Twins will be difficult. They are a hot team last 30 Days. Last 30 days team hitting in MLB Astros #2 HRs 42 Twins #4. HRs 41 Jays #20. HRs 26 Last 30 days pitching team pitching in MLB Twins #5 3.47 Astros #9 3.89 Jays #16 4.21
They only drew 17,000 fans......... for a team that is a World Series contender and has been very good for a decade. That is the smallest crowd for a playoff game since 1919..... when World War I had just entered and Spanish Flu was ripping through the USA. Yet that same team is going to build a new stadium in the same city and the MAX occupancy will be 30,000 fans. We live in weird times.
Nice 1919 WWI and Spanish Flu facts. Do you realize Clearwater/St Petersburg has same population as Tampa? No bridges connect Clearwater with St Pete.
This isn't even about baseball from what I have read and heard. This is all about the value of the land AROUND the stadium. So the Rays new stadium will only seat 30K and costs 1.3 billion to build. The owner of the Rays pays half of that 1.3 billion. However - he is HEAVILY leveraged and invested in the land in the area around the new stadium to the tune of nearly 8 billion dollars in development. So, the owner of the Rays basically is using the baseball stadium as an "anchor" like strip centers used to use grocery stores or department stores. All of the value out of this will be all the businesses and apartments etc. in the general area, that the owner of the team conveniently owns. The baseball team will plod along and not lose value over the next 3 decades and the money will come from the areas around the stadium. This model is becoming more and more popular
Man, Tampa is an embarrassment. I went to check the 90's Astros at the dome, they were drawing 50,000 for playoff day games. I'd imagine there are very few instances of teams not drawing 35,000, to draw 19,000 is pathetic, don't give me that "away from population" nonsense.
I keep forgetting how short these wildcard series's are. If the Rangers win, TB is done. If Minny wins, the Blue Jays are done. Seems like both these series just started!
Truly is the most wonderful time of the year. Got damn i love October. We get college football, actual competent Texans football lol, nba right around the corner. AND playoff baseball LFG
MLB will not allow games to be finished in 2, one series, or both will be going 3. Rays and Marlins don't draw fans, they should have AARP buses to draw fans
From talking with a couple of Tampa fans, this is 100% what is happening, it's a business development project not a baseball project
Game time didn't do any favors. Can't believe they are building a $1.3B stadium at the same site. It will be better because Tropicana is awful, but that isn't their biggest problem.
Since September 1, Twins pitching has had the lowest xwOBA in baseball (.276 compared to the Astros' pedestrian .320) and have the 7th greatest xwOBA for their hitters (.332 compared to the Astros' .343). Both their pitching and hitting has been better over that timespan than TB and BAL.