NEW YORK (AP) — The Rays likely will start a new search for a ballpark site in the Tampa and St. Petersburg area after the team is sold, according to baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred.
Owner Stu Sternberg, who has controlled the club since 2005, has been negotiating to sell the Rays to a group headed by Patrick Zalupski. The Rays have had several ballpark deals fall through in recent years.
“With new ownership, I think you have to assume it’s kind of a clean slate, that they’re going to decide about
location, they’re going have to build and make relationships and contacts with people throughout the region to decide what’s the best place for the ballpark in order to make the Rays successful over the long haul,” Manfred said Tuesday at Front Office Sports' “Tuned In” event.
Tampa Bay's home since its inception in 1998 has been Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, and the Rays have been among the lowest-drawing teams. The Rays are playing home games this year at Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, the spring training home of the Yankees, while the Trop is being repaired following damage caused in October by Hurricane Milton.
“The situation in Tampa has a lot of kind of promising developments," Manfred said. “I think the potential for the sale to a group that has huge, deep roots in Tampa would be a definite positive development in terms of the long term for the franchise.”
Under Sternberg, the Rays announced plans for and then failed to move ahead with proposed ballparks at the Al Lang Stadium site in St. Petersburg (2007), Ybor City in Tampa (2018) and adjacent to the Trop in downtown St. Petersburg (2023 ). The Rays withdrew in March from the latest $1.3 billion project, citing the hurricane and delays, and started sales talks.
Manfred wants the Rays to stay in the area.
“I think Florida is the right place for that team. I think that there are opportunities in the Tampa Bay region that can be exploited in order to get a new stadium and keep the team there," Manfred said. “They’re going to have the same options that the prior owner had in terms of one side or the other.”
He looked forward to the Rays returning next year to Tropicana from Steinbrenner Field, where entering Tuesday there had been 16 rain delays impacting 15 games for a total of 14 hours, 51 minutes.
“It’s a great solution for 2026 compared to playing in a minor league ballpark with no roof in the Tampa climate," Manfred said.
He has said MLB will consider expansion from 30 teams to 32 once the Rays and Athletics have new ballparks. Construction started this year on the A's ballpark in Las Vegas, scheduled to open in 2028.
As part of expansion, MLB might consider realignment. Manfred said owners were more open to contemplating realignment than they were when he first became involved in baseball in the 1990s.
“The first thing you heard from owners when that conversation started was: ‘I’m a National League Central team. I can’t be anything other than a National League Central team — ever,’” he said. “Today when you talk about a topic like realignment, owners says, 'OK, explain to me how you think it’s going to drive my business.' That’s a very different mentality.”
Manfred became commissioner in 2015 and would like an expansion decision before his current term expires in January 2029. Expansion could lead to realignment in order to lessen travel and create a schedule and early rounds postseason format with more regional games. But expansion remains uncertain.
“That decision, how easy or hard it is, depends in part on how much central revenue you generate, right, and how the owners are going to react to creating two additional shares of that central revenue,” Manfred said. “Assuming you get over that hump, that they want to expand, then it’s where, right? Which two cities?”
___
AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb
