Forget the St. Pete angle. Where they are playing is in so much better proximity to at least 75% of the Tampa Bay area plus being a lot more accessible to Orlando and environs.
Speaking of the Rays: Pep was awesome in his debut. I know his track record doesn't compare to Glass but so far, his stats do & some are slightly better. Pep will have a leg up on availability I believe. Nobody got fleeced in that deal.
Probably in the script. He started the 1st 3 games so it's Barnes' turn. Maybe this is the year that Roberts makes good on his promise to reduce the workload.
I didn't think so at the time especially considering what it cost the Dodgers to sign Glass
How did Montreal draw when they had a team?
Got my answer. Here is their annual attendance for their last 10 years vs the average:
What's worse than the Rays are the Marlins. They must have given away tickets by the thousands to draw 30K yesterday. Well, that and Alcantra was pitching. Once their 79 fans see how bad they are, free tickets won't help. Tuned in because it was the only game on tonight and their lineup is mostly unrecognizable. One of the few familiar names in today's lineup is Conine. No, not Jeff who is pushing the age of 60 but his son, Griffin, a 27-year-old career minor leaguer.
The year the Marlind got into the series (and won) they had the 5th highest attendance in the NL (out of 14). Then they dismantled and sold off the entire team . If they didn't have a series of owners as bad as McCort they would draw. The NBA, NFL and soccer all have no problems drawing in Miami.
The NHL Florida Panthers who play just north on Miami are averaging about 19,000 per game, 99% of stadium capacity.
At first, very well, I’m told. Then the Olympic Stadium issues and Jeffrey Loria pissed off the fanbase. The plan is to build a new retractable dome stadium on the east end of the island, but given Canada’s financial issues (thanks, Justin the Chinless) it’s likely it will take private money to build a stadium and with the short windows to build, it might take some time even if a team was brought in. The stadium is still there but it needs work to be baseball ready. The astroturf is lousy and completely tearing it out and replacing it is Job One. There are some questions whether the stadium would pass all safety tests and the clubhouses are rumored to be below even minor league standards. A recent story stated it might cost over a billion Canadian to add the new retractable dome and get the stadium to MLB standards. Add in a new stadium might cost several billion to be built and the price to bring a team to Montreal will be close to a billion, so it would take many investors to make it happen.
Hinting to Herself and my daughters they could pool their money and get me a cheap one.
I know the problem in St. Pete is the stadium is terrible. Miami’s problem from what I gather is that Loria sold the city a bill of goods to get public financing for the stadium and LoanDepot Park is a massive white elephant and having shitty teams which won’t spend hurts.
You left out the quotation marks around "cheap".
Hearing what you wrote about the costs of building a stadium in Montreal, if those numbers are right I wonder if the talk about a team moving there is just a bluff to panic Tampa to pony up. Sure would be hard to raise that much money for a stadium. Teams always draw big initially but given the past attendance history how could anyone have enough confidence the team would continue to draw big in Montreal to lay out that kinda dough for a new park?
