Fastball

Tampa Bay Rays "Seem Certain" to Not Be Able to Play at Tropicana Field Early in 2025

And the team might end up needing a new place to play for the entirety of 2025 as well.

Brady Farkas

Tropicana Field, home to Major League Baseball's Tampa Bay Rays, on June 3, 2024. The 1.1 million square foot stadium is located in St. Petersburg, Florida, which was in Hurricane Milton's destructive path across the state on Oct. 9, 2024. Hurricane Milton spawned tornadoes and unleashed heavy winds, rain and flooding across the state as the region was still reeling from Hurricane Helene.
Tropicana Field, home to Major League Baseball's Tampa Bay Rays, on June 3, 2024. The 1.1 million square foot stadium is located in St. Petersburg, Florida, which was in Hurricane Milton's destructive path across the state on Oct. 9, 2024. Hurricane Milton spawned tornadoes and unleashed heavy winds, rain and flooding across the state as the region was still reeling from Hurricane Helene. / Satellite image ©2024 Maxar Technologies / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
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According to Marc Topkin of Tampabay.com, the Tampa Bay Rays "seem certain" to not be able to play at Tropicana Field early on in 2025. The question moving forward will be if the team can play at Tropicana Field at all next year - or for the next three until they move into their new building in 2028.

This is all a result of damage sustained by Tropicana Field during Hurricane Milton last week. The fiberglass roof was nearly completely torn off and there was damage to the inside of the park as well. It will take weeks to fully assess the damage and determine what the best path is moving forward.

Per Topkin:

About the only thing that seems certain is that the team won’t be able to open the 2025 Major League Baseball season at home as planned on March 27.

Where the Rays play, how long they are displaced and what repairs beyond a new custom roof are needed to return to Tropicana Field — until the planned 2028 opening of their new stadium on an adjacent site — are among myriad things they don’t know, but hope to address in the coming weeks.

Since the Rays are moving into a new ballpark in 2028, the issue becomes more complicated. The city of St. Petersburg - and the Rays - may not want to spend the massive millions to fix the structure given that the Rays are moving somewhere else in short order. If the Rays need a new home either in the short or the long-term, there are options, which we covered here.

They would include the team's spring training home in Port Charlotte or the Yankees spring training home in Tampa. They could also relocate temporarily to Durham (the home of their Triple-A stadium) or could play in Nashville or Charlotte, two markets that have been wanting to show themselves off as potential major league cities.

Topkin even mentions the idea of Montreal, who the Rays had previously engaged on the idea of a "split season" a few years ago.

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Brady Farkas
BRADY FARKAS

Brady Farkas is a baseball writer for Fastball on Sports Illustrated/FanNation and the host of 'The Payoff Pitch' podcast which can be found on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Videos on baseball also posted to YouTube. Brady has spent nearly a decade in sports talk radio and is a graduate of Oswego State University. You can follow him on Twitter @WDEVRadioBrady. 

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