MLB 2021

[SFGiants58]

7 hours ago, Gothamite said:

 

That would be a good argument, except that Tampa Bay has demonstrated that they’re not even interested when the Rays are the best team in the American League. 

 

The Rays have given the area compelling value.  The area yawned and went back to ignoring them. 

But hey, let’s ignore the location of the stadium and keep blaming the fans/market!
 

No fans’ love of a team can transcend traffic bottlenecks, terrible parking situations, and long car travel distances at rush hour. Nor can they transcend a terrible-quality stadium in a relatively undeveloped neighborhood. That stadium screwed the market. The market isn’t inherently bad and it deserves another chance.

[gosioux76]

4 minutes ago, SFGiants58 said:

I really don’t have a soft spot for the Expos at all. The team died because the market and team did a fusion dance of failure. I think the current nostalgia movement is the product of rose-tinted glasses and is completely ignorant of the socioeconomic realities that doomed the Expos to relocation.

People like to pin everything on the ‘94 strike and Loria, but it’s not that simple at all. I’m not a Loria apologist, but he inherited a team run on the cheap in a market that nearly seceded from Canada.  The 1994 team, had they made the playoffs, would have just broken even. The fire sale would still happen and the Expos would become a dumpster fire again. He wasn’t willing to use private money for a new stadium? Well, Brochu (the previous owner) didn’t want to use it either. The minute that the original Bronfman sold the team, the Expos’ days were numbered.

 

None of what you said is wrong, but I also think it's possible to be nostalgic for something just because it's gone.  I have a soft spot for the Hartford Whalers, too, but I wouldn't make a case for bringing them back. 

[PrimalCookie]

On 9/27/2021 at 7:15 PM, the admiral said:

Has anything changed with regard to Orlando being a possible way to keep the team in central Florida? Is there any way that could be viable? I don't believe in Montreal; soccer is the second sport there now and I don't think baseball can make it as the third. Tampa Bay seems permanently broken. 

We've paid for the Amway Center, Citrus Bowl "renovations" that were basically tearing the whole thing down and rebuilding it, and a new downtown performing arts center in the last 10 years. Nobody was willing to spend public dollars for Orlando City's SSS (thankfully that wasn't an issue as the owners chose to build it completely with their own money) in 2015, and I doubt that sentiment would change for a new shiny home of the Rays that would be much more expensive than OC Stadium was. On top of all that, there's never been a large grassroots movement to bring big time baseball to Orlando. As much as I don't want to admit it, I think it'd flop massively.

 

Simply moving across the Bay to Tampa is the right move, but if that can't happen and Stu is really determined to move then fine, he should just do it and stop pretending that a split season between 2 different countries and languages would work. Montreal won't turn up for half a team and Tampa Bay will fully reject them as traitors. Imagine if the Chargers decided to split their season between San Diego and LA and expected to get any sort of engagement from SD/a full embracement from LA. Not happening.

[Sport]

10 hours ago, Gothamite said:

 

That would be a good argument, except that Tampa Bay has demonstrated that they’re not even interested when the Rays are the best team in the American League. 

 

The Rays have given the area compelling value.  The area yawned and went back to ignoring them. 

 

Again with this? Did the Rays move out of St. Pete while I wasn't paying attention? 

 

2 hours ago, SFGiants58 said:

But hey, let’s ignore the location of the stadium and keep blaming the fans/market!
 

No fans’ love of a team can transcend traffic bottlenecks, terrible parking situations, and long car travel distances at rush hour. Nor can they transcend a terrible-quality stadium in a relatively undeveloped neighborhood. That stadium screwed the market. The market isn’t inherently bad and it deserves another chance.

We've all done this dance a hundred times, but it'll never not be weird to see otherwise level-headed posters willfully refuse to acknowledge stadium location as a valid reason for the Rays attendance problems. It's the only reason! I don't know why people can't give them that benefit of the doubt. If the Rays move to downtown Tampa and then still draw flies then go off, but the stadium is still in the same place it's always been. They could be the best team in the history of baseball and I'm still not making that trip to the Trop. I don't blame a single person in that market for choosing not to make that haul, especially on a weeknight.

[dont care]

11 minutes ago, Sport said:

 

Again with this? Did the Rays move out of St. Pete while I wasn't paying attention? 

 

We've all done this dance a hundred times, but it'll never not be weird to see otherwise level-headed posters willfully refuse to acknowledge stadium location as a valid reason for the Rays attendance problems. It's the only reason! I don't know why that's so people can't give them that benefit of the doubt. If the Rays move to downtown Tampa and then still draw flies then go off, but the stadium is still in the same place it's always been. They could be the best team in the history of baseball and I'm still not making that trip to the Trop. I don't blame a single person in that market for choosing not to make that haul, especially on a weeknight.

The thing is that isn’t the only reason. The rays really don’t have a fan base. The reason being is that there are so many transplants they never had a chance to build one. Even those born and raised in Florida are more likely to be red sox and Yankees fans than they are rays fans. The stadium situation is the worst in baseball and no one will say other wise, but when you get the stadium more filled for red sox and Yankees games that shows you that the location is not the sole problem. It shows a sever lack of caring by the local fans. 

[SFGiants58]

25 minutes ago, Sport said:

 

We've all done this dance a hundred times, but it'll never not be weird to see otherwise level-headed posters willfully refuse to acknowledge stadium location as a valid reason for the Rays attendance problems. It's the only reason! I don't know why that's so people can't give them that benefit of the doubt. If the Rays move to downtown Tampa and then still draw flies then go off, but the stadium is still in the same place it's always been. They could be the best team in the history of baseball and I'm still not making that trip to the Trop. I don't blame a single person in that market for choosing not to make that haul, especially on a weeknight.

There really is no comparing The Trop to any other terrible stadium situations.

 

You could have maybe made the same argument about the Giants during the Candlescheiße period, that the market failed because the stadium was built in the nastiest weather area of the city. Unlike The Trop, it was on the side of a sizable highway and easily accessible by the fans. People would turn up when the weather cooperated and the team was good. A new stadium in a better locale silenced those criticisms. The Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum is sandwiched between freeways and a BART station. New Comiskey isn’t in a bottlenecked region of Chicago (IIRC). Turnpike Stadium was literally off of a turnpike.

 

Not even Richfield Coliseum was that bad. It was on the side of a big highway and accessible despite being in the middle of nowhere. The Trop is none of these things. 

 

8 minutes ago, dont care said:

The thing is that isn’t the only reason. The rays really don’t have a fan base. The reason being is that there are so many transplants they never had a chance to build one. Even those born and raised in Florida are more likely to be red sox and Yankees fans than they are rays fans. The stadium situation is the worst in baseball and no one will say other wise, but when you get the stadium more filled for red sox and Yankees games that shows you that the location is not the sole problem. It shows a sever lack of caring by the local fans. 

 

Well, maybe there would be more Rays fans in the stands if the people could actually attend games with ease. The bigger problem begets smaller ones.
 

Tangentially, Tampa Bay got burned so many times by MLB teams that it’s no wonder that there’s an inherent distrust of MLB. Nothing the Rays have done off-field (under Naimoli or Sternberg) has inspired confidence about MLB. 
 

The Rays’ situation is the McMartin Preschool Trial of stadium situations. They were doomed premises (St. Pete stadium and satanic abuse accusations) made for petty reasons that wasted time and money (aggravated by the egos involved). Both dragged on too long while obvious situations were always there (Tampa proper stadium and assuming the cops egged kids on to say crazy stuff). 
 

[GhostOfNormMacdonald]

Me wanting the Expos back is based purely on their logo and the expirience of following a bi-lingual leage (can't quite get into the NHL or CFL). As someone born in 2000, I have 0 memories of the Expos existing so I just think it would be neat.

[dont care]

8 minutes ago, SFGiants58 said:

There really is no comparing The Trop to any other terrible stadium situations.

 

You could have maybe made the same argument about the Giants during the Candlescheiße period, that the market failed because the stadium was built in the nastiest weather area of the city. Unlike The Trop, it was on the side of a sizable highway and easily accessible by the fans. People would turn up when the weather cooperated and the team was good. A new stadium in a better locale silenced those criticisms. The Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum is sandwiched between freeways and a BART station. New Comiskey isn’t in a bottlenecked region of Chicago (IIRC). Turnpike Stadium was literally off of a turnpike.

 

Not even Richfield Coliseum was that bad. It was on the side of a big highway and accessible despite being in the middle of nowhere. The Trop is none of these things. 

 

 

Well, maybe there would be more Rays fans in the stands if the people could actually attend games with ease. The bigger problem begets smaller ones.
 

Tangentially, Tampa Bay got burned so many times by MLB teams that it’s no wonder that there’s an inherent distrust of MLB. Nothing the Rays have done off-field (under Naimoli or Sternberg) has inspired confidence about MLB. 

What’s keeping rays fans from the stadium, yet Red Sox and Yankees fans can get to the stadium just fine? I get that it’s inconvenient but if the fans really loved their team like they say they do they’d still go and not be outnumbered by away fans when their team is 1st in the league after appearing in the WS last year.

[gosioux76]

37 minutes ago, Sport said:

We've all done this dance a hundred times, but it'll never not be weird to see otherwise level-headed posters willfully refuse to acknowledge stadium location as a valid reason for the Rays attendance problems. It's the only reason! I don't know why that's so people can't give them that benefit of the doubt. If the Rays move to downtown Tampa and then still draw flies then go off, but the stadium is still in the same place it's always been. They could be the best team in the history of baseball and I'm still not making that trip to the Trop. I don't blame a single person in that market for choosing not to make that haul, especially on a weeknight.

 

This is really the heart of the conundrum for the Rays.

 

They exist in metro area that, from the outset, faced questions over whether it would be a viable baseball market. And because they play in a terrible stadium in an even worse location, there's the theory that they never really got to test the market's viability. 

 

So if that you were your money, would you bet hundreds of millions on a new stadium in an attempt to prove the market works? 

 

That was meant as rhetorical, and not directed at anyone in particular. I'm also not suggesting that escaping to Montreal is the panacea to this situation, only that relocating elsewhere in Tampa carries its own degree of uncertainty. 

[SFGiants58]

Just now, dont care said:

What’s keeping rays fans from the stadium, yet Red Sox and Yankees fans can get to the stadium just fine? I get that it’s inconvenient but if the fans really loved their team like they say they do they’d still go and not be outnumbered by away fans when their team is 1st in the league after appearing in the WS last year.

Yeah, no. Rationality about driving in those locations generally triumphs over fan devotion, especially when TV or streaming is an option. Average TV ratings are an indicator of more substantial support. Again, why bother with an incredibly taxing and drawn-out drive when you could see them on TV? Put them in a better location within the market and the story would be different.

 

Also, do Yankees and Red Sox fans really swarm the stadium when their teams show up? That’s something that could use empirical data.

[sky1324]

I'm of the opinion that Tampa could have worked as a baseball market, provided the stadium was in the correct place to begin with. Now, however, and especially with this split-season plan, MLB in Tampa Bay might be thoroughly poisoned and I'm not sure even a well-placed downtown-Tampa stadium would fix it, again, especially if it's a part of the split-season plan. I feel the same way about Miami - I'm afraid the way MLB has happened has ruined it permanently. I don't want to see the Rays move. I don't want to see any team move. But I also don't want to see the MLB do what the NHL is doing with Arizona - the sunk cost fallacy. Will fans be willing to engage with the team in good faith in a downtown Tampa stadium when the team has shown that they are willing to abandon the market? I'm not sure. It might be that the best solution is to let the Rays move, as much as that sucks.

[SFGiants58]

Yup. The “poisoning of the well” has me worried with Tampa Bay, especially if there is little faith in a team post-Trop. The Coyotes comparison is pretty apt, especially if the team doesn’t turn around in a better location.

 

Personally, the best move would be for Stu to sell the team to a local Tampa Bay Area group. Let them build a privately funded stadium in Tampa and see how it goes. Stu is the problem here, like Naimoli was before (albeit for opposite reasons).

[Ridleylash]

The Coyotes at least finally seem to have a stable management group that isn't incompetent and/or actively disinterested in running a good franchise in the market. A promising rebuild and a convenient arena would do a lot to repair their major problems, even if Glendale is pissy over it (though they didn't exactly help their case with the team over the years, either).

 

The problem with the Rays is that Stu just :censored:ing hates Tampa Bay as a region for some reason. Before that, they were just another bad team in a fossilized ballpark. Now they're a good team in a fossilized ballpark with an owner who does literally everything he can to make Tampa fans despise him; it doesn't matter if the ballclub is good if the city :censored:ing despises the person running it.

 

If Jeff Vinik can make hockey, a sport so many people say can't work in the Southern US, into a city darling after years of similarly tumultuous waters, then the Rays can absolutely make it work in Tampa after similar problems.

 

The problem is that the Rays are not owned by Vinik, who worked to transform Downtown Tampa into what it is now...they're owned by Stu Sternberg; a scumbag who would rather sit in a sterile junkheap of a ballpark in a suburb while jacking prices to everything to squeeze as much money out of anyone who comes as possible, and then whines about how "Tampa doesn't work full-time" when people decide to watch from home instead because they don't want to spend assloads of money just to see a single Rays game and deal with the travel.

 

Right now, Sternberg's trying to get both Tampa and Montréal to pony up cash for new ballparks just so both can get halfsies; which is both A.) the most obvious :censored:ing ploy to try and get Tampa to give up and B.) the most asinine, half-baked, logistical nightmare of an idea possible that I see absolutely no chance the MLBPA gives any sort of approval to.

[Sport]

15 minutes ago, dont care said:

What’s keeping rays fans from the stadium, yet Red Sox and Yankees fans can get to the stadium just fine? I get that it’s inconvenient but if the fans really loved their team like they say they do they’d still go and not be outnumbered by away fans when their team is 1st in the league after appearing in the WS last year.

 

There's a really simple explanation for this: Red Sox and Yankees fans don't get to the stadium "just fine" - their inventory is more scarce. They all have to deal with the same bastard commute as Rays fans, the difference is asking Rays fans to make that bastard commute 81 times a year versus asking the Tampa Bay Area Red Sox/Yankees fans to make the bastard commute ~9 times a year. There's admittedly a lot of Yankees and Red Sox fans in the Tampa Bay Area, but they simply have fewer games to choose from, which in turn means more of them will be at any one of those ~9 games. 

 

I guarantee you if the Yankees moved to the Trop full-time they would have the same attendance problems as the Rays. 

[tBBP]

^ To add to that, there's one other thing to throw in here re: getting to the Trop and back: transit. Boston and New York (and other major metros) have light rail access to their stadia; Tampa does not. And ain't nobody in their right mind* finna burn up all their gas money going across one of three bridges (two being part of the same freeway, one of them being a toll bridge at that) to get to a stadium tucked next to what St. Pete laughingly calls its downtown on no weeknight then drive all the way back to where they come from when they gotta get their babies to bed, then get themselves to bed, then get up early enough to get their babies up for school and everything that goes along with that.  It's a thing called priorities, for some people.  Plus, the regular commoner folk in TSP ain't got money to be throwing around like that as it is.  So yeah...add that one into the pot as well.

 

Spoiler

*Yes there's still plenty of rational-minded people walking around Earth.

 

[The_Admiral]

  

2 hours ago, Ridleylash said:

The problem is that the Rays are not owned by Vinik, who worked to transform Downtown Tampa into what it is now

 

"The work" was that he basically bought land and an arena and got a team for free

[jp1409]

5 hours ago, NicDB said:

 

What's so terrible about the White Sox park? Apart from the lack of open concourses, I can't think of anything wrong with it. 

 

What's awesome or simply very good about it would be a better question. I'm a sucker for ballparks, been to 24 total, 20 current. Most current stadiums are at least very good. Architecture, history, location, skyline, general experience, food, they usually always have some great features. I can't think of something that impressed me there. It doesn't look good, location is sketchy at best, skyline isn't even worth mentioning, general baseball experience sucked, it was built right before the golden era of current ballparks just before Camden Yards so there's no history involved and it only feels like a "modern" cookie-cutter, upper deck is horrible and felt like it wasn't even related to lower deck. Chicago is a 40 hours roundtrip from home, we were there on a Midwest baseball roadtrip last time around about five years ago. We bought upper deck seats as we were on a budget and were not even allowed to enter lower deck where everything decent about this place is. We had to complain to customer service that we were not aware that such a policy still existed in any MLB park when we bought the tickets, be escorted by an usher to an elevator and have the "privilege" of touring the whole place... It felt like like old school stadiums with sections separated by a goddamn fence according to ticket prices. It's a bottom three current MLB stadium at best no matter the criteria.

[jp1409]

Double post

[Gothamite]

4 hours ago, Sport said:

it'll never not be weird to see otherwise level-headed posters willfully refuse to acknowledge stadium location as a valid reason for the Rays attendance problems. It's the only reason!

 

Objection, Your Honor - arguing facts not in evidence. 

 

When the Rays made their first World Series push, they were identified as the third most popular MLB club in town among baseball fans.  Behind the Yankees and Red Sox.  Third in their own hometown. 

 

There’s just zero evidence that the area will ever support the Rays.  None at all, other than wishful thinking. And hey, I love wishful thinking.  There’s nothing wrong with wishful thinking.  Brewers fans have subsisted on wishful thinking for half a century now.  

 

If you want the Rays to stay in town, that’s awesome.  I can totally respect that.  I myself have no love for relocation.  But maybe we shouldn’t be insulting people who look at the facts and don’t see all the potential you do, okay?

[SFGiants58]

15 minutes ago, Gothamite said:

 

Objection, Your Honor - arguing facts not in evidence. 

 

When the Rays made their first World Series push, they were identified as the third most popular MLB club in town among baseball fans.  Behind the Yankees and Red Sox.  Third in their own hometown. 

 

Link? Maybe they’d have more fans if the stadium was in a better location?

 

15 minutes ago, Gothamite said:

There’s just zero evidence that the area will ever support the Rays.  None at all, other than wishful thinking. And hey, I love wishful thinking.  There’s nothing wrong with wishful thinking.  Brewers fans have subsisted on wishful thinking for half a century now.  

 

Middle-of-the-pack TV ratings? The amount of local ire directed at Stu? Merchandise sale figures (if they exist)?

 

15 minutes ago, Gothamite said:

If you want the Rays to stay in town, that’s awesome.  I can totally respect that.  I myself have no love for relocation.  But maybe we shouldn’t be insulting people who look at the facts and don’t see all the potential you do, okay?

Well, the biggest fact of all of them is the impossible location of The Trop. And it’s really looking like the only issue of real note.