The Tampa Bay Rays' stadium in 2025 is unclear, but it's unlikely to be Nashville or Salt Lake City: source

LOS ANGELES – Major League Baseball and the Players Association have just worked through the last remaining major item for the A's' move to Sacramento, a pitch against the Heat: The MLB is betting on turf and not turf, as originally planned. Now the two parties will have a whole new checklist to go through once the MLB selects a venue for the Tampa Bay Rays.

On Opening Day 2025, there will be the strange circumstance of not one, but two MLB teams using an atypical facility that will need to be converted for major league use. The A's plan to share home with the Triple-A Sacramento River Cats for at least three seasons until they move to Las Vegas in 2028 at the earliest. But much less is known about what the Rays will do. Their regular park, Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida, sustained significant damage during Hurricane Milton and will be unplayable at least early in the year and possibly for the entire season or longer.

MLB is focused on the immediate need — a home for 2025 — and the league prefers that the Rays remain in Florida, where there is no shortage of spring training and minor league facilities to choose from. Two possibilities are Steinbrenner Field, the Yankees' spring training facility, in Tampa, and the Atlanta Braves' old spring training home in Kissimmee, at Disney's Wide World of Sports complex.

But the league has basically considered everything imaginable, including far-flung places. The Rays are unlikely to start 2025 in a city considered a prime target for possible expansion of the franchise, according to a person briefed on the discussions. That means Nashville and Salt Lake City are doubtful.

“I think everything is still up in the air in terms of the time frame, both short-term and long-term,” players union president Tony Clark said Friday before Game 1 of the World Series. “At this point, I haven’t officially heard anything definitive from the league. So it’s hard to say.”

The Rays were already planning to open a new stadium in St. Petersburg in 2028, but repairing Tropicana Field, an older facility, would be expensive even for 2026 or 2027.
“The plan is to build a new baseball stadium there,” Clark said. “What happens between now and then will initially be the 2025 season. We need to address that and then move forward based on what that looks like and what considerations can be made around the existing baseball stadium through 2026.

“There are options, some of which are openly discussed, others less so, which require review, and we need to ensure that they meet a standard consistent with that of the Major League,” Clark said.

The A's and Rays have a long-standing bond, as they have strived to build new stadiums for years. It's a curiosity that the Rays are now the team to join the A's in a traveling existence.

“Yes, it may be coincidental that we are in a world where both of these locations are as challenged as they are right now,” Clark said. “But suffice it to say, wherever the players are in 2025, we will be at the table to ensure those standards are met as best as possible. … It would be ideal to have all 30 teams in a major league stadium yesterday.”

The MLBPA technically has no control over which facility the MLB uses.

“We have no influence on the facility. We are not involved in the move,” Clark said. “We are involved in the so-called effect negotiations: How are the players affected by the league’s decision? Ultimately it comes down to what ‘Hars Way’ means when the decision puts players in danger.”

Clark said as a “last resort” the union could file a grievance. However, the situation in Sacramento, where players felt a grass field would be too hot, did not reach that point.

“The very real possibility of playing so often on such a hot surface would prove challenging from a health and safety perspective,” Clark said. “It took us a while to get there but we got there and now we're in a world where we're going to make the best of the situation where the grass takes a lot of beating over the course of the year, and we will adjust it accordingly.

“We didn’t get to the point where we thought about filing a complaint. We simply had a dialogue about what we thought made the most sense and then gave the player feedback. So we worked through it. …You don't start a conversation with a desire to have that conversation (about a complaint), and you don't offer this as a ploy to try to get where you want to go. You sit down, have a professional conversation, go through all the data points and information that each side has, and hope you find common ground.”

With two teams playing at Sutter Health Park in Sacramento – both the A's and the San Francisco Giants' Triple-A club, the River Cats – turf likely would have been the most durable option. Instead, the grass is cooler but requires significant maintenance.

“Grass brings a whole different challenge,” Clark said.

(Top photo: Bryan R. Smith / AFP via Getty Images)