After more than 20 years of rough trouble for the Athletics and Rays, the situation has reached critical mass for these vagabond Major League Baseball clubs.
Both teams will play the 2025 season in minor league facilities, for very different reasons. The A’s opted to move from Oakland to Las Vegas, where a new ballpark isn’t on the horizon until 2028, if that. After being kicked out of the Coliseum, the plan is to play at the 14,014-seat Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento.
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The Rays, meanwhile, are at the mercy of the elements and local government. The team was informed by St. Petersburg that damage caused by Hurricane Milton in October, when the storm blew off Tropicana Field’s Teflon roof, would cost the city $55 million to repair, in addition to $6.5 million already allocated for other repairs. The problem is that construction won’t be completed before the start of the 2026 baseball season, leaving the team currently homeless.
The city of St. Pete and Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred said they preferred the Rays stay in the area, at a minor league spring training facility, and the decision was made Thursday to share Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, where the New York Yankees hold spring training. and their minor league Tarpons play.
“This outcome meets Major League Baseball’s goals that Rays fans will see their team play next season in their home market and that their players will be able to stay home without disruption to their families,” Manfred said in a statement press.
A new stadium should be built and opened next to the Trop by 2028. Except that new elected officials could scuttle the bond issue reserved for this project during an upcoming hearing of the Pinellas County Board of Commissioners on November 19.
Either way, that means two of the lowest-revenue franchises in the American League will be playing in facilities that are small in capacity and barely up to Major League standards. They will continue to survive on substantial revenue sharing, most of which is paid by larger market clubs.
Four months before the start of the regular season on March 27 is not what everyone wants.
“It would be ideal to have all 30 teams installed in Major League stadiums yesterday,” MLB Players Association Executive Director Tony Clark said during the World Series. “Suffice it to say, wherever the players are in 2025, we will have a seat at the table to ensure those (major league) standards are met.”
Rest assured, MLB players are not going to be happy. Clark and assistant Bruce Meyer said they are aware of the pitfalls and are prepared to address the myriad complaints they will receive from players when they have to work in these minor league situations this season.
Having seen the terms At West Sac, the A’s may need to reevaluate after a season playing in cramped facilities, despite millions of dollars spent improving quality and covering up any imperfections.
We witnessed it when the Coyotes played their final two seasons in Phoenix in a 5,000-seat college arena on the Arizona State campus. The club invested more than $10 million to build new locker rooms and bring Mullett Arena up to NHL standards. It was fun the first year, but last season the player complaints came rolling in as fast and loud as hockey pucks hitting Plexiglas.
Like the MLBPA, the NHLPA has no control over where franchises play. But their general managers can make life very difficult for their various commissioners, as Marty Walsh did to Gary Bettman last season, telling him bluntly: “That’s not the way to do business.”
When it became clear that the situation at the Phoenix arena would not be corrected, Bettman withdrew the team, which now resides at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City.
In West Sacramento, the outdoor baseball stadium needs new lights, new clubhouses, new shelters and better access for players, who will have to play in 100-degree heat for most of summer. Likewise, the Rays will compete in an outdoor facility during the heat and humidity of the Florida summer months.
“This is singularly the best opportunity for our fans to experience 81 major league Rays baseball games,” Rays owner Stu Sternberg said of the 11,000-seat stadium. “As difficult as it is to bring one of these stadiums up to major league standards, this was the least difficult. You’re going to see Major League Baseball in a small environment.
The A’s must share the stadium with the minor league River Cats, and the decision was made to play 156 regular season games on natural turf rather than replacing it with artificial turf and a cooling system underneath.
“Grass can be replaced,” Manfred said. “It’s a matter of relatively modest investment to make sure it’s the best place to play.”
Think again. MLB just needs to look into the natural turf issues plaguing multiple sports at Snapdragon Stadium in San Diego. The field was in such unplayable condition that a recent San Diego Wave soccer game had to be moved to the rival’s Louisville facility “due to the ongoing safety of the players and field,” the club said in a statement. press release. Field conditions for San Diego State football games have been sketchy at best.
Players are baseball’s biggest selling point, even if MLB sometimes doesn’t act like it. It’s hard to imagine endangering a $700 million player like Shohei Ohtani or a $360 million star like Aaron Judge by playing even a handful of games in subpar facilities.
And what about the A’s and now the Rays, who have to play 81 home games in minor league parks? It can be argued that the Rays suddenly find themselves in this mess due to a quirk of nature. But the A’s and Rays’ situations should have been resolved years ago.
They were both cited as MLB’s biggest problems during Bud Selig’s tenure, and Manfred inherited them. In 2005, Selig selected his fraternity buddy Lew Wolff to buy the A’s alongside John Fisher, and Wolff was replaced as team president by Dave Kaval in 2015.
Their ballpark issues became political footballs tossed by various team owners and several government figures in California and Florida. They were disasters waiting to happen. And here we are.
The A’s could have moved to San Jose in 2011, but the San Francisco Giants blocked it because Santa Clara County is considered part of their territory. Despite promises to the contrary, Selig failed to negotiate a deal with the Giants to relinquish those rights. The city of San Jose has lost an antitrust battle in court.
Now in Las Vegas, current owner Fisher is trying to sell part of the A’s to pay for his share of a $1.5 billion project by overvaluing his team at $2 billion. Sportico estimated the A’s earlier this year at $1.37 billion. Unsurprisingly, no offers were received.
In 2018, the Rays reached a deal to build a roughly $900 million ballpark on the Tampa side of the bay in Ybor City, 50% publicly funded. But Sternberg objected at the last moment.
Recently, Pinellas County and St. Pete agreed to share the cost of a $1.3 billion domed baseball stadium with Sternberg, apparently settling the problem. Then Milton struck, causing $75 million worth of damage to the Trop, waterfront and other local structures.
In last week’s election, two citizens decidedly opposed to the rough situation were elected to the county commission. Both threaten not to issue the bonds.
“We’re in a new era here,” said Chris Scherer, one of those new commissioners. Tampa Bay Times. “I mean, everything we agreed on before needs to be looked at differently now.”
With no new rough plan and questions about Trop repairs, the Rays may have to move.
Manfred knows he’ll have to figure this out before then. retires on January 25, 2029. But it is clear that these problems have now reached crisis point.
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