Where will the Rays play in 2025?
A quick reaction to the damage to Tropicana Field.
Tropicana Field was devastated by Hurricane Milton, with winds exceeding the roof’s 115 mph capacity, the majority of the dome was ripped away in tatters. It’s unclear if the stadium is usable in any capacity moving forward.
What does this mean for the Tampa Bay Rays 2025 season?
Here are a few options following the damage to the Trop.
Repair Tropicana Field
Now that the sun is up, here’s a 360-degree view of the damage Hurricane Milton caused to Tropicana Field’s roof and the inside of the ballpark. Absolutely heartbreaking pic.twitter.com/ZCtPHv6rE9
— Ryan Bass (@Ry_Bass) October 10, 2024
It’s too early to know how significant the damage is, but it’s easy to imagine the Rays have played their last game at Tropicana Field.
With the team preparing to tear down this stadium and construct a new one for the 2028 season, it’s also difficult to imagine spending a single more dollar on repairing the significant damage wrought by the hurricane, with the field and its electronics soaked in rainwater and damaged by high force winds.
Nevertheless, if it’s easy to repair the damage done, the first and most obvious answer would be to put a roof back over the Trop.
Al Lang Field
The St. Petersburg waterfront has an historic outdoor baseball stadium, and the Rays own and operate the lease for that stadium. It currently is used as the home of the Tampa Bay Rowdies and lacks major league clubhouses or readymade facilities beyond those used for soccer.
It is, nevertheless, a tempting solution.
Al Lang Field in St. Petersburg, Florida, has a rich baseball history dating back to its opening in 1947. Named after former St. Petersburg mayor Al Lang, a prominent supporter of baseball in the area, the field quickly became a hub for Major League Baseball spring training.
Over the decades, it has hosted the New York Yankees, St. Louis Cardinals, New York Mets, Baltimore Orioles, and yes the Tampa Bay Rays. Beyond spring training, it also became a venue for minor league games and community events.
The waterfront field remains an iconic site in Florida’s baseball history, and using it as a temporary home would continue the team’s intentions of commemorating its deep ties to the game. And with Tropicana Field a short distance away, undamaged portions could perhaps be used by teams with busses available to take players to the park.
The current configuration reduced the size of the field and the seating, but could be converted back to its dimensions for baseball use.
Port Charlotte
Many major league teams have needed to utilize a minor league stadium on occasion. The Blue Jays recently did so during the coronavirus pandemic as a stop gap solution when the team couldn’t travel across country lines.
The Rays own and recently repaired a minor league stadium in Port Charlotte, and could play major league games there on an interim basis. However, there are certainly drawbacks. The logistics of getting major league teams in and out of Port Charlotte on a regular basis - as opposed to a population center with a nearby airport - are difficult to imagine being playable for the next three years. Port Charlotte is, to put it politely, in the middle of nowhere. And to put it not-so-politely, is a prison town where the closest eatery is a Hooters. That’s not tenable.
Unfortunately, Port Charlotte was also the center of where Hurricane Milton made landfall. We do not know the damage there, but the previous hurricane in 2022 made the stadium unusable in 2023, sending the team to...
Disney’s Wide World of Sports Complex
It was only one season ago the Rays were playing Spring Training Games in the Orlando area, specifically Kissimmee, FL, just beyond Lakeland.
The ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex has hosted baseball since it opened in 1997. Designed as a multi-sport facility, it became a the spring training site for the Atlanta Braves, who trained there from 1998 until 2019. If the team’s Port Charlotte facility is beyond repair after another hurricane, it stands to reason the Rays would need the same complex again in 2025 like they did in 2023.
The complex features a 9,500-seat baseball stadium known as Champion Stadium, which is a typical capacity for minor league parks, and provides a professional-level field and amenities that are maintained by Disney. That capacity includes a berm that stretches from first base to third base, and could conceivably have more stands erected around the ballpark to draw an even larger crowd.
The Rays are the team of Central Florida, and have an historic relationship with Orlando through minor league baseball. Could the next three years provide another chapter?
Abandoned MLB stadiums in Oakland or Arlington
There is a ballpark with a sudden vacancy that featured Major League baseball throughout the 2024 regular season. The Oakland Athletics played their final game in Oakland just a few weeks ago. The team’s ownership may have spurned the city, but the final few games in the Coliseum showcased the fanbase’s love for the team on the field.
Of course, the reason the Athletics are moving from Oakland is due to the ongoing issues with the current stadium there. Traveling would be a logistical headache with the Rays having to make frequent trips to the east coast for series with divisional opponents, but the Coliseum is the only MLB park that is readily available for the Rays to move into. There would have to be some sorting out with the Oakland Roots, a USL team that has signed on to play in the Coliseum.
There is also the former home of the Texas Rangers in Arlington, the 48,000 seat Choctaw Stadium, which has not been demolished. It sits in the same complex as the team’s new stadium, which also has the Dallas Cowboys stadium nearby. Choctaw Stadium is currently home to the Arlington Renegades, a United Football League team an the stadium has been reconfigured to fit their needs.
Sharing with Miami or Atlanta
The two closest MLB stadiums to Tampa Bay that could plausibly allow the Rays to make their stadiums their temporary home are the Braves and Marlins.
In 2017, Hurricane Harvey forced the Houston Astros to play a home game series at Tropicana Field and a few years later, another hurricane forced the Rays to play as the home team at Citi Field in a series against the Yankees. However, those instances were both for the short-term and the Rays will likely need a place to call home for a longer length of time.
There is also the added headache of scheduling that would require revamping the entire MLB season.
Sharing with a minor league stadium
Another option could be to play in a minor league ballpark.
The Tampa Bay’s Triple-A team is not owned by the Rays, but there is certainly a deep and prosperous relationship between the clubs.
Durham Bulls Athletic Park is a beautiful stadium in Durham, NC that currently has a 10,000 seat capacity and was designed by Populus, the firm behind most of baseball’s favorite modern parks and which is working on the new Rays stadium.
The stadium’s locker rooms were renovated in 2023, with facilities expanded to include an indoor hitting cage behind the third base line.
There are also several minor league ballparks all across the Tampa Bay region, most notably including the Yankees minor league park in the heart of Tampa, across from Raymond James Stadium and by the Tampa airport. George M. Steinbrenner Field has an 11,000 seat capacity and would prevent the Rays from needing to essentially relocate.