Looking strictly at a map, it isn't hard to decipher what Major League Baseball was thinking when deciding where the Tampa Bay Rays and Oakland A's would play their 2025 seasons.
West Sacramento's Sutter Health Park is the nearest Triple-A facility to the A's in Northern California. George Steinbrenner Field in Tampa keeps the Rays in the same region too, at a spring training facility whose 11,026-seat capacity is larger than most comparable venues.
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From a player's perspective, the early reviews on the two moves are, to put it mildly, not great.
On Thursday, A's manager Mark Kotsay revealed the team has interest in Walker Buehler, but the free agent pitcher doesn't share mutual admiration for West Sacramento. One of Buehler's teammates on the Dodgers, pitcher Ryan Brasier, seems to be on the same page.
"You have, I'm not going to say a perfectly good stadium, but you have a stadium" in Oakland, Brasier told Rob Bradford on the Baseball Isn't Boring podcast. "I know nobody shows up but I'd rather play in a stadium where nobody shows up than Sacramento where the clubhouses — you have to walk from the first base dugout through the left-field fence to get to the visiting clubhouse. Unless they renovate it all and do some new stuff. I think that is complete BS.
"The Rays, they really couldn't help it I guess. Their stadium got blown down. It's going to be miserable playing there."
Brasier is under contract to the Dodgers for next season, so he doesn't have to worry about crossing West Sacramento or Tampa off his list of 2025 employers. If anything, being under contract frees him to say the quiet part out loud: the Rays and A's are going to have a hard time signing free agents given the uncertainty around their futures.
While the A's are committed to playing at Sutter Health Park until their scheduled move to Las Vegas in 2028, the Rays' future is in doubt beyond the 2025 season.
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The St. Petersburg City Council voted Thursday to delay taking out hundreds of million in debt to build a new stadium for the Rays that was previously slated to open in 2028. According to the Tampa Bay Times, it's possible the stadium deal could be renegotiated between the Rays and the various stakeholders involved. It's also possible the team will relocate and end its nearly 30-year stay in St. Petersburg and Tampa Bay.
MLB, the A's, and the Rays will try to make the best of their less-than-ideal situations in the meantime. Judging by the early reviews, even the best alternatives might not be very good.
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