Stadium/Arena Saga Omnibus

[Gothamite]

5 hours ago, RichO said:

The thing that always kills me about Rays attendance is that their local TV numbers are fine, so it's not like they're completely unsupported. 

 

Being in the AL East, they play an outsized number of games against the Yankees and Red Sox, the two most popular teams in Tampa Bay.  I’ve often wondered how those games skew the Rays’ TV ratings. 

[Sec19Row53]

6 hours ago, Magic Dynasty said:

That’s exactly it. Now that the fanbase is alienated, even less people will show up. He’ll then use quickly dwindling attendance to justify getting out as fast as he can.

 

Me? I’m taking advantage of those $5 tickets while they last. I’ll go to a few games over the rest of the summer.

Your avatar says 'Save the Rays', but you'll only go to a few games over the rest of the summer?

[Brian in Boston]

On 6/27/2019 at 3:17 PM, mjrbaseball said:

Th Angels aren't actually moving into the Dodgers territory because they're already there, but do the Dodgers have anything to say about the Angels' choice of site. This example is unrealistic, but say the Angels decided to put a new ballpark in Griffith Park. That's less than two miles from Dodger Stadium. Could the Dodgers block such a move?

 

No, the Dodgers - by themselves - can't block the Angels from relocating to anywhere within the territory that the two franchises share. When I last checked, Major League Baseball Rule 52; Attachment 52 defined the shared territory of the Angels and Dodgers as being comprised of "Los Angeles, Orange, and Ventura Counties in California". 

Now, I do know that at the time of the Angels' establishment as a Major League Baseball franchise, MLB rules dictated that a team setting-up shop in a territory belonging to a club in the other league had to play in a ballpark that was located at least five air miles from that of the existing club's facility, unless the two teams agreed otherwise. Obviously, the Angels and Dodgers hammered out such an agreement, as their respective home ballparks in 1961 - LA's Wrigley Field and the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum - were, at best, located 2 miles away from one another. For the 1962 season, LA's Wrigley Field would have been about 6 miles, as the crow flies, from the newly-opened Dodgers Stadium. Would MLB prefer that any  hypothetical future Los Angeles-based home for the Angels be at least five air miles from Dodger Stadium? While that remains to be seen, any downtown LA location would fall well short of a five-mile minimum distance from Dodgers Stadium.

One interesting side-note to this discussion is that the Angels and Dodgers can, per MLB and MiLB territorial rules, block any affiliated minor league franchise from operating anywhere within their shared Los Angeles/Orange/Ventura County territory. To date, the only MiLB teams that have played within said territory since the Dodgers and Angels arrived in Southern California - obviously, with the permission of the two Major League clubs - have been the Ventura County Gulls (1986) and the Lancaster JetHawks (1996-present) of the California League.

However, four years ago, the Dodgers began exploring the possibility of shifting their Class A-Advanced farm team operation from Rancho Cucamonga to the Woodland Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles. The plan was for Peter Guber (a member of the Dodgers ownership group and part-owner of their Triple A affiliate in Oklahoma City) to partner with his friend Peter Lowy (then the CEO of shopping center development/management company Westfield Corporation) on bringing a California League team to the southwestern corner of the San Fernando Valley.

Westfield Corporation was just about to open the Village at Westfield Topanga, a major extension and reimagining of the existing Westfield Topanga shopping center. The resulting facility was the deathblow for the Westfield Promenade, an aging and obsolete mall that had been struggling for the better part of a decade. Lowy had been brainstorming what to do with the land on which the Promenade was located. What if Westfield were to pay to demolish the Promenade and construct a 7,000-seat minor league ballpark on its site, Guber were to secure a California League franchise, and the Dodgers were to run the day-to-day operations? Westfield owned the land on which the stadium was to be built and was willing to foot-the-bill to construct the stadium. Between spaces at the Village at Westfield Topanga and land that would exist around the stadium, ample parking already existed. The project wasn't looking for a dime of public funding. 

Lowy put Westfield architects to work designing a stadium, Guber cleared the idea with Dodgers brass and began lining up financial partners, Dodgers president Stan Kasten broached the subject with MiLB president Pat O'Conner, and Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti was brought into the loop. All the parties loved the idea, so it was floated by MLB commissioner Rob Manfred. Manfred also thought it was a winning idea. It just needed one final approval... that of Arte Moreno, owner of the Angels.

The Dodgers pitched their plan to the Angels. They pointed out that the proposed Woodland Hills ballpark site was a 57-mile drive from Angels Stadium, 19 miles more distant than the trip from Anaheim to the stadium of the Dodgers' current California League affiliate in Rancho Cucamonga. They offered a variety of incentives, including the opportunity to host more of the games in the annual Angels-Dodgers pre-season Freeway Series. The Angels weren't biting. 

They did have a question for the Dodgers: if the Angels someday wished to move a minor league affiliate into the shared Los Angeles/Orange/Ventura County territory of the big league teams, would the Dodgers grant them permission to do so? The Dodgers wanted to know, might such a move be into the City of Los Angeles? The Angels conceded that could be a possibility. The Dodgers said they couldn't envision ever granting the Angels permission to operate a minor league team within the City of Los Angeles.

The Angels refused to sign-off on the plan to allow a Dodgers farm team to set-up shop in Woodland Hills.

[PrimalCookie]

1 hour ago, Sec19Row53 said:

Your avatar says 'Save the Rays', but you'll only go to a few games over the rest of the summer?

When I have to make a 4 hour roundtrip drive, alongside actually watching the game? Yeah.

[Survival79]

9 hours ago, Scrumptious Ham said:

Now no one wants to go to the games.

 

Announced attendance for first home game after the Montreal plan was revealed: 13,955. 

[Sec19Row53]

3 hours ago, Magic Dynasty said:

When I have to make a 4 hour roundtrip drive, alongside actually watching the game? Yeah.

I drive four plus hours round trip 7 times per year for football. Different, yes, but if it meant I might have a role in saving my team, I might plan a few more trips.

[dont care]

11 hours ago, Magic Dynasty said:

When I have to make a 4 hour roundtrip drive, alongside actually watching the game? Yeah.

Just 4 hours? You must live right outside Tampa, for anywhere else it’s possibly 4 hours just one way trying to get to the game.

[BBTV]

12 hours ago, Survival79 said:

 

Announced attendance for first home game after the Montreal plan was revealed: 13,955. 

 

Announced attendance is "tickets sold", not "attendance", and obviously most of those tickets were probably sold before the announcement.

[BBTV]

10 hours ago, Sec19Row53 said:

I drive four plus hours round trip 7 times per year for football. Different, yes, but if it meant I might have a role in saving my team, I might plan a few more trips.

 

Him making multiple 4-hour trips, on weeknights, is relevant to saving his team.  If anything, it's just going to create more grief since he'd be investing more into a relationship that's just going to end with him being a cuckhold watching his wife slurp down some stylish french canadian's rock hard pastrami.

 

 

[Sec19Row53]

4 minutes ago, BringBackTheVet said:

 

Him making multiple 4-hour trips, on weeknights, is relevant to saving his team.  If anything, it's just going to create more grief since he'd be investing more into a relationship that's just going to end with him being a cuckhold watching his wife slurp down some stylish french canadian's rock hard pastrami.

 

 

Sure, but if I were trying to save my team, I would be making more than "a few" trips before the end of the season. Week nights be damned. Four hour trip be damned. 

[BBTV]

3 minutes ago, Sec19Row53 said:

Sure, but if I were trying to save my team, I would be making more than "a few" trips before the end of the season. Week nights be damned. Four hour trip be damned. 

 

Easy to say when you're not the one facing the problem.  "I'm leaving work at 4 so I can drive two hours to save my team and then get home at close to 1AM and be crappy at work the next day" simply isn't reasonable.  Your example of traveling to Packers games 7 times a year isn't even in the same ballpark of what we're talking about here.  While I'm not facing it either, my gut reaction would be to say FU and not waste my time.  Of course, this move is so unlikely to happen, and the most likely situation is them staying put for the next 8 years, so it's kind of a moot point.

[IceCap]

21 hours ago, Survival79 said:

 

Announced attendance for first home game after the Montreal plan was revealed: 13,955. 

That's still under their season average (which isn't great either).

 

http://www.espn.com/mlb/attendance

 

Not to mention Vet's right. Immediate post-announcement doesn't mean much. Let's see how it looks a week on.

 

EDIT- lol Miami

Edited June 29, 2019 by Ice_Cap

[DG_YouKnowWhatThatMeans]

1 hour ago, Ice_Cap said:

That's still under their season average (which isn't great either).

 

http://www.espn.com/mlb/attendance

 

Not to mention Vet's right. Immediate post-announcement doesn't mean much. Let's see how it looks a week on.

 

EDIT- lol Miami

 

Time to contract the Marlins.

 

Interesting to see Seattle in the top 20 there. The team has been so bad for so long, it's amazing people still show up. And I'll say that when Seattle had its hot start, there were really was a lot of buzz in town around the Mariners. People were excited, going to games, and ready to watch winning baseball in the city.

[DEAD!]

I admit, I totally ignored the Mariners after the hot start, and only noticed their record since when they traded Encarnaçion.

[Gothamite]

This popped up on my YouTube feed - interesting to see how Sternberg felt about the prospect of baseball in Montreal as far back as 2013. 

 

 

[SFGiants58]

46 minutes ago, Gothamite said:

This popped up on my YouTube feed - interesting to see how Sternberg felt about the prospect of baseball in Montreal as far back as 2013. 

 

I’ve always figured that Montréal was the most trouble-free relocation in the same way DC was for the MK I Expos (no realignment, decent temporary stadium, etc.). 

[BBTV]

21 minutes ago, SFGiants58 said:

I’ve always figured that Montréal was the most trouble-free relocation in the same way DC was for the MK I Expos (no realignment, decent temporary stadium, etc.). 

 

Did the Expos really ever compete for good free agents?  Is it fair to ask whether they'd be at a disadvantage for recruiting any star African American players without dramatically overpaying?  I don't think Latin American players would be an issue - in fact some might prefer it, at least for the next 1-5 years, and I don't think most white American-born players would have any issue, as it's a great place despite presenting some extra challenges for their families that might move with them, but would AA players really go for it considering they'd be putting themselves in situations where they're more of a minority than they are anywhere in the states, and from things that I've read (not witnessed personally) it's not known for embracing racial diversity?  Is it fair to ask that, and is it a fair concern?

 

It might be a moot point, since the results of a google search for black MLB players shocked me when I saw how few there were, but the ability to draw FA's in a non-capped sport is usually one of the first things on my mind once the other hurdles (basic start-up) prove to be workable (which, so far, they haven't in MTL's case.)  In capped sports, it doesn't matter as much, since there's limited money to go around and any player will follow the money anywhere, but baseball is different.

 

 

 

 

 

[Olmec]

Why is this still being discussed. The Tampa Bay-Montreal Rays is never going to happen. 

[Gothamite]

Just now, Olmec said:

Why is this still being discussed. The Tampa Bay-Montreal Rays is never going to happen. 

 

Of course not.  But the odds are much better that the Rays will be playing in Montreal in five years’ time than that they will be playing in Tampa Bay. 

[BBTV]

Just now, Gothamite said:

 

Of course not.  But the odds are much better that the Rays will be playing in Montreal in five years’ time than that they will be playing in Tampa Bay. 

 

Maybe 8 years time... unless that buyout shrinks a bit every year.  In the video that you posted it was said that part of breaking the lease early would be that they'd have to fund the demo, in addition to any financial buyouts.  What is not known, is if it's a compulsory lease (I forget the legal term) that requires them to operate there, regardless of if they just pay the lease off and attempt to operate elsewhere, like most leases are.