Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred, reaffirming his commitment to the Tampa Bay area, said it's up to Rays owner Stuart Sternberg to come up with a "go-forward plan" to get a stadium built in the region.
“I see the Tampa Bay region, Tampa-St. Pete, as a major-league market, and we're going to figure out a way to make it work in that market,” Manfred said Wednesday.
During an interview on the “Mad Dog Unleashed” show with Chris Russo on SiriusXM, Manfred said the Rays need to identify a way to build a stadium in the area for when their lease ends at hurricane-damaged Tropicana Field.
The stadium remains damaged and unusable after Hurricane Milton ripped off most of the roof in October. Because of that, the Rays are playing this season at Tampa’s Steinbrenner Field, beginning Friday against the Colorado Rockies.
“I don't think it's realistic to play indefinitely in a repaired Trop, but they got to tell the other clubs, and I think they got to tell their fan base that they have a plan for making it work,” Manfred said.
RELATED: How the Rays are preparing fans for their new Tampa outdoor home
Manfred also said he's hopeful repairs at Tropicana Field will be completed in time for the Rays to play in St. Petersburg next season, which team executives are planning to do.
Manfred noted that the city is obligated to make the repairs under the lease, and a 12-month window essentially is underway with the first phase still waiting on financing.
On Thursday, the St. Petersburg City Council delayed a vote on allocating nearly $23 million to replace the roof, the first job in a project expected to cost the city about $56 million. The vote is now slated for April 3.
“We're really hopeful,” Manfred said. “We're monitoring it closely. We have our own engineers down there. We're hopeful that the Trop will be ready for 2026, I think that's really important. … It's possible, not a certainty, but it is doable.”
The lease extends one season for each year the Rays don’t play in St. Petersburg, “so they would be locked into a lease at the Trop through '28. So, we have a little time,” Manfred noted.
On March 13, Sternberg pulled out of an agreement with St. Petersburg and Pinellas County to build a $1.3 billion stadium, part of $6.5 billion redevelopment project planned for the 86-acre Tropicana Field site.
The decision left city and county officials bitter and prepared to move on from baseball. Mayor Ken Welch has vowed to no longer negotiate with current ownership.
And Pinellas commissioners this week raised the prospect of seeking reimbursement from the team for millions of dollars spent so far on the stadium project.
“I asked Pinellas (County) staff today to prepare a letter asking him to reimburse our residents for expenses we incurred,” Commissioner Chris Latvala posted on X on Thursday.
Manfred said he wasn’t sure if the St. Petersburg plan was done “for good,” but he said Tampa could become a player depending on how the Rays do outdoors at 10,046-seat Steinbrenner Field, the New York Yankees’ spring training facility.
“Any sentence that ends with "for good" is hard to say yes to,” he said. “The fact of the matter is, we believe in the market, and it's up to the Rays to identify a way to get a stadium in the market.”
