This week, Tampa Bay Rays team presidents, Brian Auld and Matt Silverman, went on a local radio show and spent the first part of the interview discussing the issues facing the team because of Hurricane Milton. Both men followed up this first part with a second part that included some tone-deaf comments and a number of preposterous lies.
Before we discuss what the Rays said recently, let’s back up a bit. Last year, the Rays and local officials agreed on how both sides would pay for a $1.3 billion, 30,000-seat ballpark. Pinellas County agreed to chip in $312.5 million. St. Petersburg City officials agreed to put in $417.5 million. This new ballpark was going to be part of a massive $6.5 billion redevelopment project. The plan was to have this new ballpark built for the 2028 season and for the Rays to pay for all cost overruns. Overall, this agreement had little to no chance of ever helping the local area whatsoever financially speaking. This deal promised comical and unrealistic economic development estimates and empty job numbers with no guarantees.
Over the last few months, the $6.5 billion dollar agreement has gone through city and county leaders to get their approval. But after Hurricane Milton hit central and south Florida last summer, there was a delay by Pinellas County in getting the bonds issued. The county was still trying to deal with all the issues brought onto them by the hurricane. This delay meant that new commissioners would vote on whether to issue the bonds when the county next met because of recent elections. Pinellas delayed the vote yet again by 30 days. However, they would finally agree to issue the bonds the next time that they met. Keep in mind that the ballpark agreement does not give the city or county any deadlines to agree or issue the bonds.
The team claims that this 30 day delay has caused financial damage to them and that the county “broke” the ballpark deal. The city and county have asked many times to show them where or how this delay caused financial damage, yet as of today, the team has shown no one a single piece of evidence that they lost extra money. As the Tampa Bay Rays SB Nation wrote in a recent article, the team presidents were simply giving off “bold face lies”. A 30+ day delay in a process that can take 18–24 months to complete will “not kill a 30+ year investment strategy”. While the team keeps giving public interviews and saying that Pinellas County “effectively broke the deal and turned their back on the commitment”, there was absolutely nothing done that showed any abandonment of the agreement by the County. The Tampa Bay Rays received all the money that they were promised in the agreement.
Yet, the team wants even more public money…why? Because the team says so? All while refusing to show anyone how or why they lost any money from the delay? The Tampa Bay Times wrote an article yesterday that virtually begged the Rays to please explain “how a minimal delay could wreak havoc on a generational project that was expected to take 20 years to complete”. Well, one local commissioner admitted in an interview that the Rays team president, Auld, told him recently that “he was trying to hold the deal together amid revenue projections and cost estimates both moving in the wrong directions”. The Rays are responsible for all cost overruns and have one of the cheapest and worst owners in all sports.
So, it would make sense that Sternberg is getting nervous and trying to find any way possible to get out of this deal. Residents and leaders blasted Sternberg in 2018 for announcing a new $900 million dollar ballpark yet claiming that the team would only be putting in between $150—$400 million dollars. Uh, that is quite an enormous difference between the two. Is it any wonder why this 2018 deal fell apart so quickly? Let me put it this way. In 2018, as Sternberg was announcing the new ballpark…“no one had any idea who would pay for it”. Sternberg does not want to pay a single dollar more than he has to. Multiple deals with Tampa have fallen through due to Sternberg refusing to give an actual number of how much money he would put into a new ballpark. One of the Rays team presidents, Silverman, not that long ago stated how the current deal may not be good for the Rays “in the context of Major League Baseball and fielding a competitive team for the next 30 years”. I do not understand the last part of this comment. Is he saying that this deal will not allow the team to compete moving forward? What? How?
But here is where I get irritated with the Rays. Auld says the Rays are frustrated because local leaders only made minimal repairs to Tropicana Field. Except, wait a second, who stopped the city from fixing the Rays ballpark months ago?
“Repair plans slowed down after Auld told the council in November it was a “bad use of funds”. Two months later, the Rays changed their position and now want repairs done in time for the 2026 season… City Council chairperson Copley Gerdes…who ran point on negotiations, said that the council had voted to approve $24 million to repair the Tropicana’s roof until Auld spoke up. The council then held another vote to turn down that funding, but has approved some money for initial steps toward repair since. “It was them who asked us to backtrack at the very beginning. It seems like we’re doing it the way they asked us to”, Gerdes said. “If they don’t like it now, the Rays shouldn’t have communicated during that City Council meeting back in November that they didn’t want us to fix it all at once” — Tampa Bay Times, 02/14/25
Speaking of bare minimum, it appears that the owner of the Tampa Bay Rays has been connected to that word in the past. When giving out the award to the Tampa Sportsman of the Year, one site was quite clear that the Rays owner, Stu Sternberg, would not be getting this award anytime soon.
“Stu Sternberg is an absentee owner who rarely attends games…bemoan(s) the attendance at Tropicana Field…slashed payroll, feuded with the mayor of St. Petersburg and has issued a threat that the league may “vaporize” the franchise…Sternberg’s treatment of the fans and the community can’t go unnoticed. He whines about attendance but rarely do you see billboards on the Tampa side…Sternberg is doing the bare minimum to ensure attendance is low and he can get his shiny new stadium on the Tampa side of the bay” — Tampa Bay Sportsman of 2011: Jeff Vinik, Owner, Tampa Bay Lightning, JC De La Torre, 12/26/11
But Auld was not done. He moved on from this topic to other claims that continue to make no sense whatsoever. In one breath, Auld claims that doing the bare minimum “doesn’t synch with what I think our community is all about” and “just not how we run our organization”. I do not know what that first claim means. How exactly does the community spirit have to do with the Tropicana Field repairs? Auld said the team’s skepticism is because of the “respect and understanding we have of the democratic process”. Again, what? I am not sure where to start on this one. Is Auld’s understanding of the process too much for him? Why are we talking about respect? Please. Stop talking.
The Tampa Bay Rays are worth around $1.25 billion dollars according to Forbes. Every year, the value of the team increases. The team’s yearly revenues from games and MLB’s luxury tax also increase virtually every year (except COVID-19’s year). Has the team returned $1 dollar to local taxpayers over the last 20 years?
