Rays Waze

BY KEVIN KERNAN

Pity the poor Rays fan.

It is bad enough that you never really know who is playing for the Rays, and if they do discover and develop a talented player, you just know he will be traded, but now you don’t even know where the Rays will be playing in 2025 because of the roofless Trop – wrecked by Hurricane Milton.

And even if the Rays are playing somewhere in the Tampa-St. Pete area this summer, it is guaranteed to be the longest, hottest and wettest of summers for the players and the fans who bother to show up for Rays games at a spring training ballpark.

As bad a home Tropicana Field was for the Rays, I personally loved going there because it was an easy in and out to the ballpark, it was air conditioned and there were no rain delays; all that is out the window now that the domed roof was blown off the building and repairs are estimated to be a cool $56 million, according to a report in the Tampa Bay Times by Marc Topkin and Colleen Wright. Those repairs will take a year to complete.

If all that happens, then it won’t be too long before the Rays move into their new cozy ballpark (2028) and the Trop will be left standing in the shadows of love.

What a complete mess, and, of course, all this will affect the Rays players so you can basically forget about the Rays being in competition for the AL East title or a wild card spot. The Yankees and Orioles should both be able to glide to the postseason because the Rays will be wanderers, a team without a true home.

Make the best of a rotten situation.

Add to that the fact the Red Sox have gone all analytics all the time and look to be spending as little money as possible for a big market team and the Blue Jays have no clue what they are doing, unless they somehow shock the baseball world and sign Juan Soto.

So, yeah, the Yankees and Orioles are sitting pretty in the division that used to be the best in baseball but is now basically another AL Central. As we know, the Yankees have a long way to go to catch the World Champion Dodgers.

My simple advice for the Yankees is to work on their defense and their base-running during the season as much as possible, so they are ready for October the next time around.

As for the Rays, there is a simple solution to their homeless situation, but baseball will never do it. There is a perfectly workable major league ballpark sitting empty in Oakland called the Coliseum. And the weather is perfect.

Make them the Oakland Rays for the time being – it has a good ring to it – almost like the last baseball team that called Oakland home. Utilize that ballpark and then back in St. Petersburg, Rays ownership should put all their efforts in getting their new ballpark built in the Historic Gas Plant Neighborhood as quickly as possible.

Make the best of a rotten situation.

Rob Manfred though would have to give this the green light, so don’t expect it to happen. The Rays probably will stumble along this summer playing in some Florida State League ballpark. That means it will be a summer of rain delays, a summer of heat and humidity. There is good reason the Rays and Marlins have played in air-conditioned ballparks. This will make it a summer of question marks. As it is, the Rays use way too many pitchers, imagine how many pitchers they will run through in the summer heat of Florida this time around?

The Rays could wind up at BayCare Park, spring training home to the Phillies. They could wind up at Steinbrenner Field – you know who plays there in the spring – or TD Ballpark in Dunedin, spring training home to the Blue Jays that housed major league games in the recent past and was a home run haven. They also could play their season at Charlotte Sports Park, their own spring training facility, about 80 miles south of St. Pete in Port Charlotte or even in Fort Myers at the Twins home or in South Fenway, home to the Red Sox.

Another possible landing site is perhaps an area where Major League Baseball should be played in Florida, a central location that is known the world over, Orlando, at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex, 90 minutes inland. Some may say that would be fitting that the Rays, run frugally – you could call them a Mickey Mouse organization – now they would be close to the real Mickey Mouse. I just visited Disney World, it is a bit busy.

Perhaps the Rays should just play at Marlins Park.

Again, what a complete mess.

Last time I looked none of those small spring training venues had a roof or air conditioning. It is one thing to be playing baseball in the Florida State League in the summer, trying to improve your skills in the heat and humidity in A Ball. It is quite another to be a Major League team playing in open air Florida State League venues, not exactly Welcome to the Show, fellas.

I spoke to a top baseball evaluator who offered another way out for the 2025 season and quite frankly, this one makes the most sense and Manfred should sign off on this one. Although I would really love to see the Rays play in Oakland and see how those forgotten A’s fans, who watched their team pick up and leave them flat (where I grew up we call them “flat-leavers’’) respond to having the Rays in their old ballpark.

“They don’t draw anything, so it doesn’t really matter where they end up going,’’ the baseball man began. “But for me, they should go to Durham, that would be a perfect fit because that has been their AAA club. You already have the A’s sharing a stadium with a AAA team next year in Sacramento, you might as well do it in another place.’’

The A’s and the Giants AAA team the Sacramento River Cats will share Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento for three years.

Durham makes a lot of sense and Rays fans in Florida can take a trip to Durham to see their team, home of the Durham Bulls. Heck, get Kevin Costner to throw out the first pitch at Durham Bulls Athletic Park, located in downtown Durham, a park that features a 32-foot-high wall in left field only 305 feet from home plate, a bit of Fenway Park and the Green Monster in Durham.

This one is called the Blue Monster, and it features the Snorting Bull that stands above the wall.

The bull, of course, is modeled after the bull in the 1988 baseball film classic, Bull Durham. Have an area in the ballpark where Bull Durham is shown during games as well. Make a production out of the move and figure out a way for the AAA teams to fit their games into the schedule as well.

How about this, baseball?

Make it a doubleheader day where the AAA team plays the early game and the MLB/AAAA Rays play the second game, two games for the price of one … do something nice for your fans occasionally, Commish.

“Embrace the Suck” as my friend and former Rays manager Joe Maddon is fond of saying.

Evidently, Joe left too many of the Embrace the Suck t-shirts in Chicago with the Cubbies. They haven’t won anything since he left even though that is one rich organization that has really taken that saying to heart under their Jed Hoyer leadership, and I see where they recently dumped even more scouts, but all that is a Baseball or Bust in the near future, not here, not now.

Today we are focusing on the Durham Rays or Oakland Rays or Clearwater Rays or wherever the Rays play in 2025. Manfred said he wants a decision by Christmas, that sure would be nice. Merry Christmas, Rays fans. One thing is certain: the Rays will not be home for Christmas for a while.

Mother Nature sure hit the Rays hard, there is no time to waste.

Here is another advantage to playing in Durham. Rays players who came up through the system would feel somewhat at home in that situation. Either way, no matter what happens, what an upside-down year it is going to be for the Rays and their families.

The good news for the Rays players is that when they take the AAA shuttle, especially Rays relief pitchers who are constantly being promoted and demoted, if they play in Durham, they can stay in Durham for both teams. Remember, what happens in Durham stays in Durham.

Yeah, but I read the Rays are interested in trying to land Juan Soto. I’m sure Soto, who will get the biggest contract in baseball, would love to play for the cheapest of teams, a team that has no idea where it is going to play in the near future, and that Soto would just love playing in a minor league ballpark somewhere.

Geez, I can’t wait until Soto signs somewhere, anywhere, (probably the Mets) just so I don’t have to read any more stories about where Juan Soto is going to wind up.

As Warner Wolf used to say: Gimme A Break!

The local Pinellas County politicians want the Rays to stay as close to home as possible, part of the rebuilding effort of the area.

I don’t see the wisdom in shelling out $56 million (or more) for fixes on a ballpark that was consistently deemed the worst in baseball and will be left for a brand new ballpark in the 2028 season. But politicians sure like to spend your money, and they said insurance and FEMA would pay the bulk of that cost for fixing the Trop. So, it goes. Don’t get me started on that part of the plan.

As for the thunderstorms rolling through on a regular 3 p.m. basis in Florida in the summer – I know, I live here – if the Rays venture off to a spring training type facility, the evaluator offered this about the challenge of working in that environment.

“What ends up happening is, but it doesn’t matter anymore because no one goes out on the field and does anything,’’ he said, “but everyday batting practice gets rained out, so you have to hit in cages and do stuff like that.’’

No infield practice when it rains, no outfield practice, no outdoor BP, no PFP. Hey, sounds like what major league clubs are shooting for anyway and now they would have the perfect excuse to run to the iPads and the indoor hitting area and hire even more metric readers to make their baseball decisions.

What a complete mess.