As the Rays assess the damage to Tropicana Field following Hurricane Milton last week, the club’s ability to get the Trop back in working order in time for Opening Day 2025 has been thrown into serious doubt. Given that the club was already planning to relocate to a new ballpark nearby in in time for Opening Day 2028, questions linger about whether or not the Rays will look to return to their current stadium at all or instead look for an interim home while their newest ballpark is being constructed.
While it will likely be a few weeks before the Rays are able to fully assess the damage to the Trop and hash out a plan of action, Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times notes that they’re expected to at least begin the 2025 season playing their home games elsewhere. That reality has led to a rash of speculation about where those home games may end up being played, with Topkin noting a push by local media in North Carolina to put the city of Durham, where the club’s Triple-A affiliate plays. Said coverage of a hypothetical temporary move to the area by the Rays includes a piece by Dallas Woodhouse of the Carolina Journal about the possibility that includes comments from a handful of local politicians supporting the possibility.
Whatever hopes North Carolina residents had of MLB games being played in Durham appear to have been dashed for the time being, however, as the Durham Bulls released a statement this afternoon emphasizing that not only have there been no discussions about the Bulls hosting the Rays in Durham, but that the Bulls “do not anticipate” hosting them for the full 2025 season due to “overlapping scheduled and other logistical challenges.” That statement seemingly rules out the possibility of the Rays playing a full slate of 81 home games in Durham next year, though the Bulls statement also notes that they are “always ready to help [their] parent club” and does seemingly leave the door open for the Rays playing part of the season in Durham if necessary.
That could be a useful option for Rays brass if they intend to fix the Trop up in time for the club to play games there later in the 2025 season, or if the club takes another route to filling out its regular season calendar such as sharing time with other minor league clubs or even one of the more extreme possible solutions floated by Topkin such as sharing loanDepot Park with the Marlins. Any of those options would likely come with some scheduling conflicts not unlike the ones that would face the Rays and Bulls in Durham, and a speculative solution to that dilemma could be spreading the Rays’ 2025 home games across multiple sites.
In other stadium news, a recent report from Betsy Helfand of the St. Paul Pioneer Press noted that the Twins are only halfway through their 30-year lease at Target Field in Minneapolis. While that wouldn’t be especially noteworthy in most circumstances, the Pohlad family’s recent announcement that they intend to explore selling the franchise has prompted concern among Twins fans that prospective buyers may look to move the club out of Minnesota. If a buyer planned to do that, however, they’d have to wait quite some time in order to do so as the Twins’ lease stipulates that “shall not vacate or abandon the ballpark at any time” during the lease’s term.
In other words, any prospective buyer of the Twins would likely have to wait more than a decade before they could seriously consider relocation, a reality that could lead any potentially interested parties who hope to purchase and subsequently relocate a team to seek out other options that could lead them to their intended destination faster. That’s surely a relief for Twins fans who have in previous decades endured relocation and contraction attempts while the Pohlad family has owned the club.
This is how they’re going get that split of games with Montreal they were looking into a few years ago.
gbs – If The Big O is ready by then, I think the Rays definitely need to play at least a third of their games in a large stadium such as Montreal.
I know many people here look at the Rays relatively low average attendance, but what they don’t realize is how much revenue would be lost when the visiting team is a popular one (keeping in mind dynamic pricing means they make a LOT more money playing against certain teams).
Looking at their schedule, the Rays have these high-demand home games:
Home Opener – 1
Braves – 3
Red Sox – 6
Yankees – 6
Phillies – 3
Astros – 3
Dodgers – 3
Cardinals usual draw well on the road too, although they are projected to not be very good next season.
But yeah, the Rays would lose an insane amount of revenue if they play in a ST/Minor League facility against teams like the Yankees, Dodgers, Braves and Phillies.
Move to Wide World of Sports in Orlando!!! All of the options mentioned didn’t have a roof, were further away, and minor league stadiums. Disney is closer, is Major League caliber (Atlanta played there in the spring), local fans could make it to games, plus you would have tourists. Why is nobody talking about Disney or making a serious pitch for it?
Karen – For two reasons. One, the weather conditions during the summer (especially July thru September) would not be conducive to MLB games being played there. Two, it’s already heavily booked for most of 2025.
I do think the Rays will end up playing in Florida for at least the first two months, and I agree with Nick that having multiple home sites for 2025 is probably the most logical approach.
Heck, let them play in Dunkin Donuts Park during September. The Goats play their last home game on September 7th.
Fever- Look at an article on Mass live in today’s paper. Several of the sportswriters rate all 30 parks. 2 of them have the dumpsterdome next to last, 1.. Think was mcadam rated it like 20th, which was shockingly high to me.
Why waste any $$ repairing the thing regardless. Often times they draw 10k or less anyway, play in a ST facility and deal with the rain by starting games early.
John – The city is going to get the insurance money whether the roof is repaired or not. Question is how much will they get and how much will the Rays lose in revenue if they play elsewhere. There’s no luxury boxes in ST parks, no $500 Dex Club seats, nobody will pay over $100 to sit in an uncomfortable minor league park. I’ve been to the Trop many times during the summer, no way i’d have attended in a minor league stadium. If the revenue loss is significant, I think the roof needs to be replaced. The Rays are the tenants, it’s their call.
The Rays don’t even know yet what their insurance covers, yet you know it’s covered whether it gets fixed or not? How?
It is very possible that the plan is written that payout won’t be issued if they don’t rebuild. There’s entire book-length sections on whether or not you can make improvements while rebuilding. We won’t know any of this until the Rays release that info.
Karen, moving to Orlando is a Mickey Mouse solution. It’s Goofy. Until they get an owner that isn’t a Scrooge McDuck, they might as well play on Pluto.
The alternate bookings at Disney is a leading reason why Braves Spring Training moved out of Disney. Disney hosts a ton of colleges, youth groups, weekly cheer/dance competitions, etc.
Where would the Twins move that’s better and bigger than Minneapolis? Charlotte is smaller and Nashville is way smaller. Oakland? Montreal? Doesn’t make sense.
niched – What doesn’t make sense is building an open air stadium in Minneapolis.
Huh? The Twins haven’t had any more trouble with rainouts than any other teams. Weather is Minneapolis during the baseball season is generally good, better than many other Midwest MLB cities.
Foss – Check out the Twins attendance in March/April & May each year.
It’s not the rain there, it’s the snow and extremely cold temperatures that are hurting ticket revenue.
Nonsense. Anybody who has lived in Minnesota can tell you May is the best month of the year for weather, by far. September also can be great but May is consistently the best. April can be a little chilly sometimes, but nothing that bothers the locals. In the last 20 years, April has been very warm usually. With climate change spring has been starting even in early March in Minnesota lately. What you’re seeing in those numbers is the impact of school not being out yet. Twins attendance relies heavily on families. Once school gets out right before Memorial Day weekend, attendance shoots right up in a big way every year.
Foss – In April of this year, 2 games were postponed due to weather.
And here’s some of the attendance figures for games that were not impacted by school:
Friday Night April 19 – 13,849
Saturday April 20 – 20,064
Sunday April 21 – 17,757
I think you’re a bit in denial.
Ha, I guess you must not have kids. Friday nights during the school year are a hard no of course. You think we’re going to take them to a ball game when they were up at 5:30 in the morning? Sunday day games are tough with a lot of activities too. Saturday is really the only option until school gets out. So for your cold Saturday in April, 20,000 fans is only 4,000 fewer than what the Twins averaged per game for the whole year. So yeah, on a cold night in April likely you do lose 4,000 butts in seats. That’s no big deal for those couple of games a year where it’s cold. Compare that to the far more serious decline in attendance you see for teams in the south during the summer heat. They’re all figuring out you need a dome now. Look at what Texas did or Miami. You should be far more concerned about a team like Atlanta still trying to play outdoors in that incredibly wet and oppressive climate during the summer than a team like the Twins having a slight dip in their gate for a couple of chilly days in April.
San Antonio Texas could be a great Market. 1.5 million people. Spurs fans an insanely loyal, would be a great baseball town.
So… About one third as many people as the Twin Cities market basically? Plus, a much less affluent area with less disposable income. Plus far more big corporations in MSP for sponsorship and luxury boxes. Try again maybe?
Plus the Astros and Rangers would most likely fight another team moving to Texas.
Make it an open air stadium cut all the girders that get in the way of the balls. If it is open air it might be a nicer place to go.
No drainage on the field
proton – You attend a game there in August like that when it’s 100% humidity with severe lightning, torrential downpours, tropical storms and a flooded field and dugouts because of the lack of drainage. .
Let us know how it is.
Fever. Damn, you just snuffed out my retirement plans for Tampa.
let – Go to the Space Coast instead. Much less traffic, more affordable cost of living, fewer weather events, and within a 3-hour drive of both the Rays and Marlins.
Guys I was attempting to be funny. Guess it was hard to tell. I wrote a longer post but then shortened it a lot. The longer post would have been seen as a joke.
I have been to Florida 1 times. Played football in West Palm Beach. It was 80* with 80% humidity at game time. Which was 8 pm. Played an hour later for the heat. When we got to the locker room they did not have our AC on and it was stifling inside.
I was the center and had to play DE after a guy got hurt because they only brought starters to save on air fare. That was just into the 2nd Q. About halfway through the 3rd I noticed I was no longer sweating. They tried to get as much fluid in me as possible during dead balls. I only left the field for kick offs. That is my only chance playing in the lovely weather there. It was no fun. Played in St Louis too. Was not as bad.
@proton
Depends when you played in St. Louis because by mid June it can get pretty brutal until September.
Loandepot park would work, can the big o host games right now? Can hard rock stadium too? Can Raymond James turn into a baseball stadium at all?
sad – 1) Not for 49 overlapping Marlins/Rays games.
2) No it’s not ready yet
3) Not July thru September
4) Not possible
You wanna dance with Broseidon?
Get ur thinking of coastal damage, but mangroves were only ever in a small part of the state and been gone for what am thinking.. A century or more mostly. What has/should be mentioned by so called climate nuts is the fact that most swampy land, like areas surrounding the massive Green swamp, which is 1k’s of acres encompassing central Florida, was drained/built up and homes placed on it, starting in the late 1960’s. Areas where MANY of us natives to the state used to camp, hunt etc and now is nothing but man made cities, like Poinciana, which was nearly all underwater just 50y ago.
Mangroves are an easy point to for what has been destroyed by population boom in Florida, but for us that have been here since the 50’s? It’s far more than that and seeing it with our own eyes over time while some cry about these more trivial things makes it in lots of ways worse.
Had a feeling that was coming TS.. Go back to how FL was ran, well into the 90’s.. A Blue bastion.. Now can tell u I never, ever was and can remember times when went to primaries time for so called local elections? I myself “might* have gotten some agenda item and often, nothing primary wise.. Due to this being such a deep blue state for decades.. people learn and the state changed over time, so ur actually posting something u really didn’t intend to..
Also, people have been flocking to the state for decades, but last qtr century it’s been more the permanent resident, 60’s-80’s it was what we termed “snowbirds”, or retirees who were here several months, then went home and they lived in these huge, what we called mobile home community’s mostly, but those mostly gone now.
Hey a boomer who denies climate change and blames all the world’s problems on liberals, what a shock.
And maybe it’s time for those people to stop asking for government handouts and rebuild the area themselves.
Funny how we’re the “United” States after a hurricane but the second the money gets deposited they’re back to ripping into blue states.
No one would live there if handouts weren’t given every time a terrible disaster happened. It’s down to an attractive state tax policy which is enabled by Fed disaster subsidies that make it possible for it be a bastion for hellions. Take away reasons for the diaspora with responsible home state policy, and you’d have de-fanged Florida.
Oakland Rays
now THIS, is a great idea
Why on Earth would someone want to buy the Twins and move them out of Minneapolis?
For one, there is no monetary reason to do so. The only market close to their size that doesn’t already have a team is Orlando, but given how poorly the Rays and Marlins consistently do in Tampa and Miami, I don’t see any concrete reason to believe the Twins would be poised to do any better in Orlando than they’re doing in Minnesota. Then you look at other cities that get thrown around – Nashville, Charlotte, Salt Lake City, maybe Indy – they’re all very fine cities and nothing wrong with them, but are still a good deal smaller than their current market. They’d have to generate an unheard of amount of interest for a new team to be able to make that more lucrative than where they’re at.
Then you’ve got the stadium….there’s nothing at all to complain about or leave you wanting. Target Field is an absolute GEM of a modern, downtown ballpark. It’s not like they’re stuck in some decrepit old dump they need to flee from, like – oh look at that, one of the teams already in Florida.
Really don’t know where any of this thinking would come from other than plain old insecurity.
Could just be a space filler for the Pioneer Press. Can’t blame them for any paranoia though. They lost a hockey team to Dallas. Heard rumors of the basketball team being sold to Bob Arum who would in turn move them to New Orleans. Had the baseball team owner offer up the team for contraction. Oh, and lived through the Red McCombs years with the football squad being associated with a possible move to San Antonio. I can understand some of that insecurity.
Fair point. Though I think each of those situations also had other underlying factors to them that made the noise so loud but don’t necessarily apply to the Twins right now.
The North Stars, Twins, and Vikings were all stuck in decrepit stadiums nobody wanted to go to as a player or fan, but they had no success in working out a deal for any replacement buildings. The owner of the Stars was also facing legal troubles and his wife reportedly threatening to leave him if he didn’t move the team. McCombs did try to go back to Texas and take the Vikings with him, but not before initially saving them from getting relocated to LA and revitalizing fan interest in a team that was getting buried by NFL’s local blackout rules. The Twins in the Metrodome were also in a financial pinch because they got zero revenue as a tenant. They weren’t getting any money from the suites, parking, or advertising and it was crushing them. If you’re conspiratorial-minded you could also argue Selig had a conflict of interest due to his ties to the Brewers, who stood to gain a lot from Minnesota potentially getting swallowed up by their market territory.
The Twins have none of those problems anymore and when they are actually trying and playing well, they are usually right in line with where they should be attendance-wise, in the middle of the pack. Yeah some years are low turnout like this one, but there was a lot of fan frustration because of the RSN nonsense and the FO refused to spend money to help a roster that should have made the playoffs but needed more established pitching to get there. MN summers are too short to waste on a baseball team that isn’t trying, so yeah, if Old Man Pohlad is going to tighten the purse strings and mail it in then Minnesotans are going to say to hell with it and tune out & go to their cabins.. The team does have a big enough fanbase, but the effort is a two way street and it’s been the team that hasn’t been living up to their end of the deal much more than anything you can blame their fans for.
The Wolves are a whole different thing. For the vast majority of their existence they’ve never given anyone a reason to care about them, outside a few rare exceptions. But these last few years with Edwards’ rise to stardom they have shown Minneapolis is not just a hockey town – this city can and will support an NBA team, if given something to support. That should put an end to relocation talk for the Wolves
I could swear I remember reading something about the Vikings moving to Alabama once? Late 90s? Then it came up again when the dome collapsed but I think that was more a joke.
I caught a Twins game at Target Field (2019). I liked it. Stupid to be discussing already leaving it.
I don’t recall or know anything about Alabama, but I know there was a close call where Red McCombs almost took them to Texas before he sold them to the Wilfs. And before he bought them they almost got moved to LA. The Minneapolis/St. Paul sports writers are just cynical beyond the point of sanity.
I looked up the Vikings and Birmingham, Alabama. The Vikings considered moving to there, Los Angeles, Phoenix or New York in 1979 if they didn’t get a domed stadium. Then in 1998 Birmingham thought about upgrading their stadium in an attempt to lure the Vikings, but didn’t spend the money.
Moving the Twins would be foolish. Tying the success of a franchise to TV revenue lacks intelligence or foresight.
And they continue to funnel taxpayer money to billionaires right out in the open. Wake up.
I hear Oakland has a stadium that is available
I would like to see ML:B stop holding cities ransom for public funds. Just pick the top 2 bids from cities like Nashville, Portland, Salt Lake, Charlotte, Sacramento, etc. Manfred has been saying $2.2 billion as a potential expansion team price. I think they could do better but lets say they do two teams at 4.4 billion in total. That would make each team’s share around $145 million, then they could turn around add 2 more teams a few years after that. So the Rays could afford a new roof.
The idea of the Twins moving is ridiculous even without the lease. They have a sparkling ballpark, one of the top five in the sport. Also, the Twin Cities are much larger and more affluent than any of the potential expansion markets, the Twins are middle class in MLB, not even one of the small market teams at all really. Plenty of other teams like Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Kansas City and so on would be on the move long before the Twins.
two teams playing in minor league facilities till 2028
They didn’t have building insurance? Lmao
They do. That doesn’t solve any of the problems listed.
They do, but the problem is that the repair work won’t be done soon enough even if they start now. Insurance payouts take forever, and you know the City of St. Petersburg won’t pay for the whole thing up front.
Trop wasn’t built up to code for cat
3 hurricane only cat 1. Time for glass cat 5 roof panels.
I can definetly see the Rays play in Sanjuan Puerto Rico, every time MLB goes to P.R its a major BOOM”
There are 2 former MLB Stadiums that are only about 25-30 years old. One in Atlanta and one in Arlington. Why not use one of those? It’s not like the Rays are going to pull a bunch of fans away from Braves or Rangers games
You’re right about not pulling fans from the Braves or Rangers, but then what’s the point of finding a major league stadium? Will 20,000 Rays fans travel to Atlanta or Arlington to watch the Rays?
20,000 Rays fans don’t travel to St. Petersburg to watch the Rays.
I’m not sure what’s going on at Turner Field these days, but I’m pretty sure Globe Life Park was reconfigured for other sports.
They Rays should play at George M. Steinbrenner Field until their new stadium is ready. They could make a deal with the Yankees where the Rays pay to build luxury boxes and expand seating to around 18,000. At least they’ll be playing where their fans are located.
Let’s just agree that out of all of the possibilities, MLB will choose the worst one.
They could play say 40 games
at Rickwood Field
101 12th St W, Birmingham, AL 35204
Home of the Birmingham Barons Negro League stadium
(Willie Mays, Satchel Paige (played there) + others)
Some temporary lighting and seating would have to be added.
AND 122 games at
Montreal Canada -O’ Canada! – Make It So! Engage!
They could play say 40 games at Rickwood Field…AND 122 games at
=================
That would be a nice way to honor the heritae of the Negro Leagues, but you only have 81 home games.
Lol
Honestly like the idea of moving them to Oakland or even Montreal! That would be a good solution!