The Tampa Bay Rays last season won 77 games, their fewest since 2016. Now that they’re up to their old tricks, sitting on the second-best record in the American League, only a half-game behind the New York Yankees, the truth can be told.
Playing the 2025 season at George M. Steinbrenner Field was difficult and dispiriting. For all its faults – and at least until new ownership completes its mission to open a new ballpark in Tampa by March 2029 – Tropicana Field is where the Rays belong.
Rays players and officials, frazzled by their trying campaign at the New York Yankees’ spring-training facility, actually were excited to return to their quirky domed stadium. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the team’s 25-12 start includes a 14-4 record at the Trop.
“I think it’s definitely helped. Guys like what they know and normalcy,” manager Kevin Cash said. “But most importantly, I think this group has just really played well together.”
Even now, Cash, his coaches and players will not complain about their temporary move last season to Steinbrenner Field, a move necessitated by Hurricane Milton tearing the roof off the Trop in October 2024.
Rays pitcher Drew Rasmussen said the team remains “very grateful” to the Yankees for making an AL East rival feel welcome. The home clubhouse at Steinbrenner, in particular, is first-class. But the disruptions to the Rays’ routines, both on and off the field, were undeniable.
“The Yankees were exceptional to us. Given the circumstances, we couldn’t have asked for anything better,” Rays president of baseball operations Erik Neander said. “It was like crashing on a friend’s couch for a few months — a really nice couch. But there’s no place like home, and the Trop is our home.”
The difference between playing indoors at the Trop and outdoors at Steinbrenner – with its heat, humidity and unusual wind patterns stemming from its single-deck construction – is difficult to quantify. Yet for the Rays, the atypical playing conditions were only part of the adjustment.
Many of the Rays’ uniformed personnel live close to the Trop in St. Petersburg, about 25 miles south of Steinbrenner. The club’s offices were relocated to an office building in St. Pete while the team played in Tampa, effectively splitting the organization in two. And then there was the schedule.
The Rays played 19 of their first 22 games at Steinbrenner as protection against the Florida rainy season in the summer. They won four of their first five in their temporary home, then lost 15 of their next 20, only to rebound and move within a half-game of first place on June 28.
From there, they unraveled. First came an 8-22 slide that included eight one-run losses. Next was a two-week, four-city West Coast trip that further drained the club.
It was all just too much.
In some respects, the Rays acquitted themselves well. They finished 41-40 at home, 36-45 on the road. Their plus-31 run differential suggests their record should have been closer to 84-78 than 77-85. Still, Rasmussen said, “There are no excuses for how our season unfolded. We underperformed our internal expectations and that is truly frustrating.”
Opponents dealt with the same elements as the Rays at Steinbrenner, but their visits were only brief. The weirdness, for better or worse, was similar to what teams experienced at Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento, the minor-league park the Athletics moved into last season for at least three years.
The Trop, at least, is a major-league facility. The Rays’ return, in Rasmussen’s view, brings “a certain level of comfort.” The park, he said, better rewards the Rays’ athleticism, playing bigger from left-center to right-center, turning fewer fly balls into homers.
Though the sample is still small, the home run to fly ball ratio for the Rays’ pitching staff at the Trop thus far is the league’s seventh lowest. At Steinbrenner, it was the second highest. The minor-league park matched Sutter Health as the sixth easiest for home runs.
Second baseman Brandon Lowe, who played for the Rays from 2018 to ’25 before getting traded to the Pittsburgh Pirates last offseason, recalled other idiosyncrasies. The adjustments pitchers needed to make to both the mound and working outdoors. The infield dirt that required an upgrade after the first homestand, as well as the differences in the grass. The lighting at night.
The dimensions at Steinbrenner are the same as they are at Yankee Stadium. But with no second and third deck to block the swirling currents, pitchers suffered when the wind was blowing out and hitters when it was blowing in.
“It felt like a spring-training facility. It looked like a spring-training facility. It just played differently,” Lowe said. “But there was no reason to complain, because it wasn’t going to get you anywhere.”
The Rays simply had to wait for the Trop to reopen. And this season, back in their familiar surroundings, they look more like the team that made five straight playoff appearances between 2019 and ’23.
Some of this might be good fortune. The Rays’ offense, built around three quality hitters – Yandy Díaz, Junior Caminero and Jonathan Aranda and a speedster whose contributions are not easily measured, Chandler Simpson – entered Thursday ranked 15th in runs per game. But their underlying statistics suggested they did not necessarily merit even that middle-of-the-pack standing.
The Rays’ .297 batting average on balls in play was seven points above league average. They took over the league lead in stolen bases Thursday night with their seventh straight triumph, an 8-4 victory in Boston. But they began the day tied for 25th in home runs per game. And while their strikeout rate was the league’s second lowest, their hard-hit rate was the second lowest, too.
The pitching staff, ranked fourth in ERA, also might be bound for regression. The Rays’ .221 opponents’ batting average entering Thursday was 33 points below the expected number, their .367 opponents’ slugging percentage 64 points below the expected mark. Both gaps were the largest in the league.
Then again, after what they endured last season, perhaps the Rays were due. They even caught a classic Trop break last Saturday night, when the San Francisco Giants’ Heliot Ramos hit what appeared to be a home run to center field, only to see it land in the glove of Rays center fielder Cedric Mullins. The Giants argued the ball hit one of the Trop’s lower two catwalks, making it an automatic homer, but to no avail. The Rays won 5-1.
“There’s a home-field advantage at the Trop,” Lowe said. “It’s a hard place to hit. When you call it home, it’s a little bit easier because you have all those reps there. And then getting adjusted to the roof. Pop-ups, all that kind of stuff, they’re very different at the Trop.”
The Rays seem very different at their oddball park, too. Welcome home.