suggests that the dollars a family spends on the ballpark would likely have been spent elsewhere, locally, on restaurants, movies and other entertainment options.

"People don't just have money buried in a coffee can in their yard waiting for a MLB team to come to town," Bradbury pointed out.

The elected officials who expressed early support for Big League Utah said they hoped a stadium would spur new west side development, like a wave of housing and retail development in and around the Power District. However, Bradbury said, there's no evidence that strategy works, either.

"Stadiums are quite poor development anchors," Bradbury said. A few bars and restaurants might benefit from pre-game crowds, but by and large, people who come to the game spend their money inside the stadium.

These drawbacks aren't theoretical for Bradbury—he has studied them in his own backyard. He points to the experience of Cobb County—near Atlanta, Georgia—where Truist Park (the home of the Braves) was built recently as part of a mixed-use development just like the Power District. It didn't help the county's finances, he said. In fact, his research shows it costs Cobb County $15 million a year.

The reality, he said, is that businesses and residences near stadiums often suffer, because of traffic and parking problems. Big League Utah hopes to mitigate those effects with existing trail and transit access around the stadium site, but private automobiles would certainly be the primary mode of travel for most fans.

"People don't want to live in a neighborhood where they can't have friends over more than 80 nights a year because of traffic problems," he said.