Vegas deserves better than the A's, but it is what it is. They should have held out for an expansion team.
MLB isn't expanding when they have multiple teams that can't draw fans. What really sucks is Oakland has passionate fans. Meanwhile, TB has never sold well despite being a good team over the last 15 years or so, and have the benefit of playing Boston & NYY several times every year. John Fisher has basically done everything in his power to drive away fans. People thought Lew Wolff was bad when he was the managing partner, but it got so much worse when Fisher took over total control. It should have been TB relocating to Vegas, even if that would have made a need to re-align again.
Aren't ratings still pretty good in Tampa? Its just that the team is located in St. Pete and play in an outdated dome. Tampa also seems to support all their other teams that do well. I don't think they love hockey/football that much more than baseball. I'm against teams moving in general. Getting a stadium in Tampa would do wonders for regular Rays attendance. MLB actually could expand to cities like Nashville/Portland who would likely support MLB quite well (and have been trying to get into the league for some time).
They do have a bad stadium situation, but so did Oakland. I have little doubt they love football more than baseball. NHL I'll give you, but I don't think a new stadium fixes Tampa baseball long-term. It certainly didn't fix it for Miami, granted they haven't been good since moving.
I think Tampa very much like Houston. They’ll support winners. Won’t support losers even if stadium nice. Either way, it’s a better situation than Oakland if the stadium is upgraded and closer. Having a stadium that far from the city center doesn’t work as well for baseball as it does for football. Tampa also didn’t support the lightning as well when they used to play out there. if the Astros played in Kemah or Galveston, they’d also probably get less overall fans nightly.
I'm not familiar with Kemah, but Galveston is almost like traveling between Tampa and Orlando. But yes, they are better off with a new stadium in Tampa then they are in St Petersburg, and you would expect central FL to be capable of supporting a baseball team, but I'm also shocked that Miami doesn't do better. I suppose the good news for Oakland is the Giants are just across the bay so they can still enjoy MLB, but it just isn't the same for them. Ideally nobody ever loses sports teams.
Made the comparison to Galveston because Houston is just so vast/large… would have to be far enough to make people think twice about going (but still, Galveston only 45 minutes away from Downtown, minus traffic). Agreed. Ironically, both these Florida cities hardly support baseball (in a state where baseball has a lot of connections) whereas their hockey teams draw very well when successful.
Seems like a black and green (the color of money) scheme would be fitting in vegas . . . could transition the yellow to a gold accent and call it a day.
I like that baseball teams (especially the historic ones) typically keep their color schemes since their inception… and if they change, they typically come back to the original at some point (White Sox, Astros). That being said, the Philadelphia A’s were originally Blue/Grey… and the KC A’s were red white blue/grey.
Red Sox and Mets train further away. Yes, certainly a large cohort of Yankees fans (as there are in all cities)... but even those games are no longer the split it once was as Tampa natives do fill up the Trop for some of the better opponents.
I've made that drive (galveston to MMP) in 45 minutes around 6:30pm on a Friday. Saturday day games are also really easy to get there around that time frame.
