Tampa Bay Rays enter 2025 with more questions than answers

For the Tampa Bay Rays, 2024 was as unpredictable as a Phil Niekro knuckleball.

The year started with the team coming off one of its best records ever and, more importantly, a deal was in place for a new ballpark where it would play the next 35 years.

After 20 years of uncertainty, the Tampa Bay Rays were finally planning to move into a long-term home as its prospects on the field continued to improve.

But sometimes life is like trying to hit a knuckleball. It doesn’t seem to be moving very fast, but you have no idea where it’s going and the best you can do is swing wildly at a ball that is no longer there.

Heading into 2025, the Rays have swung wildly and, as of mid-December, it appears the team may have missed. That means it will enter what could be watershed years for the organization with more questions than answers.

“As for what happens next,” a team spokesperson wrote in a Dec. 17 email, “we really don't know.”

Five challenges and questions the Tampa Bay Rays are face in 2025 include: 

1. The team’s current home, Tropicana Field, had its roof blown off during Hurricane Milton and needs major repairs before the Rays can move back in. The cost for the repairs, which the city will pay for with insurance money as well as its own funds, has been estimated at $55.7 million. The Rays’ lease on the ballpark expires at the end of the 2027 season but could go another year because of the repairs.The plan was for the Rays to move into the new ballpark in 2028, but with the Rays and the city (and Pinellas County) at a stalemate over funding for a new ballpark, that is unlikely to happen. And with the Rays threatening to move, would the city spend the funds for its share of the repairs — about $23 million — for a facility without a tenant and that may be torn down in five years?

2. Because of the damage to Tropicana Field, the team is starting the year with plans to play the 2025 season, and possibly longer, at George M. Steinbrenner Field, a minor league baseball park in Tampa. This is going to cost the Rays a reported $15 million as well cut deeply into revenue streams. For example, as part of the move to the Yankees’ training field, the team “will have limited permission” to sell advertising throughout the stadium and on the scoreboards, according to a fact sheet shared by the Rays.

3. The future of the deal for the new stadium, which was expected to break ground early this year in order to be completed by 2028, is at best uncertain. While the city of St. Petersburg and Pinellas County have voted to issue bonds to pay for half the $1.3 billion ballpark, the team is balking. After agreeing to pay $600 million and absorb all cost overruns, it now wants to renegotiate the terms and have the localities pitch in more money. That is unlikely to happen. In a handful of public meetings since November, local officials at all levels have been united in saying that they are not going to give the Rays any more money than what’s already been committed. For its part, the Rays have threatened to relocate if they can’t come to an agreement for more money.

4. Given the standoff, the future of the second part of the agreement, the $6.5 billion redevelopment of the Historic Gas Plant District, a Black neighborhood razed in the 1990s to make way for Tropicana Field, is also uncertain. The 8-million-square-foot development was an expected part of the new stadium, bringing back a neighborhood with housing, retail, hotel, parks and a museum. But if there is no ballpark, will the redevelopment vanish with it? Or will the Rays and its development partner, Miami-based Hines, get to redevelop the property, keep the proceeds and play baseball in another city?

5. While it’s hard to quantify the damage, by aggressively pushing the narrative that the delay in building the new stadium fell at the feet of the Pinellas County Commission because it twice postponed a bond vote, the team has ostracized a partner and become a villain in the community. It’s not too often that the public chooses the government over the local baseball team, but that’s what seems to be happening here. That largely has to do with timing. The Rays decided to pick a fight with the commission and demand more money from the county and city in the aftermath of two hurricanes that decimated large swaths of the area. At a Dec. 17 county commission meeting where $312 million in bonds to build the new stadium were approved, residents who lost homes and jobs pleaded with commissioners for help rebuilding their lives. And after the money was approved for the stadium, the team issued a terse statement saying, “the cost of the project has increased significantly, and we cannot absorb this increase alone.” While that may be true, it’s hard to imagine what a team that, even with a winning record is unable to fill the stands, gains by taking such a hard stance when so many remain suffering.