MLB Stadium Saga: Oakland/Tampa Bay/Southside

[Red Comet]

30 minutes ago, DukeofChutney said:

Pardon my limited knowledge on this, but could Detroit or Cleveland just refuse to move? Or does the league reserve the right to move a teams division?

 

 

I remember that the Royals were approached to move to the NL Central before the Brewers but they refused and then you had the situation with the Astros this past decade. So, the team would have to consent to relocating to another division or league. 

[DukeofChutney]

36 minutes ago, Red Comet said:

 

I remember that the Royals were approached to move to the NL Central before the Brewers but they refused and then you had the situation with the Astros this past decade. So, the team would have to consent to relocating to another division or league. 

Ah ok, thanks.

 

I guess there are compensations from the league for the team that moves too.  You can't blame a team for staying though  (keeping this generic) if you're in a decent divison that you have a 75% chance of winning, why move to a division that could reduce that to, say 50%.

Of couse if that move means that you'd sell more regular season tickets then that works but is that worth it at the expense of playoff prospects.

 

Anyway... I guess neither Detroit or Cleveland need to worry too much about it now. Not with this lease on the Trop still having a few years left in it.

[SFGiants58]

2 hours ago, mania said:

 

I really, really wish this board would stop propogating this lie.

 

They don't.

 

They don't do as poorly as say, the Marlins, but they're not a top watched team by any metric.

Ah yes, the ratings misinformation about how the Rays do “great ratings.”
 

In 2019, they were ranked #16, ahead of some truly terrible clubs (Pirates, Tigers, Rockies, Mariners) and clubs with screwy tv deals (Dodgers). The Marlins were at the bottom, of course. 
 

They’re not the “runaway ratings success” that people try to tell you they are. Again, ownership and the stadium situation are to blame for disincentivizing fan engagement.

[The_Admiral]

RSN ratings are tricky because you can toggle between gross number of households and market share depending on which argument you're trying to make at the moment. The Devils always have a small sliver of the pie, but a ratings point is worth more in the New York tri-state area than it is in Nashville, so even with bad ratings, the Devils still have pretty good ratings. In conclusion, New Jersey is a land of contrasts.

 

I've always understood the Rays' TV situation to be that their ratings are "good, considering," or rather that their television viewership is not commensurate with their woeful attendance, and if it were, there'd be even more of a problem than there is right now. 

[The_Admiral]

On 5/29/2021 at 9:46 PM, neo_prankster said:

Are you sure they're not going to Bronson, Missouri?

hey, fatty, I got a movie for ya: A Fridge Too Far!

[McCall]

5 hours ago, DukeofChutney said:

Putting the Trop lease to one side for a moment - do they have any facility in the Nashville area for the Rays to move to in the mean time?

(Naturally, they do have time to build the stadium by the time the Rays can leave the Trop).

 

Geographically, Cleveland makes more sense as the team displaced for Nashville going to the Central. But, apart from logistics and division identity, I wouldn't be surprised if the Rays stayed in the East for the short term. Same would apply if they went to Montreal - the city works in either division. (Whether that makes it right, is a whole other matter! )

 

Pardon my limited knowledge on this, but could Detroit or Cleveland just refuse to move? Or does the league reserve the right to move a teams division?

 

Before the addition of Arizona and Tampa Bay in 1998, Detroit was in the East and Cleveland was in the Central.

[Sec19Row53]

6 hours ago, the admiral said:

 

More or less, yeah, unless you're coming from Here There Be Monsters territory, which a fair deal of Brewers fans are.

 

With Miller Park, the issue isn't location or traffic -- Milwaukee traffic has always struck me as rather light compared to what I've witnessed in Chicago -- but rather some absolutely horrific ingress/egress issues. That place has to have the worst parking lot bottlenecks east of Dodger Stadium. Getting out has been a miserable experience each time I've gone to a game there. That's where Milwaukee's lack of public transit hits you -- everyone drove to the game and they're all pretty much leaving at once.

Just curious--do you expect 25-30,000 people to magically leave the same place at the same time? Of course we all drove to the game, as there's this institution known as tailgating. I've only known one local to complain about leaving the game. I'm sure there's more. If the team went back to the ceremonial opening and closing of the roof, it might lag the times of people leaving. I guess it's what I expect having grown up going to Lambeau. It's gonna take time to leave. Oh well??

[The_Admiral]

Plenty of daylight between "it's gonna take time to leave" and "insufficient infrastructure and the folly of only having one way to reach the premises." Any mass gathering takes time to leave. Getting out of a Brewers game is like eating crap for dessert.  I don't know to what extent they could fix it. There's not a transit culture in Wisconsin.

[SFGiants58]

23 minutes ago, the admiral said:

Plenty of daylight between "it's gonna take time to leave" and "insufficient infrastructure and the folly of only having one way to reach the premises." Any mass gathering takes time to leave. Getting out of a Brewers game is like eating crap for dessert.  I don't know to what extent they could fix it. There's not a transit culture in Wisconsin.

I remember all the people whining about the streetcars in Milwaukee, which started service during the last year I was there. I didn’t ride it, because I could comfortably walk to the places I really wanted to go. The most issues it gave me were construction noises when I was in the Third Ward. 

[bosrs1]

On 5/29/2021 at 4:46 AM, Walk-Off said:

Yesterday, an anchor of the morning newscast on the Bay Area's Fox station interviewed Dave Kaval:

 

https://www.ktvu.com/video/938385

 

Kaval talked up the Las Vegas option so much in that interview that I have come away with the impression that Kaval, A's principal owner John Fisher, et al. are now to MLB, Oakland, and Las Vegas what Anthony Precourt was to Major League Soccer, Columbus, and Austin, respectively -- people who are eager to try to move a big-league pro sports team from a fairly large city that seems to be too boring for their tastes to an area that has noticeably fewer residents but also a considerably more exciting image (be it the hip, socioculturally cool, "weird" reputation of Austin or the hedonistic glitz of Las Vegas).

 

 

Honestly that's the feeling I'm getting as well. Last week I thought Vegas was in play but was the backup. Now it's pretty clear it's their preferred choice and will be their only choice if Oakland's city council doesn't give them everything they want on July 20. 

[bosrs1]

On 5/22/2021 at 8:21 PM, GDAWG said:

Nice to see Las Vegas is continuing it's delusions of grandeur when it comes to pro sports.

 

Going to be even more fun to watch it blow up in their faces in a few years when Vegas bombs out as a city. 

[bosrs1]

On 4/1/2020 at 7:42 PM, Cujo said:

Oakland fans after the Warriors, Raiders and A's all dip out

 

 

Nah they'll be fine. They all still root for the Warriors. And most of them were Giants fans already, which has been part of the problem. 

[DG_ThenNowForever]

You don't need to abandon tailgating forever to improve access to a stadium.

 

Maybe you have shuttle buses and convert a lane to bus-only on game days. Maybe you provide discounts or free passes to HOV drivers. Maybe you build monorail or something.

 

I don't know. It's not just "well, what can you do?" It's bad for our planet to simply assume it's one person one car for forever. There are better ways.

[SFGiants58]

Beyond cars, downtown St. Pete/the remains of the gas plant district don’t seem too developed in the same way as the areas around Willie Mays Park or Nationals Park. 

[The_Admiral]

57 minutes ago, DG_ThenNowForever said:

Maybe you have shuttle buses and convert a lane to bus-only on game days. Maybe you provide discounts or free passes to HOV drivers. Maybe you build monorail or something.

 

Yeah, I think you'd have to work within existing infrastructure and kinda kludge it with more buses or something. There's no appetite for a big project like a monorail. Couldn't even get high-speed rail to link Milwaukee and Madison, which would have made life easier for so many people. 

[dont care]

2 hours ago, bosrs1 said:

 

Going to be even more fun to watch it blow up in their faces in a few years when Vegas bombs out as a city. 

They’ve been saying that do 2 decades now. Sure there are lulls and casinos go out of business, to them be demolished and build an even bigger resort but vegas has adjusted with the times and will continue to be successful until the businesses in Vegas stop adjusting and it’s no longer adult Disney in America.

[SFGiants58]

2 hours ago, bosrs1 said:

 

Nah they'll be fine. They all still root for the Warriors. And most of them were Giants fans already, which has been part of the problem. 

So yeah, sorry about not giving you guys the San José rights back. My big question is, how’d the A’s even get them in the first place?

[Digby]

14 hours ago, Red Comet said:

I was about to say, anyone thinking you could plop a place like Lambeau, Gillette or Arrowhead in the middle of a downtown has a couple of screws loose. Baseball or hockey/basketball? Sure, as long as the city in question has the infrastructure to handle transportation of people to and from the game and there’s a decent nightlife to be had after the game.

Some cities have managed downtown and/or transit accessible NFL stadia — Baltimore, Philly, Seattle come to mind that I know of. Gillette would have wound up in Boston if the Brady era began a few years earlier and the team knew how things worked in the state house. Now, whether that’s a good idea is another question; last time I was in Minneapolis pre-pandemic the new Vikings stadium was shocking, and not in a good way.

[SFGiants58]

Heck, Mile High is on my light rail route into downtown Denver. It’s pretty easy to access from downtown and other areas via light rail routes, as is Ball Arena. The Dick in Commerce City (8 miles north of downtown Denver), however...

[BBTV]

12 minutes ago, SFGiants58 said:

So yeah, sorry about not giving you guys the San José rights back. My big question is, how’d the A’s even get them in the first place?

 

https://www.athleticsnation.com/2012/4/18/2958535/territorial-rights-a-not-so-brief-history

 

I'll concede that I only skimmed that because it's very long, but based on my minimal reading, it seems like there wasn't any territorial rights until the Giants were looking into moving to San Jose, so in order to "help out", the A's owner essentially created them and handed over the west and south bay to the Giants so they could sell San Jose as still their home market.  The thing is, they did this legally with paperwork and everything, and the Giants now had a valuable asset that never previously existed, and they never gave it back even after not moving to SJ.