- MLBPA head Tony Clark told reporters (including The Athletic’s Evan Drellich and USA Today’s Bob Nightengale) that he and the union haven’t yet heard from the league about any plans for the Rays’ playing future, as Tropicana Field was heavily damaged by Hurricane Milton. Assessment of that damage is still taking place, but since the Rays will surely have to spend at least the start of the 2025 season in a new home ballpark, plenty of options have already been floated as interim locales. As Clark noted, the players’ union “do not have a hand in the facility. We don’t have a hand in the move. We have a hand in what’s called effects bargaining: How are players affected by the league’s decision? At the end of the day, if the decision puts players in harm’s way, it depends on what harm’s way means.” This would mean making sure everything involved in a new ballpark is up to Major League standards, as several minor league stadiums and Spring Training facilities are under consideration for the Rays.
Rays Rumors
MLBTR Podcast: The World Series, The White Sox Reportedly For Sale, And Tropicana Field
The latest episode of the MLB Trade Rumors Podcast is now live on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts! Make sure you subscribe as well! You can also use the player at this link to listen, if you don’t use Spotify or Apple for podcasts.
This week, host Darragh McDonald is joined by Steve Adams of MLB Trade Rumors to discuss…
- The upcoming World Series (0:30)
- White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf reportedly talking about selling the team (4:35)
- The hurricane damage to Tropicana Field and the complicated situation the Rays are in (18:10)
Plus, we answer your questions, including…
- Should the Guardians trade Josh Naylor and what would the return look like? (27:05)
- What would a Masyn Winn or Alec Burleson extension look like? Could the Cardinals still hammer out a deal even with the current budget constraints? (35:00)
- What do you think the Red Sox will do this winter? (42:05)
Check out our past episodes!
- Changes In Minnesota, Cubs’ Prospect Depth, And Possibilities For The O’s – listen here
- Previewing FA Starting Pitchers, TV Deals, And Potential Spending Teams – listen here
- Buster Posey Takes Over In SF And The Cardinals’ Succession Plan – listen here
The podcast intro and outro song “So Long” is provided courtesy of the band Showoff. Check out their Facebook page here!
Manfred: League Prefers To See Rays Remain In Tampa Area
- In other stadium news, the Rays’ immediate landing spot isn’t yet clear as the club continues to assess how badly Tropicana Field was damaged by Hurricane Milton. Amidst speculation that the Rays could at least open the 2025 season in any number of different cities, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred made it clear in an interview on the Varsity podcast that the league’s preference is to keep the Rays in the Tampa/St. Pete area. “The easiest thing is always to stay in the market where the clubs are anchored, if we can manage it,” Manfred said, in terms of Tropicana Field, “we’re hopeful…the repairs can be done in a way that allows them to resume playing.” That said, Manfred is aware of the “complication” of how the city could balk at a large repair bill for a stadium that will soon be abandoned entirely, as the Rays’ new ballpark is slated to be ready for Opening Day 2028. (Hat tip to Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times.)
Rays Re-Sign Michael Flynn To Minor League Deal
The Rays have re-signed right-hander Michael Flynn to a minor league deal, reports MLBTR’s Steve Adams on X. The righty, who is represented by Dynamic Sports Group, receives a spring training invite and will make a salary of $900K in the majors next year if he gets there.
Flynn, 28, has yet to make his major league debut but was recently part of a deadline deal. He joined the Rays a few months ago, coming over in the trade that sent infielder/outfielder Amed Rosario to the Dodgers.
Prior to the 2024 season, Flynn had spent time in the minors with the Pirates and Mariners but had allowed 7.05 earned runs per nine innings in his 97 frames. That was surely a misleading ERA, as he had solid strikeout and walk rates of 25.3% and 8.4% in that time. His 4.36 FIP for that stretch perhaps better represents his work, with his unfortunate .364 BABIP and 55.3% strand rate pushing extra runs across the plate.
He reached free agency after 2023 and signed a minors deal with the Dodgers. He went on to throw 42 1/3 innings in that organization, between Double-A and Triple-A, with a 4.25 ERA. He struck out 33.1% of batters faced with a 9% walk rate.
That strikeout rate surely intrigued the Rays and motivated them to take a flier on Flynn in the Rosario deal. Unfortunately, Flynn spent time on the injured list after the trade and was only able to make six appearances in the Rays’ system. But they apparently liked what they saw enough to bring him back for another look in spring training next year.
The Rays opened up their bullpen a bit last summer, sending out relievers Phil Maton, Jason Adam and Shawn Armstrong as part of their sell-off. Pete Fairbanks is a speculative trade candidate for this offseason now that his deal has just one more guaranteed year and a club option. In general, the Rays are one of the clubs most willing to rotate arms through the roster, which could give Flynn a chance to crack the big leagues.
Offseason Outlook: Tampa Bay Rays
Despite significant injuries on the pitching front, the Rays spent much of the season's first half in or on the periphery of the Wild Card chase. The front office took advantage of a seller's market at the deadline even though the club was hovering around .500, bolstering the farm, reducing payroll and setting the stage for what could be a quick turnaround.
Guaranteed Contracts
- Jeffrey Springs, LHP: $21.75MM through 2026 (includes $750K buyout of $15MM club option for 2027)
- Yandy Diaz, 1B: $10MM through 2025 (contract contains $12MM club option for 2026, with no buyout)
- Pete Fairbanks, RHP: $4.667MM through 2025 (includes $1MM buyout of $7MM club option for 2026)
- Shane McClanahan, LHP: $3.6MM through 2026 (McClanahan is arb-eligible for two more years thereafter)
2025 financial commitment: $27.766MM
Total long-term financial commitments: $40MM
Other Financial Obligations
- Wander Franco owed $172MM through 2032; Rays unlikely to pay remainder of contract due to abhorrent allegations against Franco and subsequent legal proceedings in Dominican Republic
- $2MM to Twins for buyout of Manuel Margot's 2025 club option
Option Decisions
- Brandon Lowe, 2B/OF: $10.5MM club option with $1MM buyout (contract also contains $11.5MM club option for 2026 with $500K buyout)
Arbitration-Eligible Players (service time in parentheses; projected salaries via MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz)
- Colin Poche (5.114): $3.4MM
- Zack Littell (5.043): $4.8MM
- Tyler Alexander (5.011): $2.8MM
- Drew Rasmussen (4.111): $2MM
- Dylan Carlson (4.104): $2.7MM
- Cole Sulser (4.031): $1MM
- Taylor Walls (3.092): $1.3MM
- Garrett Cleavinger (3.060): $1.4MM
- Ben Rortvedt (3.043): $1.1MM
- Jose Siri (3.015): $2.3MM
- Richard Lovelady (3.008): $900K
- Shane Baz (2.158): $1.9MM
- Non-tender candidates: Poche, Alexander, Carlson, Sulser, Walls, Lovelady
Free Agents
- None
As we began this year's Offseason Outlook series, the top focus for the Rays was understandably on the team's roster and reshaping an offense that lacked balance, struggled against righties and was far too whiff-prone. While the series was being written, however, a far broader-reaching issue arose. The awful damage stemming from Hurricane Milton and Hurricane Helene has wrought incalculable, heartbreaking levels of damage on the country's southeast region. The big-picture focus, of course, is on helping those impacted and rebuilding those ravaged communities. In the grand scheme of things, the logistical challenges a natural disaster of this magnitude presents to a baseball team are trivial, at best.
Nonetheless, for the Rays themselves, Hurricane Milton created an unexpected and undeniable challenge the team will have to address. The roof of Tropicana Field was shredded, exposing a stadium interior that does not have a drainage system. It's not yet clear when the facility could return to a serviceable state, but the Rays aren't likely to have their home field available to them to begin the 2025 season. They'll spend as much time and energy this offseason determining where they'll play their home games as they will augmenting their roster. We at MLBTR extend our deepest and most heartfelt condolences to all affected by the tragedy in the southeast.
Turning to the baseball operations side of the offseason, the Rays have a clear picture of what went wrong. Tampa Bay entered the 2024 campaign with an injury-ravaged rotation. Starters Shane McClanahan (Tommy John surgery), Drew Rasmussen (flexor tendon surgery) and Jeffrey Springs (Tommy John surgery) were set to miss some or all of the 2024 season while recovering from surgery. Former top pitching prospect Shane Baz was finishing off recovery from his own Tommy John procedure, performed late in the 2022 season.
Unlock Subscriber-Exclusive Articles Like This One With a Trade Rumors Front Office Subscription
BENEFITS
- Access weekly subscriber-only articles by Tim Dierkes, Steve Adams, and Anthony Franco.
- Join exclusive weekly live chats with Anthony.
- Remove ads and support our writers.
- Access GM-caliber tools like our MLB Contract Tracker
Red Sox Hire Taylor Smith From Rays For Possible AGM Role
The Red Sox are nearing a deal to hire Taylor Smith for an unspecified analytics-based role in the club’s front office, according to MassLive.com’s Sean McAdam and Chris Cotillo. Smith could be joining the ranks as an assistant general manager, which would presumably also come with some type of VP title like Boston’s other four assistant GMs under chief baseball officer Craig Breslow.
Smith had been working with the Rays as Tampa Bay’s director of predictive modeling. He has been with the organization since graduating from the University of Georgia in 2018, and Smith was initially hired as an analyst in Tampa’s research and development team. He’ll now head to a larger role in Boston, becoming the latest in a seemingly endless line of Rays staffers hired by other teams to try and learn from Tampa Bay’s consistent success in player development.
As McAdam wrote in another piece earlier this week, assistant GM Mike Groopman had been considered the “de facto overseer” of Boston’s analytics operations, but Groopman was being shifted into another role “with more of a focus on player acquisition.” It would seem that Smith will now be filling the gap left behind by Groopman’s role change, and it remains to be seen some more shuffling could be on the way.
Paul Toboni, another assistant GM, has been rumored to be the top in-house name to become Breslow’s official top lieutenant as Boston’s general manager, so if Toboni is promoted, the Red Sox would still have four AGMs (Smith, Groopman, Raquel Ferreira, Eddie Romero) in place. McAdam suggests that promoting Toboni might also be a way of keeping him within the organization, and away from GM vacancies with the Giants and Mets. There are some links between Toboni and other those jobs, as McAdam writes that Toboni is from the Bay Area, and he previously worked with Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns in the Brewers’ front office.
Details On Tropicana Field's Insurance Policies
- The top Rays story remains the team’s likely need for a new temporary home to begin the 2025 season, as Tropicana Field sustained heavy damage due to Hurricane Milton. John Romano of the Tampa Bay Times shares some details about the insurance policies attached to the stadium, and the possibility that the city of St. Petersburg (which is funding the repairs) might simply decide that repairing the Trop isn’t worth it since the Rays’ new ballpark is set to open in 2028. “We’re going to try to figure out every avenue, both through insurance and otherwise, to try to make sure the Rays have a place to play in St. Petersburg. But we’re going to make sure that it’s a financially responsible decision,” city council member Copley Gerdes said. Romano opines that Orlando might check off the most boxes as the Rays’ interim home, as the team could play at the 9500-seat stadium on the ESPN Wide World Of Sports complex at Walt Disney World.
Montreal’s Olympic Stadium Ruled Out As Possible Temporary Home For Rays
The Rays are uncertain about where they’ll play in 2025 after Hurricane Milton damaged the Tropicana Field roof. One option that will not be under consideration: Montreal. Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times reports that the city’s Olympic Stadium — the former home of the Expos and a speculated possibility for the Rays — is undergoing an $870MM renovation to replace its own roof. The stadium will not be available for three years.
“Until 2028, the field of play will be within a construction site and therefore not open to the public,” the stadium’s communications officer told Topkin via email. Montreal is the second city to back away from serving as a potential temporary home for the franchise. The Durham Bulls, home of the organization’s Triple-A affiliate, released a statement earlier this week saying they “do not anticipate hosting (the Rays) for a full season due to schedules overlapping and other logistical challenges.”
The Rays still haven’t confirmed they won’t be able to play all of next season at the Trop. Topkin reported earlier in the week that the facility was unlikely to be repaired by Opening Day, however. The Rays are scheduled to open a new stadium in St. Petersburg in 2028. Assuming that timeline isn’t delayed, it’s not clear if the organization and city will find it worthwhile to repair Tropicana Field if the team is leaving the Trop after three years anyhow.
Montreal was mentioned as a possibility largely because the Rays flirted with the idea of playing there a few years ago. While the Rays were trying to secure public funding for their new stadium, owner Stuart Sternberg floated a plan to divide the team’s home games between Tampa Bay and Montreal. MLB’s executive council killed the idea in January 2022. The Rays turned back to securing the funding for the new facility in St. Petersburg, which was approved this past July. Topkin’s column lists a few other cities the Rays might consider if the Trop is unavailable.
Stadium Notes: Rays, Twins
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.
Rays PBO Neander On Christopher Morel's Post-Trade Struggles
- Christopher Morel had long been a Rays trade target before the club finally landed him in the four-player deadline deal that sent Isaac Paredes to the Cubs. However, Morel’s first two months in a Tampa uniform were a struggle, as he hit only .191/.258/.289 over 190 plate appearances. “There were signs underneath he was really unlucky in terms of the balls hit in play,” Rays president of baseball ops Erik Neander told Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times, in a nod to Morel’s .233 BABIP for the season. Neander is still bullish on Morel’s potential for 2025 and beyond, and felt that the Rays’ decision to move him to second base and left field (after he’d played third base with the Cubs all season) maybe also “took a toll on him offensively.” Even the trade itself might’ve been a factor, as Neader noted “that new environment, that first taste of it, if you don’t get off to a great start or hold it, it can be difficult. It’s a hard thing to recover. Sometimes it takes that first offseason to come in and be familiar with that environment, to really be yourself again.” There is plenty of time for the Rays to figure out a player who is under team control through the 2028 season, and who has shown flashes of his power potential over his three MLB seasons to date.
