TAMPA — Major League Baseball opens the regular season far and wide on Thursday, but the focus is not on the Dodgers facing Detroit in Los Angeles or the Yankees hosting Milwaukee in New York.
From a baseball standpoint, the fate of last year’s heralded World Series opponents should be front and center. The Dodgers defeated the Yankees in five games.
Instead, all eyes are on Tampa, Fla., and West Sacramento, Calif., where the Rays and Athletics are playing this season in minor-league parks for much different reasons. It’s a first for MLB and the result of decades worth of neglect trying to replace decaying stadiums in St. Petersburg, Fla. and Oakland, Calif., respectively.
Rays manager Kevin Cash said he’s tried to deal head-on with the fact that his club is playing the season at Steinbrenner Field, the spring training home of the Yankees. They open there against the Colorado Rockies on Friday.
“We’re emphasizing the positives over the negatives,” he said in an interview. “I give the guys credit. They seem genuinely excited about getting over to Tampa to start the season.”
The A’s won’t play their first game at Sutter Health Park until Monday night against the Chicago Cubs, but their fate already seems sealed. They are headed to a new ballpark in Las Vegas in 2028 after three seasons in West Sacramento, the result of a failure to build a stadium in multiple San Franciso Bay Area cities, including Oakland.
The A’a are sharing the facility with the River Cats, the Triple-A affiliate of the San Francisco Giants, who have a home series at Sutter Health this weekend before the A’s play three games against the Cubs. To add insult to injury rain is in the forecast all next week.
The Rays’ situation is far more complex and their future in the Tampa Bay region seems grim, considering the condition of hurricane-battered Tropicana Field and no plan on the table now to replace it. They open 26 miles and across the bay from their usual home.
Cash said he isn’t concerned with the long-term viability of the club in Tampa.
“No, I’m more concerned about our 2025 club,” he said. “We’ve got to trust that other people are working on that and make sure that’s in a good place.”
As far as the 2025 club is concerned, the Rays have already lost opening day starter Shane McClanahan to a nerve issue in his left triceps. He’s on the injured list indefinitely, replaced at the front of the rotation by Ryan Pepiot, a former Dodger obtained in the 2023 trade that sent Tyler Glasnow to LA. The injury occurred in McClanahan’s final spring start last Saturday as he returned from Tommy John surgery.
Cash said the latest injury is not related to that surgery.
“Granted, the situation could be a lot worse,” McClanahan told reporters on Monday. “I’m very frustrated that I’m going to be missing a little more time. It’s just a freak thing.”
This comes under the category of when it rains, it pours. For that matter, the Rays will be playing regular-season home games outdoors for the first time since they visited Disney Wide World of Sports near Orlando for a series in 2008, and with that comes all the problems of delays because of the Florida heat and inclement weather.
Because of those probabilities increasing later in the summer, MLB scheduled 19 of Tampa Bay’s first 22 games in April at home.
“As far as the stadium situation is concerned, there’s nothing we can do about it,” Pepiot said in an interview. “We’re playing in Tampa this year and that’s what we know. It’ll be different. We just have to roll with the punches.”
Steinbrenner Field is usually the home of the Tarpons, the Yanks’ Single-A affiliate. The club has played there since 1996 but will spend 2025 playing on a side field at the complex instead to make room for the Rays. Last year, the Tarpons had eight games delayed by rain, plus four cancellations, three postponements, four suspended games and one that was shortened, the Associated Press reported.
That doesn’t include October’s Hurricane Milton, which battered the area, blowing the Teflon roof off the Trop and causing what the city of St. Petersburg has estimated as $55.7 million worth of reconstructive damages.
The city is obligated by lease to fund the repairs, although the city council has yet to authorize the expenditure. An expected vote at Thursday’s session was delayed for at least a week, and it’s not listed yet on the next agenda, either.
If the repairs are not approved, the Rays currently have nowhere to play in 2026 and beyond after owner Stuart Sternberg killed the deal earlier this month to fund his share of a new $1.3 billion domed stadium as part of a redevelopment zone adjacent to the Trop. Sternberg cited the hurricane and expected costly construction delays as the reasons.
If the refurbishment is approved and the Rays can return in time for the 2026 season, they are obligated to play there through 2028, thus kicking the long-term stadium issue and possible relocation down the road a bit.
Therein lies the predicament.
Cash said he held a team meeting at the start of camp in Port Charlotte, Fla., to at least review the move for one season to Tampa.
“They’ll get used to it,” Cash said about his players. “It’s easy to be negative about the entire situation. But they’re going to be in a really good spot.”
The Rays asked for and were granted a one-day delay to open the season as they convert Steinbrenner Field into their own home facility. The Rays played the Yankees in New York’s final spring home game this past Sunday. That gave them 120 hours to erase any sign of the Yankees at the ballpark.
They are taking over the team store and the home clubhouse while replacing all signs that refer to New York or Yankees with Tampa Bay Rays references. When the Yanks return for games against the Rays from April 18-20, they will be the visiting team.
Friday’s game is sold out at 11,026, the 19th year in row the Rays have sold out at least the opener. They were 28th in all of MLB attendance last season at 16,515 per game.
The stadium conversion will happen so fast, Cash said he wants the front office folks to record it.
“I hope they have one of those timelapse cameras or multiple timelapse cameras set up because it should be pretty entertaining,” he said.
So should their 2025 season.
