- Jun 23, 2020
- 5,782
- 8,346
The Bay Area is the fifth largest metropolitan area in the United States (New York, Los Angeles, Washington-Baltimore, and Chicago are 1-4) by Combined Statistical Area. That also excludes the adjacent Sacramento CSA.But if you look at the stats, Bay Area only ranks 13th in metro population so it technically doesn’t make sense to have two teams in the same sport.
While Chicago can probably draw from the adjacent Milwaukee CSA (depending on the sport - not as applicable for baseball as, say, for hockey), #6 Dallas doesn't really have any adjacent CSAs - yes, there is population outside their CSA that is drawn from, but that's true of every CSA (for example, the Bay Area CSA not only doesn't include Sacramento, but also doesn't include the Fresno CSA, Monterey County, or Northern CA).
Metropolitan statistical areas aren't good tools for this analysis, because they're built around a single urban core, and the Bay Area has multiple significant urban cores.