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.
TittySprinkles
That’s what you get for destroying the mangroves, Florida. Poseidon is hungry.
case
You wanna dance with Broseidon?
TittySprinkles
@case immortal technique said it best
“So when the Devil wants to dance with you, you better say never
Because a dance with the Devil might last you forever”
johnsilver
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.
TittySprinkles
@john agreed.it is much more than that. Its decades of policies from the state govt that have caused water pollution issues and the devastation of native ecosystems that buffered the area. Also its development that destroyed wetlands that also help during hurricanes.
As for those of you that have lived there since the 50s? Your decades of voting is not without blame. Maybe Floridians should have been less selfish and had more forethought?
gbs42
This is how they’re going get that split of games with Montreal they were looking into a few years ago.
Karensjer
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?
Fever Pitch Guy
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.
niched
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.
Fever Pitch Guy
niched – What doesn’t make sense is building an open air stadium in Minneapolis.
FossSellsKeys
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.
proton
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.
phillyphan81
There is no drainage there due to having a roof. Way more expensive to put that in for a temporary solution while the new stadium is built.
pev4
No drainage on the field
Fever Pitch Guy
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.
sad tormented neglected mariners fan
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?
Fever Pitch Guy
sad – 1) Not for 49 overlapping Marlins/Rays games.
2) No it’s not ready yet
3) Not July thru September
4) Not possible
pev4
Oakland Rays
DirtyWater04
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.
colonel flagg
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.
CO Guardening
Moving the Twins would be foolish. Tying the success of a franchise to TV revenue lacks intelligence or foresight.
Yanks4life22
And they continue to funnel taxpayer money to billionaires right out in the open. Wake up.
m34josh
I hear Oakland has a stadium that is available
The Convoluted Universe
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.
FossSellsKeys
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.