Rays to possibly become two-city team

[richig07]

If Portland is going to get a team, it going to be the A’s or expansion. If the Rays move to Portland is will become a clusterfuck of changing of divisions.

Yeah, I knew the A's were the team that they really wanted.

And yes... a clusterfuck, indeed.

 

[ATL96Steeler]

Not exactly. We in Tampa were generally interested in building a ballpark for the Rays. The Rays proposed a spot in Ybor with a price sticker of ~$900 million of which they would pay ~$150 million. Leaving the city of Tampa on the hook for ~$750 million of the bill. It was at this point that most of the taxpayers in Hillsborough County said "fuck that".

The Tampa Bay Bucs stadium was built in 1996 for $165 mil. Assuming 23 years of 3-4% inflation that cost today would be ~$300-400 mil. We *definitely* don't like the Rays more than double what we paid for the Bucs stadium. Had the Rays come up with something in the $400 mil range with them paying $150mil of it, we probably would have done it.

The crazy thing is that Pineallas County where the Rays currently plays has a population just under 1 million people. You'd think they could sell at least 20,000 season tickets to the locals....but no.

There are the dirty details...at some point there was a cap on taxpayer money which makes sense.

On the stadiums...if it still rains every afternoon in the summer like it did when I lived there...baseball would need a roof of some sort, especially a new stadium so Idk if trying to equate the cost to the Bucs open air stadium is a good one, but I agree where which team the fans hearts lie closer to.

Pineallas...yeah, but a good percentage of those are cashed out retirees still would be content with spring training MLB or a minor league team.

 

[Chewbaccer]

And probably be forced to stay in the AL East

I hadn't even considered that aspect. Yikes.

Boo hoo, for years the Braves were part of the NL West and the Dodgers and Padres were considered their rivals. About time another team gets the shaft on division placement.

 

[Ojb81]

I think the Rays wear a sharp-looking hat, yessiree.

 

[Chewbaccer]

If Portland is going to get a team, it going to be the A’s or expansion. If the Rays move to Portland is will become a clusterfuck of changing of divisions.

Rays move to the West, the Astros move to the Central(they were in the NL Central are are located in the central time zone), and the Indians move to the East, who IIRC, only moved to the Central from the East so the expansion Rays could be in the East.

Problem solved.

 

[wazzu31]

Rays move to the West, the Astros move to the Central(they were in the NL Central are are located in the central time zone), and the Indians move to the East, who IIRC, only moved to the Central from the East so the expansion Rays could be in the East.

Problem solved.

It’s not exactly that easy. If you move the Astros to the Central then you have to flip either a NL West to the AL West and the Rangers to the NL Central or some combo of both.

 

[wazzu31]

Yeah, I knew the A's were the team that they really wanted.

And yes... a clusterfuck, indeed.

Portland even getting remotely serious about building a ballpark really gained momentum when it became apparent Oakland wasn’t going to do anything to either fix or rebuild the dump they have for a Stadium and the Raidiers decided to move to Vegas.

 

[Chewbaccer]

It’s not exactly that easy. If you move the Astros to the Central then you have to flip either a NL West to the AL West and the Rangers to the NL Central or some combo of both.

Why?

 

[black francis]

Move the Rays to Puerto Rico

Problem solved

3rd world island, but they'll still draw better.

 

[richig07]

Portland even getting remotely serious about building a ballpark really gained momentum when it became apparent Oakland wasn’t going to do anything to either fix or rebuild the dump they have for a Stadium and the Raidiers decided to move to Vegas.

Yeah, I saw the plans the city had as a rough outline for them. It looked nice and they support the shit out of their minor league team.

The Colisseum needs to be bulldozed yesterday

 

[BigFin]

Pulled from another board: "When the Expos played 22 of their 82 home games in San Jaun, they saw a 35% increase in the ticket sales of Montreal games over the previous average the past two seasons. So despite playing only 73% of their games in Montreal, they still sold 98.4% of the total tickets they sold prior. This even before factoring in that ticket prices were able to be increased because of the scarcity as well."

 

[wazzu31]

Why?

How in the world does it make sense to balance the divisions by moving only one Texas team out of the West? It would make more sense if Portland were to get a team it just be the A’s since the city doesn’t really care anyway, just like the Rays go to Montreal since Tampa doesn’t care about their team.

 

[msgkings322]

If Portland is going to get a team, it going to be the A’s or expansion. If the Rays move to Portland is will become a clusterfuck of changing of divisions.

Portland is not a good city to have MLB IMO, too small, no big corporate HQs there, it wouldn't be much improvement over Tampa after the initial honeymoon.

 

[Hang_On_Sloopy08]

Now that I’ve stopped laughing for a bi

Serious question.

If by some miracle a joke of a franchise like this wins a World Series.

2 parades? Or who get priority?

Excellent question.

 

[Chewbaccer]

How in the world does it make sense to balance the divisions by moving only one Texas team out of the West? It would make more sense if Portland were to get a team it just be the A’s since the city doesn’t really care anyway, just like the Rays go to Montreal since Tampa doesn’t care about their team.

Because the Indians would be going back to the East too. What's the issue here? Did you type all that without actually reading my post?

 

[broncosmitty]

The NBA did this in the early 70's when the Cincinnati Royals moved west to become the Kansas City-Omaha Kings..then they ultimately moved further west and became the Sacramento Kings in the mid 80's.

Picture Chris Farley, sweating profusely, interviewing White Chocolate about that time they almost won that one series.

 

[broncosmitty]

Lets go with Teams Nobody Wants To Play For, for a thousand Alex.

 

[broncosmitty]

Because the Indians would be going back to the East too. What's the issue here? Did you type all that without actually reading my post?

Portland having two professional sports franchises.


It ain't gonna happen.

 

[wazzu31]

Because the Indians would be going back to the East too. What's the issue here? Did you type all that without actually reading my post?

The Rangers would still be in the AL West. It makes zero sense

 

[wazzu31]

Portland is not a good city to have MLB IMO, too small, no big corporate HQs there, it wouldn't be much improvement over Tampa after the initial honeymoon.

I don’t know if they would be or not. They support the Blazers and Timbers really well. I don’t know about whole economics of how it would do for 81 games and for sure it would cause a headache tv wise because the Seattle Mariners own the main sports television station.