Rays and MLB have held preliminary talks about possible home playoff locations: Sources

New York Times

9 hours ago

As the regular season nears the halfway point, the question of whether the Tampa Bay Rays could host postseason games at cozy Steinbrenner Field in Tampa no longer can be ignored.
Major League Baseball and Rays have engaged in preliminary conversations about where the team would play home games if it makes the playoffs, according to officials briefed on the discussions.
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Steinbrenner Field, with its 10,046-seat capacity, could be viable for the wild-card round and Division Series. But logistical concerns might force a move to a larger stadium if the Rays advanced to the American League Championship Series and World Series.
Those concerns would include:
* The need for the league to make thousands of tickets available to a variety of participants and stakeholders;
* The diminished gate receipts from playing in a smaller park, resulting in players receiving reduced postseason shares;
* The challenges broadcast partners would face in attempting to pull off their typical postseason productions.
The Rays, naturally, would not want to be put at a competitive disadvantage by playing home postseason games at a neutral site – say, Miami's loanDepot park or Atlanta's Truist Park. Steinbrenner Field is scheduled to be their home park only for this season. But since a hurricane last October ripped the roof off Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, the Rays have made it their own.
Entering Wednesday, the Rays held the top wild-card position in the American League and trailed the New York Yankees by only one game in the AL East. Their 28-14 record since May 8 was the best in the majors. And one of their weakest offensive positions should grow stronger when shortstop Ha-Seong Kim makes his expected return from right labrum surgery in July.
The Rays' surge is not certain to continue. The league front-loaded their home schedule to help the them avoid the summer heat and rain in Florida. To this point, they have played the most home games of any major-league club. Fifty-two of their final 83 games will be on the road.
The Rays, though, already have demonstrated they can adjust to changing circumstances, going 16-5 at Steinbrenner since May 19 after an 11-18 start at their temporary home. Their .586 winning percentage on the road entering Wednesday also was higher than their .557 overall mark, which ranked as the fourth best in the AL.
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For the Rays, then, a sixth playoff appearance in seven years is hardly a distant dream. And if they earn home playoff games by winning the AL East or finishing as the top AL wild card, they surely would want to play in front of their home fans at Steinbrenner, where they have sold out 42 of their 50 games.
Steinbrenner might be sufficient for the early rounds, even though the league would need to utilize outdoor seating for media it cannot squeeze into a press box that seats only 29. But in later rounds the media contingent would grow larger, and a 10,046-seat park simply would not be big enough for the league to fulfill all of its other obligations.
For World Series games, the league sets aside approximately 7,500 tickets for players, umpires, visiting teams, sponsors, broadcast partners, media and others, an MLB source said. The number of tickets the league requires for League Championship Series games is lower, but still could be significant enough to make Steinbrenner Field impractical.
Gate receipts, and their impact on players' postseason shares, would be a separate discussion, one that likely would involve the Major League Baseball Players Association.
The players' pool includes 60 percent of the gate receipts from postseason games guaranteed to be played – the first two of each wild-card series, the first three of the Division Series and first four of the LCS and World Series. Travel expenses of up to $100,000 per club are deducted for each visiting team in the wild-card round. Members of the World Series champions receive the largest shares. Losers in the wild-card series get the smallest.
The gate from postseason games at Steinbrenner Field obviously would be smaller than it would be at a typical major-league park, reducing the size of the players' shares. Then again, Rays home postseason games almost always result in the players receiving less money.
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The main exception was in 2008, the only time the Rays appeared in the ALCS and World Series in front of fans. Their attendance at Tropicana Field that year for each of their final four playoff games was more than 40,000. But in their last postseason appearance at the Trop in 2023, their two wild-card round losses to the Texas Rangers attracted crowds of only 19,704 and 20,198.
Neutral-site postseason games might result in higher attendance. But from the players' perspective, any potential bump in the gate might be negated by the increased travel costs for their families, not to mention the loss of home-field advantage the Rays earned.
The television broadcasts seemingly would be less of an issue. Fans already are accustomed to watching Yankees spring-training games and Rays regular-season games from Steinbrenner Field. Network productions for the postseason broadcasts, however, are more elaborate.
Reaching the standard number of camera positions might require a network to build platforms, run cable for connectivity and yes, purchase seats. Even then, the look would not be the same. The high home camera, the main source of coverage when the ball is play, is quite low at a one-deck stadium like Steinbrenner Field. The netting covers much and at times all of the TV screen. It also features a number of vertical cables that create additional obstructions.
Maybe the Rays will fail to make the postseason, and none of these issues will come to pass. Even if they do, the situation likely will be a one-off. The Rays' lease at Tropicana Field runs through 2028, and owner Stuart Sternberg has entered 'exclusive discussions' about a possible sale of the franchise to a group including Jacksonville-based real estate developer Patrick Zalupski. Any new owner almost certainly would push for a new park.
For now though, the league and the Rays must deal with the reality created by a natural disaster – the possibility of the postseason games taking place at a spring-training park.
Before the season began, Tampa Bay's playoff odds were 37.7 percent. Entering Wednesday, they were 71.2 percent. Come October, a team known for disrupting the sport might provide its craziest wrinkle yet. A public-address announcer bellowing, 'Welcome to the 2025 postseason at Steinbrenner Field!'
(Top photo of Steinbrenner Field:)