MLB commissioner Rob Manfred did what Rob Manfred does during the World Series on Friday, going on the radio and opining about big-picture stuff like which teams might move if they don’t get a pile of public money for new stadiums:
“I think (with) a properly located facility in (the) Tampa (Bay area), that Tampa’s a viable major-league market,” Manfred told SiriusXM radio. “I’ve got a lot of faith in (Rays principal owner) Stu Sternberg. I think they will find a place to get a ballpark built and I think baseball can thrive in Tampa.”
And:
“I think the mayor in Oakland has made a huge effort to try to get it done in Oakland. It just doesn’t look like it’s going to happen. …
“I think the A’s have proceeded prudently in terms of exploring the Las Vegas alternative, given the lack of pace in Oakland. I think they have to look for an alternative. I see Tampa differently.”
The Tampa Bay Times reported this as Manfred being less “optimistic” about the A’s staying in Oakland than the Rays staying in Tampa Bay, and on the surface it is. But keep in mind that Manfred’s job isn’t to go on the radio and make predictions about what he thinks is going to happen. (That’s what sports betting shows are for.) He’s paid to try to get for his bosses, the 30 team owners, what they want. So his statements about the A’s and Rays have to be read as leverage moves as much as prognostications:
- For Rays owner Stuart Sternberg, there’s no benefit to brinksmanship, because there’s no brink approaching. Sure, the team’s lease expires in 2027, but leases can be extended; more important, there are no stadium proposals on the table that Sternberg needs to say “Send money or we’ll shoot this team!” about. Sternberg at this point is still trying to make nice with Tampa and St. Petersburg and shake loose the most lucrative deal that he can; once that’s in place, he can decide how loudly he wants to rattle the Montreal saber to try to get a deal in Florida done.
- A’s owner John Fisher, by contrast, is actually way further ahead of Sternberg in getting a stadium deal done — he has a site picked out, and Oakland and the state of California have agreed to $495 million in infrastructure subsidies, though that’s still about $ 500 million short of what Fisher wants. But it’s also been stalled for a while, and A’s stadium czar Dave Kaval has been actively touting Las Vegas as an alternative — never mind that progress on a stadium there makes Tampa Bay look positively accomplished — and there’s a mayoral election coming up that could reshuffle the political decks, so Manfred has reason to grab his coat and hat and say, “Maybe the A’s are more of a Las Vegas idea.”
What does any of this say about the actual likelihood of either the Rays or A’s relocating? Pretty much nothing, since Manfred has no clue what officials in either area will actually approve, or for that matter what officials in cities the teams might relocate to might approve. If anything, both teams’ situations and past history suggest that there could be a lot more plot twists ahead in each case: The A’s were once in a situation like the Rays with no viable stadium options, and now they have one that’s advanced enough for them to be pulling out the big threat guns; and Rays were once zeroing in on a stadium with a deadline seemingly approaching, only to go back to the drawing board and have to play the long game.
It is extremely likely that both the A’s and Rays will be in their current metro areas in 5 years, and probably even 10, given that baseball teams almost never move, and that baseball owners and league execs alike seem inclined to wait for a new mayor to be elected so they can try again with them instead of rolling the dice with an untested market. (Or, in the case of Montreal, a market that was tested and didn’t do that great, or at least no better than the cities MLB would be looking at giving up on.) In the long run, it’s hard to predict — after all, any of Tampa Bay, Oakland, and Las Vegas could be uninhabitable a couple of decades from now, thanks to either sea level rise or crushing heat or both. Manfred doesn’t have to worry about that, though: He just needs to think about which elected officials will be swayed by which words, and that’s a far easier calculus to perform.
There’s an obvious “40 miles $outh on 880!” solution for the A’s. But it would require some common sense to FINALLY take over at MLB and revisit a decision made back in 1992.. a decision made with the A’s blessings that kept the Giants from moving out of SF.
And that makes me wonder if Manfred’s (and by extension, MLB’s) grandstanding on Oakland has to do with the league preferring a standalone market — even one that would be *the* smallest in baseball — for the A’s, rather than having them split an existing market.
Antonio,
$outh Bay i$ $imply not an option.
Let it go.
Counterpoint: Manfred doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing and just says things at random because they pop into his head.
Hanlon’s Razor is a harsh mistress.
Ouch!
That would explain the Manfred Man
Yeah, it’s a bit off-topic for this site, but Manfred saying he would probably keep the ghost runner because nobody dislikes it is one of the most reading-the-room-deficient comments of all time.
Can we just make Manfredding a verb?
Question: How many different mayors has Tampa had since the Rays first announced “they had to have a new stadium”?
There is precisely zero evidence that Major League Baseball can thrive in Tampa or anywhere else in Florida.
On the other hand there exists 25 years of evidence that Major League Baseball is failing (as a business) in Florida. Tampa and Miami are profitable franchises, but only because they (like several of their more northern cousins) farm the MLB subsidy as effectively as they do.
The one piece of evidence we have about the effect of a shiny new $600m+ baseball stadium in Florida is that the attendance bump does not even last one year.