Tampa Bay Rays Get Big News in Attempt to Salvage Tropicana Field

So, you're telling me there's a chance...

The roof of Tropicana Field, home of the Tampa Bay Rays MLB team, was torn off by Hurricane Milton's powerful winds. Satellite imagery from Maxar shows the destruction on Oct. 10, 2024. Prior to landfall, the stadium was converted into a base camp for emergency responders. / Satellite image ©2024 Maxar Technologies / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Coming off a fourth-place finish in the American League East, the Tampa Bay Rays enter the offseason with plenty of questions. The team dealt away Tyler Glasnow and Randy Arozarena over the last year, and their production needs to be replaced. Furthermore, the Rays could trade away first baseman Yandy Diaz this offseason. They have ace pitcher Shane McLanahan coming back from Tommy John surgery but you never quite know how someone will recover.

However, the Rays questions are not just about the roster. They also don't know where they are going to play in 2025. After Hurricane Milton badly damaged Tropicana Field, taking off the roof, the stadium looks unusable at the moment. There's already been talk that the Rays will need a temporary facility for at least part of 2025, if not longer. Given that the Rays are moving into a new building in 2028, it's easy to see why no one wants to spend real money to fix up a ballpark that will be vacant soon anyways.

However, there was some movement on the ballpark front recently. This report comes from MLBTradeRumors, but links to the original report from the Tampa Bay Times (subscription required):

The city of St. Petersburg took a step toward potentially fixing up the stadium recently, however, asJohn Romano of the Tampa Bay Times writes that the St. Pete city council agreed last week to spend up to $6MM in order to create a temporary drainage system and waterproof exposed areas of the stadium. Romano adds that this mitigation process figures to take up to eight weeks, though the process (and the related spending) could be halted if the stadium is declared impossible to salvage

It sounds as if the plan might be to try to have Tropicana Field act as an open-air stadium. The problem with that has been that there's no drainage in the ballpark, so intense Florida rainstorms would render the field unplayable. But perhaps this $6 million can help mitigate that while also protecting the rest of the stadium that would be exposed.

Regardless, it's just one of many things that the Rays need to get clarity on heading into 2025.

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