MLB 2021

[JTernup]

1 hour ago, spartacat_12 said:

 

An organized effort to bring MLB back to Montreal has been going on for nearly 10 years, and the Blue Jays games at Olympic Stadium were very successful. The reasons for the original franchise moving have been well documented, and it wasn't simply because of  attendance issues. 

 

If baseball returns to Montreal they would absolutely be the number 2 team in town. Much like in Toronto & Vancouver, people in Montreal think they are above the CFL, so the Als wouldn't be much competition. As for MLS,  the Impact/Club Foot have been near the bottom of the league's attendance figures, and I've even heard rumblings that they could move into the CPL.

 

An organizing effort and filling a stadium for a few games after over a decade of baseball being gone aren't quite the best indicators that Montreal will be successful. Just about any mid-to-large sized city in North America could fill a baseball stadium for a one off game. The struggle with baseball is that you need 20k people to show up 81 times. I'm not saying Montreal couldn't be successful, I'm saying that salting the earth on another market when it has NEVER received a fair shot to succeed is not a good strategy. MLB already has several failing markets and anyone who doesn't recognize that there are no sure things left is fooling themselves. Invest in the market you have, because the Rays do have a decent fan base, as TV viewership shows. 

 

If your way of making me think MLB will work for the second time is telling me how the most famous team in the CFL is an afterthought and that a team in another league (which is thriving in several markets MLB isn't) is at risk of being moved into CPL you have a funny way of convincing me.

[SFGiants58]

1 hour ago, JTernup said:

Invest in the market you have, because the Rays do have a decent fan base, as TV viewership shows. 

 

That myth needs to die. The Rays have average-to-low TV ratings, only ahead of terrible competitive teams with good stadium situations (Tigers and Pirates) and teams with horrific TV deals (Dodgers). The Marlins were dead last.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/maurybrown/2018/10/04/2018-mlb-regional-tv-ratings-in-primetime-shows-continued-strong-popularity/#21d746d46257

 

https://www.statista.com/statistics/251536/average-tv-viewership-of-selected-major-league-baseball-games/

 

1 hour ago, JTernup said:

If your way of making me think MLB will work for the second time is telling me how the most famous team in the CFL is an afterthought and that a team in another league (which is thriving in several markets MLB isn't) is at risk of being moved into CPL you have a funny way of convincing me.

The difference is that both of those teams are run terribly. The Als are recovering from an immense ownership struggle/hot potato and Club de Foot (in mouth) has struggled considerably since arriving in MLS. It’s how you run it, not how the market is.

 

[MilSox]

On 9/26/2021 at 12:53 PM, BBTV said:

 I never liked watching expos games on tv when they were in Olympic Stadium

 

I never saw much of the Expos back in the day... Milwaukee being a AL city for most of their concurrent existence.  But I caught a game of the 1980(?) NLCS during lockdown and my mind was blown that a MLB team played in a venue like that during my lifetime. Although in hindsight, I actually found the backstop fence and running track kind of charming in a bizarre kind of way. Kind of reflective of their logo which is nothing of what I like in a good hat monogram, yet I like it somehow.

[Ridleylash]

The main problem with the Rays is that they have both sucked for a majority of their history and are in a park far away from the core of Tampa Bay. That could be fixed by just getting a stadium in a better location; people will still go to the games of bad teams if it's convenient for them, especially if the region has a lot of transplants like the Tampa Bay area does, and the team that's currently in place would be a pretty good way for someone in Tampa to enjoy a night out.

 

The problem with the Marlins is that this team has consistently, over multiple ownership groups, blown things up whenever they look to be on an upswing, leading to endless rebuilding and waning fan interest in seeing a perpetually bad, perpetually rebuilding ballclub even if they have a couple of World Series titles won before a chunk of their fanbase was even alive. But they're still in a pretty good location, which helps make up for their abysmal TV ratings.

 

Basically, the Rays are well-run but terribly-located, and the Marlins are terribly-run but well-located.

[JTernup]

1 hour ago, SFGiants58 said:

 

That myth needs to die. The Rays have average-to-low TV ratings, only ahead of terrible competitive teams with good stadium situations (Tigers and Pirates) and teams with horrific TV deals (Dodgers). The Marlins were dead last.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/maurybrown/2018/10/04/2018-mlb-regional-tv-ratings-in-primetime-shows-continued-strong-popularity/#21d746d46257

 

https://www.statista.com/statistics/251536/average-tv-viewership-of-selected-major-league-baseball-games/

 

The difference is that both of those teams are run terribly. The Als are recovering from an immense ownership struggle/hot potato and Club de Foot (in mouth) has struggled considerably since arriving in MLS. It’s how you run it, not how the market is.

 

How is it a myth to say they have a decent fanbase when the TV viewership is 17th out of 30? You can make all of the excuses for other teams that you want but being in the middle of the pack literally shows the Rays have a decent fan base. 

 

This is the bizarre thing about all of you folks who want the Rays to move out of the Tampa Bay market. You're willing to make SOOO many excuses for other teams that are struggling with attendance. The Als and CdF are run poorly and don't get results, LAD has a terrible TV deal, the ballparks are just too good at DET and PIT for fans to watch on TV, the Marlins get a pass because they have a stadium. What you don't seem to understand is that the Rays are just as poorly run as any of those teams. They just happen to be really well run on the field and horribly run off of it. Ownership has neglected the market, has done little to no promotion or marketing of the team, offers fewer game day deals than any Big 5 team I've ever lived near across 3 states and 6 TV markets, and have completely bungled their stadium situation. 

 

Once again, like others in here you don't seem to know what is actually happening in the market. You just want to say, the Rays win, why don't fans go to games. If you can make excuses for poor on field management you need to do the same for poor off field management.

 

And even despite the great success the Rays have had recently, this is still a franchise that has finished more than 10 GB of the division lead in 2/3 of its seasons in existence. They play money ball and send players packing in a way that makes it hard for fans to connect to the team or players too. This is a team that has lost or traded every big star in its franchise history such Carl Crawford, Evan Longoria, Blake Snell, Chris Archer, Matt Garza, Ben Zobrist, Delmon Young, James Shields, Wade Davis and probably many I'm forgetting. They've done really well on those trades but you'd be hard pressed to find a team that has cycled through franchise players more than the Rays. That hurts fan connection.

[spartacat_12]

1 hour ago, JTernup said:

An organizing effort and filling a stadium for a few games after over a decade of baseball being gone aren't quite the best indicators that Montreal will be successful. Just about any mid-to-large sized city in North America could fill a baseball stadium for a one off game. The struggle with baseball is that you need 20k people to show up 81 times. I'm not saying Montreal couldn't be successful, I'm saying that salting the earth on another market when it has NEVER received a fair shot to succeed is not a good strategy. MLB already has several failing markets and anyone who doesn't recognize that there are no sure things left is fooling themselves. Invest in the market you have, because the Rays do have a decent fan base, as TV viewership shows. 

 

If your way of making me think MLB will work for the second time is telling me how the most famous team in the CFL is an afterthought and that a team in another league (which is thriving in several markets MLB isn't) is at risk of being moved into CPL you have a funny way of convincing me.

 

On what planet are the Alouettes the most famous team in the CFL? They don't have rabid fan support like Saskatchewan, Winnipeg, or Hamilton, and haven't had the same historical on-field success that Toronto or Edmonton have. Heck, they've folded twice.

 

Montreal is the biggest market in North America that doesn't already have an MLB team, and is much more stable economically & politically than it was at the turn of the century. Unfortunately I don't think that having half a team for a few years before it maybe becomes a full-time Montreal team would be a great foundation to build a new franchise on.

[SFGiants58]

9 minutes ago, JTernup said:

How is it a myth to say they have a decent fanbase when the TV viewership is 17th out of 30? You can make all of the excuses for other teams that you want but being in the middle of the pack literally shows the Rays have a decent fan base. 

 

Eh, I’d say it’s oversold more than anything else. Middle-pack ratings are whatever and nowhere near the “saving grace” defenders of the team want it to be.

 

9 minutes ago, JTernup said:

This is the bizarre thing about all of you folks who want the Rays to move out of the Tampa Bay market. You're willing to make SOOO many excuses for other teams that are struggling with attendance.
 

The Als and CdF are run poorly and don't get results, LAD has a terrible TV deal, the ballparks are just too good at DET and PIT for fans to watch on TV, the Marlins get a pass because they have a stadium.

 

I was talking about ratings, not attendance, with the other baseball teams. The Dodgers are in the top half in attendance, so that doesn’t apply to them.  I didn’t say that the parks were the reason why DET and PIT have bad ratings. I said they had stable stadium situations for poorly-run on-field teams (unlike Tampa Bay, where the inverse is true). Also, the Als and CdF had those extenuating circumstances that might not translate to a baseball team.

 

9 minutes ago, JTernup said:

What you don't seem to understand is that the Rays are just as poorly run as any of those teams. They just happen to be really well run on the field and horribly run off of it. Ownership has neglected the market, has done little to no promotion or marketing of the team, offers fewer game day deals than any Big 5 team I've ever lived near across 3 states and 6 TV markets, and have completely bungled their stadium situation. 

 

 

Nobody is disputing Stu’s attempt to poison the well in Tampa/St. Pete here. It’s just that some believe that it was a bad market in the first place. We thoroughly understand the poor state of the club’s off-field affairs. 

 

9 minutes ago, JTernup said:

Once again, like others in here you don't seem to know what is actually happening in the market. You just want to say, the Rays win, why don't fans go to games. If you can make excuses for poor on field management you need to do the same for poor off field management.

Actually, I’d say I have a fair sense of what’s going on in the market. MLB blue-balled the market for over a decade, St. Petersburg built an albatross of a stadium to “get one over” on Tampa, Naimoli was an egomaniacal buffoon who poisoned  the well, and Stu decided to stay out of the front office’s way as he penny-pinched and added more poison to the Tampa Bay stadium well. Stu wants the market to fail, because he’s unwilling to cough up money for a privately-financed venue in Tampa proper. Or, he saw the Marlins situation and worried that the same thing would happen there.

 

The well of Tampa Bay baseball has been so thoroughly poisoned that I doubt a Tampa proper stadium would fix it. At this point, pulling the plug has become a sensible idea for many. I would rather that a Tampa stadium works out, but I have my suspicions that it wouldn’t be a fix-all solution.

[Lights Out]

2 hours ago, JTernup said:

Just about any mid-to-large sized city in North America could fill a baseball stadium for a one off game.

 

I strongly doubt there are many other non-MLB markets that would consistently fill the seats for Spring Training games the way Montreal did. Maybe special event games that actually count, like the Field of Dreams Game or the Little League Classic. But not Spring Training.

 

Expos fans also flocked to Cooperstown for Tim Raines' induction ceremony a few years ago despite not having a team anymore. I'm sure the MLB noticed that too.

[marlinfan]

6 hours ago, BBTV said:

 

I'm not lumping them together.  I'm simply stating that regardless of the reasons, neither one has taken root, and I have no confidence that there's any way baseball in Florida will ever be a success.  It might be a failure in each Florida location for different reasons, but there's no reason to believe it would succeed anywhere in Florida. 

 

Would a perfectly-located stadium in Tampa work?  Maybe, but it can't happen so it's moot.  Would a great team bring people to that ugly-ass dull-dome that is the antithesis of what a stadium in Miami should look like?  Again, we'll never know.  Move them to Orlando, and the excuse will be that they're competing with Disney or some other reason.

 

I'm old enough to remember expansion in '93, and reading an article in SI about how one writer felt major-league baseball in Florida was a bad idea - and it turns out he was right.  Florida should cherish it's place as one of the two sprint training sites, and be good with that.

Have you ever been to Miami? Marlins Park is exactly what a ballpark in Miami should look like. It’s definitely not Art Deco or Mediterranean Revival which are both concentrated to two small areas in the city.

 

MLB in Florida was doomed from the beginning when MLB allowed Joe Robbie Stadium and Tropicana Field to be permanent solutions during expansion.

 

I visited the Trop this weekend for the first time in about 10 years and while it’s still the 29th best ballpark in baseball the experience has improved tremendously.

 

 

[SFGiants58]

11 minutes ago, Lights Out said:

 

I strongly doubt there are many other non-MLB markets that would consistently fill the seats for Spring Training games the way Montreal did. Maybe special event games that actually count, like the Field of Dreams Game or the Little League Classic. But not Spring Training.

 

Expos fans also flocked to Cooperstown for Tim Raines' induction ceremony a few years ago despite not having a team anymore. I'm sure the MLB noticed that too.

 

I was at the Larry Walker jersey retirement game in Denver and I saw roughly a dozen or so people in Expos gear. I also saw about a dozen or so folks in Cardinals merch, so that might not be a reliable indicator. Still, the Rockies made sure to include plenty of Expos clips in their highlights for Walker's career. 

 

Heck, a revived Expos team would likely add Martinez's 45 and Walker's 33 to the retired number list.

[O.C.D]

1 hour ago, JTernup said:

How is it a myth to say they have a decent fanbase when the TV viewership is 17th out of 30? You can make all of the excuses for other teams that you want but being in the middle of the pack literally shows the Rays have a decent fan base. 

 

This is the bizarre thing about all of you folks who want the Rays to move out of the Tampa Bay market. You're willing to make SOOO many excuses for other teams that are struggling with attendance. The Als and CdF are run poorly and don't get results, LAD has a terrible TV deal, the ballparks are just too good at DET and PIT for fans to watch on TV, the Marlins get a pass because they have a stadium. What you don't seem to understand is that the Rays are just as poorly run as any of those teams. They just happen to be really well run on the field and horribly run off of it. Ownership has neglected the market, has done little to no promotion or marketing of the team, offers fewer game day deals than any Big 5 team I've ever lived near across 3 states and 6 TV markets, and have completely bungled their stadium situation. 

 

Once again, like others in here you don't seem to know what is actually happening in the market. You just want to say, the Rays win, why don't fans go to games. If you can make excuses for poor on field management you need to do the same for poor off field management.

 

And even despite the great success the Rays have had recently, this is still a franchise that has finished more than 10 GB of the division lead in 2/3 of its seasons in existence. They play money ball and send players packing in a way that makes it hard for fans to connect to the team or players too. This is a team that has lost or traded every big star in its franchise history such Carl Crawford, Evan Longoria, Blake Snell, Chris Archer, Matt Garza, Ben Zobrist, Delmon Young, James Shields, Wade Davis and probably many I'm forgetting. They've done really well on those trades but you'd be hard pressed to find a team that has cycled through franchise players more than the Rays. That hurts fan connection.

The older I get the more hesitant I am to move teams if only that it makes a lot of people sad. A lot of people enjoy the spectacle and process of a team moving (from an outside perspective). I'm not sure if a new stadium would make more fans show up, but the stadium they play in now is depressing (from an outside perspective).

[marlinfan]

I have a hard time believing hockey can thrive in Tampa but baseball cannot.

[GriffinM6]

I went to college in Central Florida. I had honestly never met a Rays fan (or a fan of any Tampa team) in my life until I was down there. I was, however, surprised at just how many people there legitimately liked the Rays. These are people who have grown up with the team being successful since that 2008 run.

 

It may have taken some time, but there are people who have allegiance to the Rays from Plant City, to Clearwater, to Brandon, to the heart of Tampa. The Tampa area has had plenty of high-quality players come out of it as well. It's not like baseball is a dead sport there. The issue is 110% the stadium location.

 

If they can somehow manage to get a ballpark that fits ~30k people to be approved before 2027 that's on the east side of the bay, then Rays baseball will be there to stay.

[SFGiants58]

That’s very good to hear, that the well hasn’t been completely poisoned. A stadium next to the RayJay would be less of an albatross than I previously imagined.
 

Tampa doesn’t have the demographic issues of Montréal (Bill 101 driving away many of the anglophones and businesses). It also isn’t a market propped up by a misguided nostalgia movement. I do want Montréal to get a team at some point, but not at the expense of the Rays or Québec taxpayers.

[Ben in LA]

I mean

 

[dbofox]

14 minutes ago, GriffinM6 said:

I went to college in Central Florida. I had honestly never met a Rays fan (or a fan of any Tampa team) in my life until I was down there. I was, however, surprised at just how many people there legitimately liked the Rays. These are people who have grown up with the team being successful since that 2008 run.

 

It may have taken some time, but there are people who have allegiance to the Rays from Plant City, to Clearwater, to Brandon, to the heart of Tampa. The Tampa area has had plenty of high-quality players come out of it as well. It's not like baseball is a dead sport there. The issue is 110% the stadium location.

 

If they can somehow manage to get a ballpark that fits ~30k people to be approved before 2027 that's on the east side of the bay, then Rays baseball will be there to stay.

Having been to Tampa only a handful of times, to visit in-laws, it seemed that the St. Pete location was the issue.  If it were near Raymond James as suggested here, it seems there would be better attendance.  the last time I was down there it sounded like the the two cities were at odds of who would get a potential new stadium.  It's a good sports town, I hope they stay and can work out a deal

[FiddySicks]

26 minutes ago, Ben in LA said:

I mean

 

Hat Club was WAY out in front on that one. 

[SFGiants58]

28 minutes ago, Ben in LA said:

I mean

 

 

I don't hate it. It actually handles the Expos' insignia well. Of course, now it makes me wonder about a navy/light blue/navy-dark teal-light teal-yellow gradient design for the Rays.

[The_Admiral]

It's crazy: I should be happy for my beloved Quebec getting back in the bigs, but...I don't really want them to, and certainly not at the expense of Tampa Bay fans, who were in an unwinnable situation from day one with that park. I think part of it is a desire to see them do it right or not at all, and the other part is that I'm much more emotionally invested in Quebec City rejoining the NHL than Montreal rejoining MLB, and if it has to be one or the other for sleazy tax-break purposes, I'm on l'equipe Nordiques.

[Popmart]

I don't have a horse in this race, but just wanted to say that you're all making really great arguments and I'm really loving following this discussion.