With the news coming out on Monday that the Tampa Bay Rays are having to adjust their 2025 schedule to avoid the summer rain and heat at their temporary outdoor home in Florida, it’s clear that Hurricane Milton did more damage for the Rays than just decimate Tropicana Field.
Thanks to schedule swaps that will have the Rays away more from Tampa during the peak summer months, the Rays will play 69 of their final 103 games on the road in 2025. That’s not great news for a team that has been a perennial postseason contender in recent seasons, missing the playoffs last season for the first time since 2018.
Not only will the Rays have to adjust to playing at George M. Steinbrenner Field this season, but they will also have to learn how to win consistently on the road late in the campaign if they hope to play meaningful baseball in October.
It was bad enough that the Rays had to spend at least this season with a minor league/spring training stadium as its home. However, to have the pressure of playing on the road even more after the All-Star break and further alienating its fan base is another blow for a franchise that is also wondering about its long-term future in the Tampa area after the latest plans to keep the team along Florida’s Gulf Coast imploded.
While MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has admitted there is “uncertainty” around the future of the Rays and where they will play, Monday’s schedule shifting feels like a bit of a panic from MLB’s standpoint.
Adjusting the schedule to keep the Rays home when the weather is drier and cooler and on the road to avoid the heat and moisture is a bit of a head-shaker for those fans in Atlanta, less than a seven-hour drive away but still encased in humidity every summer. The same could be said in Cincinnati, St. Louis or other locations where summers can be sweltering and heat indices soar.
The move also shrugs off history. After all, the Texas Rangers dealt with the humidity and heat in the Lone Star State while playing outdoors from 1972 until Globe Life Field opened in 2020. The Miami Marlins played outdoors from 1993-2011, dealing with the same hot and rainy effects the Rays will have to endure without Tropicana Field in the equation.
When the Athletics and Rays get together this year, MLB needs to market the matchups as the Vagabond Series. After all, these are the two franchises looking for a home and wondering exactly what the near future will look like for them.
Like the A’s, MLB has watched another franchise become unstable, and this schedule adjustment feels like another potential step for the Rays out of the Tampa area without a domed stadium plan in its future. It’s a situation Manfred and MLB didn’t want in 2025, but is now a reality that has shifted schedules and potentially the future of the Rays.