It's my belief that MLB will expand by 2 teams between the end of the 2021 season and the beginning of 2022, brought on as a bargaining point of the next CBA. I think this because veterans who reach FA, unless they are very top tier players, are no longer getting paid. Teams have adopted a policy of going with the young, cheap guys instead of paying bigger money to average veteran players.

That will have to be fixed or we will see a work stoppage. The easiest way to fix it is to add a couple of ML teams creating more veteran opportunity. My guess of locations would be Charlotte and Las Vegas right now, maybe Nashville, maybe Montreal. It doesn't really matter there will be two.

When that happens, there will be an expansion draft. Teams with a big bench of young players, especially those near ML ready are likely to get hurt the worst. It appears to me that the Braves may be just on the outside of that risk due to the timing of the ongoing rebuild and the apparent outlook of current minor league talent (if the talent currently in the minors hasn't graduated to the majors by the end of 2021 then it probably is no loss anyway). However, I think AA or whoever, needs to have a plan to protect as much ML young talent as possible and convert other young, close talent to bottom of the minors talent OR more expensive ML talent in order to protect the value currently built.

I could see teams currently further away in their rebuild or just entering a rebuild as being most vulnerable to talent loss unless MLB comes up with some kind of tiered expansion draft based on record and market.