The Rays won an important political battle late last week in the St. Petersburg City Council, as Charlie Frago of the Tampa Bay Times reports. Under the deal that the council approved, the ballclub will have the opportunity to explore possible stadium sites in two neighboring counties for the next three years. Team owner Stuart Sternberg suggested that there’s no plan in place for a new location. “We haven’t done it before,” he said. “I don’t know if it takes a week or six months to identify and figure out a site.” But the organization made clear that it is aiming for something more than bare function. “We want to build the first of the next generation of baseball stadiums,” said president Brian Auld.
- In other stadium news, Athletics majority owner John Fisher is said to be more involved than usual as his club considers possibilities for a new park, as Phil Matier and Andy Ross of the San Francisco Chronicle report. While managing partner Lew Wolff has traditionally been the public face of ownership, Fisher is believed to control 80% of the shares.
- Change continues to filter through the Blue Jays organization, which has recently announced two front office hirings. Mike Murov will come over from the Red Sox to serve as the director of baseball operations, in which role (says the team) he’ll “assist in the preparation and analysis of financial, statistical, and contractual information, coordinating contract negotiation and arbitration preparation.” And Toronto also recently added Gil Kim to their organization as well. Formerly the international scouting director for the Rangers, Kim will serve as the Jays’ director of player development.
- The Orioles have given a promotion to the head of their analytics department, Sarah Gelles, as David Laurila of Fangraphs discusses (among other things) in his Sunday notes column. Now the organization’s Director of Analytics and Major League Contracts, Gelles discusses the development of the club’s analytical efforts, which she helped drive as an intern working for now-Phillies GM Matt Klentak.
I would love for the stadium to be built close to 75 rather than inside the city. Somewhere like Temple Terrace or Brandon
I’ve always said the Fairgrounds would be ideal at the I-4/I-75 corridor but I doubt they could pull a deal off to acquire the land. Sure the fairgrounds make too much money annually to consider selling but I think that would be best.
That would be amazing. I was thinking inbetween the 75 275 split.
Brandon takes the team much too far from the Pinellas fans. The whole point of moving is to put a stadium more centralized to the population. Brandon or the Fairgrounds totally defeats that purpose.
Build it n Tampa either by Raymond James or by the hockey arena, plenty of parking , transit , bars, restaurants , hotels and both places very easy to get to
Build it in New Port Richey. I’ll go to more games.
Mr. Fisher nearly 10 years with no success for a new stadium and now you finally wanna be more involved!! How do you ever expect to build a new stadium when you can’t even keep anyone!!
Oakland can’t even build a stadium for there football team they love. What makes ownership think they can build one for the A’s which can barely fill the stadium halfway if there lucky.
Just leave Miami and go somewhere else!!
Florida*
Miami…HA…good stuff!
Orlando?
A’s San Jose or Monterrey,Mexico or Hawaii or Las Vegas or Charlotte or New Orleans or Dallas?
Move the Rays to Nashville
Both the Rays and the Jags should have been put in Orlando! Both Jacksonville and Tampa look to be city’s on the rise but both have seen so much people leaving those areas because of job lost. Would draw more fan here in Orlando