On paper, the Rays are tied to a lease at Tropicana Field until 2027. In reality, there’s much more uncertainty involving the location of a franchise that had the lowest per-game attendance in the majors last year.

St. Petersburg mayor Bill Foster has been adamant about not allowing the team to negotiate possible stadium sites outside the city, most notably in neighboring Tampa and Hillsborough County. Yet principal owner Stuart Sternberg told reporters during in spring training that he’s optimistic that progress can be made on the issue. The mayor said on Opening Day that since meeting with Sternberg in February, their respective staffs have been working together on the matter, as Joe Smith of the Tampa Bay Times notes. Whether that means the Rays could soon be looking at sites in St. Pete, Tampa or elsewhere is unclear. What is clear is that the question of where the Rays will play in the coming years continues to hang over the team like the pesky catwalks on the ceiling of the Trop.

Of course, as with any front office issue, that doesn’t mean anyone in the clubhouse is paying much attention to it.

“I honestly believe we’re beyond that being a distraction for us,” manager Joe Maddon told reporters in spring training when MLBTR asked about the ongoing stadium issue. “I mean, it’s been going on for a while now. We’ve been ridiculed nationally. We’ve been ridiculed locally. We’ve had conversations about it.”

Third baseman Evan Longoria certainly doesn’t seem worried about the team's future in Tampa Bay, if his decision last winter to sign a contract extension through 2023 is any indication. Utility man Sean Rodriguez, one of six players to speak to MLBTR about the stadium issue, believes it's possible teammates or potential free agents may take Longoria's extension as a sign that there's no cause for concern.

“You could definitely think that,” Rodriguez said. “If he’s willing to stay here, it’s obviously because he believes in what’s going on.”

Sternberg said on Opening Day that even if the team started working toward a new stadium immediately, the earliest the club could move in would be five or six years from now. If Longoria’s deal stands to ease the mind of any player considering a long-term deal with the club, the lack of immediacy makes it a non-issue for players operating on shorter timeframes.

“We know we’re going to be playing in Tropicana Field in 2013, and that’s kind of all we’re worried about,” outfielder Sam Fuld said. “Other than a select few, we’ve all bounced around enough to know not to look past the next month, let alone the next year.”

Fuld, like all but five of his teammates, is on a deal that expires at the end of the season. Ben Zobrist is one of the five who figures to be with the Rays at least a little while longer, as his contract includes team options in 2014 and 2015. Zobrist said he’s on board with whatever the organization decides to do about a place to play.

“I’m not worried about that,” he said. “They (Rays officials) make that decision. As players, especially around here, you have to be flexible. If you’re not flexible, then you’re not going to last very long in baseball, because you have to be, to be able to be successful in this profession. Things are changing all the time, and you’re always traveling, and there’s always a new situation. So it’s certainly something that you have to have some thick skin (about), and just learn to enjoy it all.”

Starting pitcher Alex Cobb said he takes a neutral stance about the stadium talks, but concedes that there are ties that would make staying at the Trop appealing to him.

“Obviously, it would be nice to have sold-out crowd every night, which is asking a lot, but I grew up coming to this stadium,” he said. “Living in Vero Beach, I drove over all the time, came to games, and chased autographs around the stadium, so there’s a big nostalgic feeling about this stadium. I live close-by to the stadium now, so it’s a nice, easy drive.”  

The same roof under which Cobb watched his baseball heroes now makes his professional life a little easier.

“I love the stadium,” he said. “I know every time I’m getting the ball that it’s going be 72 (degrees) and no wind. I know the conditions I’m going to get.”

Rays fans might not show up in droves at the ballpark, but many of them show their support in other ways, as Maddon observes amid the specter of a stadium issue that feeds the perception of the team’s lack of appeal.  

“While that’s all going on, the thing that I think gets overlooked, from our perspective, is how much we respect our fans,” Maddon said. “Our fans have been great to us. You walk up and down in the Tampa Bay area, you’re going to see a lot of Rays gear. I live up in Tampa. I see it all over the place, right on Bayshore (Boulevard). People are talking about us. We’re well-watched on television. We’re well-listened-to on radio. So, the thing about the ballpark — of course we want a better ballpark. Of course we do. In the right spot. But it’s not a distraction.”

Rays local television broadcasts drew a 4.89 rating in 2012, up about 28% over 2011 and almost squarely in the middle of local ratings that ranged from a high of 9.13 for the Tigers to a low of 1.02 for the Astros last season. The Rays cite data from the Scarborough Research firm that showed the number of fans who attended one of their games, watched one on TV, or listened on radio was greater than any other team in the Tampa Bay area in 2011, including the NFL’s Buccaneers.

The numbers suggest that the local market isn’t the problem, and that the team’s attendance woes could be solved with a stadium in a better location within the area. Such a move might make Cobb’s commute a little longer, but it would mean less upheaval than if the Rays left Tampa Bay entirely, and perhaps a more certain future for a club looking to build on the success of the past five years.

Much of what general managers do involves negotiation, but a handful of general managers use a strategy involving arbitration-eligible players that brings an early end to the customary give-and-take. As Tim Dierkes of MLBTR detailed in January, five teams take a stance known as “file to go” or “file and trial” with players who are up for arbitration. Four more clubs dabble in the practice of ending negotiations with players and their agents once the MLB-imposed deadline for the two sides to exchange figures arrives. That forces an arbitration hearing, and that's a venue in which Rays executive vice president Andrew Friedman, a file-to-go proponent, has never lost.

Friedman is 5-0 in arbitration, and he won his first case, against catcher Josh Paul in 2006, just months after taking over Tampa Bay’s front office. It seems as though Friedman, with such a sterling record in the courtroom and with the successful turnaround of the small-market Rays on his resume, would relish every chance he gets to outfox his competitors. Yet he told MLBTR that part of the rationale for file to go is to curb the subtle maneuvering that takes place on both sides.

“There are a lot of reasons behind the policy, but the aspect that is most beneficial is that it keeps the discussions leading up to the deadline reasonable and grounded in the overarching point of the process,” he said. “At its heart, the process is meant to pay players fairly for what they’ve accomplished. No more, no less. When both sides are held to numbers that they’ve been artificially forced to swap, it adds a level of gamesmanship to the process that distracts from the real purpose of the whole exercise. Our goal is always to get to a fair settlement that rewards the player for what he’s done. Adding this extra layer only complicates that.”

Blue Jays GM Alex Anthopoulos told Jordan Bastian of MLB.com that one of the reasons he uses the strategy is to speed up negotiations in an effort to strike a deal before the deadline. It’s unclear whether file to go had a significant effect on the lack of arbitration hearings this year, but the policy hasn’t prevented the Rays from going to trial more often than any other American League team in the time since Friedman’s been in charge.

The Rays came close to going to an even greater number of hearings. They avoided arbitration with three out of four eligible players right before the deadline to exchange figures in 2010. That year, players union executive director Michael Weiner disputed Friedman’s theory that the union put pressure on agents of players negotiating with file-to-go teams.

“With respect to the file-to-go strategy, or the file-and-trial strategy, the union has long believed, and has expressed to the commissioner’s office, that that strategy stands the purpose of salary arbitration on its head,” Weiner told Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times. “Years ago, many clubs took the view that it didn’t make sense to talk until after we exchanged numbers, and to say that we won’t talk if you exchange numbers in our view is not consistent with the way the system was designed to operate. But clubs are entitled to negotiate as they see fit.’’

Friedman told Topkin that, with two more teams adopting file to go in 2010, he thought the union wanted to stop the strategy from becoming more widely used. When Friedman spoke to MLBTR recently, he was quick to dispute the idea that file to go continues to grow across baseball, pointing out that a sizable majority of teams aren’t in the file-to-go camp.

Friedman and the Rays have had 15 potential arbitration cases come up in the last three years, but as our arbitration trackers show, they went to trial with only one of them, against Hendricks Sports client Jeff Niemann in 2012. Niemann was once more eligible for arbitration this past winter, but the two sides avoided a hearing and settled on a one-year, $3MM deal. That was a raise on Niemann's $2.75MM salary from last year, but still not as much as the $3.2MM he asked for going into his hearing in 2012.

Had Niemann gone to trial a second time, he could have followed a path similar to Paul, a Dick Moss client who lost in arbitration to the Rays in back-to-back seasons. When Paul hit free agency the following winter, he didn’t appear to hold a grudge and re-signed with Tampa Bay. Niemann didn’t address his arbitration when he spoke to MLBTR this spring, but he praised the Rays for their ability to develop a deep store of talent and gave no indication of any hard feelings. That’s just the sort of attitude Friedman hopes to foster with file to go.

“Simply put, we think that our policy gives both sides the best chance of getting to a number that each of them can feel good about,” Friedman said. “In essence, it adds a level of rationality to a process that, on occasion, can get emotional. It helps keep us grounded.”