Tampa Bay Rays: Leaving Florida? Think Caribbean, not Canada

The Tampa Bay Rays are talking about playing half  their games in Montreal…but Caribbean cities may be better sites

Tampa Bay Rays owner Stuart Sternberg is floating the idea of playing half his team’s games in Montreal. He may be looking in the wrong direction.

Beyond question, the Rays suffer from a lack of community support. With just 1.18 million paying fans, Tampa ranked ahead of only the Miami Marlins in attendance in 2019…and that was despite fielding a 96-win team.

They have unfailingly finished 29th or 30th in attendance since 2011, notwithstanding that they have produced five 90-win seasons during that time.

Almost everybody in and around Tampa Bay blames the Rays’ situation on their home field, Tropicana Field. It’s a domed structure built in the mid-1980s in the hope of landing an established major league team, probably either the Giants or White Sox.

That didn’t happen, but when MLB considered expansion in 1998  the Trop made Tampa plausible home for a new team. Thus were born the team then called the Devil Rays.

Today the Trop is almost universally panned. For starters, it was constructed in downtown St. Petersburg, away from the region’s population base. Since it is fully indoor –no retractable roof – there isn’t a blade of grass in it, conveying a sense of artificiality.  Finally, parking is – to be kind – a challenge.

Due to those problems, the Trop is one of the worst revenue producers among major league ballparks. Forbes estimated that in 2019 it produced just $119 million in revenue for the Rays, the second-lowest figure in MLB and less than half the league-wide average.

Rays management spent much of the past few years trying to work out an arrangement for construction of a new facility in the suburbs, but that plan collapsed last year. When it did, Sternberg began floating the idea of playing half the team’s games in Montreal.

The Tampa Bay Rays cannot move due to a contract with the stadium binding them to Tampa for another eight seasons.

Splitting home games may make sense…but why look north when there are so many more inviting options to the south. Unlike Canada, the Caribbean-Latin region is already a baseball hotbed, producing close to one in five major leaguers today.

Granted, some of the potential Caribbean locations might pose challenges, but why not road test them for consideration as homes to a future round of expansion? The downside does exist, but the upside could be substantial.

Possible New Homes for the Tampa Bay Rays

Santo Domingo

The capital of the Dominican Republic sits at the center of a 3 million person metropolitan area – that’s equal to the Tampa St. Pete metro area.

And unlike the folks in central Florida, Dominicans are gaga over baseball. Although the number varies from year to year, the nation routinely produces more big-league players than any country outside the USA, that figure generally running in the mid-80s. Baseball is the country’s national sport.

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The country has had professional baseball for a century, its teams routinely excelling in the Caribbean winter leagues.

Obviously summers in the DR will be hot. Daytime highs in the 90s are normal, as are nighttime lows in the 70s. Those factors plus the normal mid-80s percent humidity will require the construction of a domed facility. But you knew that.

From a purely practical standpoint, the biggest drawback to playing regular major league games in Santo Domingo is probably economic. Like much of Latin America, the average Dominican gets by on a fraction of the average American’s income.

That may require the creation of a plan that allows for some percentage of seats to be set aside for those unable to afford the prices that seats in New York, Boston, Los Angeles or Chicago can command.

On the other hand, Santo Domingo’s upper class also loves baseball, and it can support a big-league team.

If the Tampa Bay Rays are serious about off-loading some home games, the combination of factors at minimum merits consideration of Santo Domingo.

Possible New Homes for the Tampa Bay Rays

Mexico City

Everything that was said about Santo Domingo can also be said of Mexico City. Its citizens are passionate about the game, and almost certainly would relish a chance to show it. MLB won’t even dispute that; it has scheduled a pair of regular-season games to be contested there April 18 and 19 between the Arizona Diamondbacks and San Diego Padres.

What do you want to bet they sell out?

In several respects, Mexico City is an even better potential location than Santo Domingo. While the metropolitan population of the Dominican capital essentially replicates Tampa-St. Petersburg, the metro population of the capital of Mexico exceeds 21 million, making it the most populous metro area in the Western Hemisphere.

The poor Yankees and Mets have to get by on New York’s mere 20.3 million souls…and they have to share.

Like Santo Domingo, most Mexico City area residents earn far less than average Americans, reducing their disposable income for such things as major league games. But the region’s raw size ensures a substantial enough upper class to ensure a steady fan base at something approaching expected levels of support.

The biggest drawback is probably altitude. If you think Coors Field (elevation 5,200 feet) is a hitter’s paradise, wait until they start playing games at Mexico City’s 7,300-foot elevation. That’s why MLB would be advised to go one step at a time if it opted to look at Mexico City. Allowing the Tampa Bay Rays to play half their schedule there for a few years would provide the data necessary for a serious evaluation.

Possible New Homes for the Tampa Bay Rays

Havana

Several dozen native Cubans will occupy places on Major League Baseball team rosters in 2020. You could fashion a plausible All-Star team around Jose Abreu, Aroldis Chapman, Yasmani Grandal, Yuli Gurriel, Yoan Moncada, Yasiel Puig, and Jorge Soler, all native Cubans.

Havana has a metropolitan population exceeding 2 million, probably slightly smaller than metro Tampa-St. Pete although specific regional figures are not calculated in Cuba.

Since the region’s attributes are so similar to those of other Caribbean locations such as Santo Domingo and Mexico City, let’s skip to the concerns. There is one obvious and potentially overriding one: politics.

Since the establishment of the Castro government more than a half-century ago, operating anything in Cuba – including a baseball team – risks submitting to significant foreign governmental oversight. That oversight may have been reduced in the years since the death of Fidel Castro, but in recent years American business involvement in Cuba has actually waned.

There are potential risks from the United States government as well. The administration does not appear friendly to expanded American business activity in Cuba, and certainly few businesses come across as symbolically powerful as baseball.

So while there is substantial obvious interest in baseball across Cuba, playing regular games in Havana may be a hard sell both in Havana and Washington.