LOS ANGELES – Major League Baseball and the Players Association just went through the last remaining big ticket for the A’s move to Sacramento, a playing field to combat the heat: MLB is going with grass, and not turf as originally planned. Now the two sides can go through a whole new checklist once MLB chooses a location where the Tampa Bay Rays will play.

On Opening Day 2025, there will be the strange circumstance of not one but two MLB teams using an atypical facility that needs modifications for major-league use. The A’s plan to share the home of 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, was significantly damaged during Hurricane Milton, and it will be unplayable for at least the beginning of the year, and perhaps the entire season or longer.

MLB is focused on the immediate need — a home for 2025 — and the league’s preference is for the Rays to 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 home in Tampa, and the Atlanta Braves’ old spring training home in Kissimmee, in Disney’s Wide World of Sports complex.

But the league has thought of just about everything, including faraway places. It’s unlikely the Rays would start in 2025 in a city considered a prime destination for a potential expansion franchise, according to a person briefed on the discussions. That means Nashville and Salt Lake City are questionable.

“I think everything is still on the table as far as the time frame, both short-term and long-term,” Tony Clark, head of the players’ union, said Friday before Game 1 of the World Series. “I have not heard anything definitive, formal, from the league at this time. So it’s hard to say.”

The Rays were already planning to open a new stadium in St. Petersburg in 2028, but Tropicana Field, an older facility, would be expensive to repair even before 2026 or 2027.
“The plan is to have a new ballpark there,” Clark said. “What happens now, between now and then, will be the 2025 season first. We’ll have to address that and then move forward based on what that looks like, and what considerations regarding the existing margin can be made between now and 2026.

An aerial photo of Tropicana Field from October 10 shows the damage sustained by Hurricane Milton. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

“There are options available, some of which have been publicly derided, some not so much that need to be revisited, and we will need to ensure they are at a level comparable to Major League,” Clark said. said.

The A’s and Rays have always been linked because of their long-standing quest to get new stadiums built. It’s strange that the Rays are now the team to join the A’s in an itinerant existence.

“Yes, it may be coincidental that we are in a world where these two locations are as challenged as they are today,” Clark said. “But suffice to say, wherever the players are in 2025, we will be at the table to ensure that, as best we can, these standards are up to par. … It would be ideal if all thirty teams would set up shop on a Major League field yesterday.”

The MLBPA technically has no say in which facility MLB chooses to use.

“We have no influence on the facility. We have no influence on this move,” Clark said. “We have a hand in what is called securities negotiations: how are players affected by the league’s decision? If the decision puts players at risk, it ultimately depends on what the harm means.”

Clark said the union could file a complaint in “a last resort.” However, the situation in Sacramento, where players strongly felt that an artificial turf field would be too warm, did not reach that point.

“The very real possibility of playing on such a frequent and hot surface would prove challenging from a health and safety perspective,” Clark said. “It took a while to get there, but we are there, and now we are in a world where we will make the best of the situation where that grass is going to take a lot of hits over the course of the year, and we will respond accordingly to adjust.

“We have not yet reached the point where we were considering filing a complaint. We simply had a dialogue about what we thought made the most sense, and as a result we gave the player feedback. So we worked through it. … You don’t start a conversation by wanting to have that conversation (about a complaint), nor do you offer it as a trick to get where you want to get. You sit down and you have a professional conversation, and you go through all the data points and information that each party has, and you hope that you can find some 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 – artificial turf would likely have been the most sustainable option. Instead, grass will be cooler, but will require significant maintenance.

“Grass brings another level of challenge,” Clark said.

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