The debate became obsolete following MLB‘s abandonment of the concept of Rays shared custody plan dropped”>sister cities involving Montreal and Tampa, but Rays pitcher Tyler Glasnow admits there was some skepticism in his team’s locker room. Why have to play in two different cities?
“I think the situation would have been difficult, but nobody really knows. It was all hypothetical,” Glasnow, the Rays’ representative on the Players Association, said in an interview with the Tampa Bay Times.
Concretely, the players of the Rays were not very numerous to have started to ask themselves questions on the subject. For good reason, only a handful of athletes, including young Wander Franco and veteran Brandon Lowe, have already been hired by the Florida team beyond the next two seasons. In the case of Glasnow, it should be eligible for full autonomy at the end of the 2023 campaign.
“I understand that most players were not so much in agreement, nevertheless advanced Glasnow. The details still had to be ironed out. I think training camp was planned to be in the Tampa Bay area, so we would have had to move maybe twice a year. The idea of having to go to another country in the middle of a season, however, is a bit rough.»
A future in Tampa?
Believing it could have been perilous for a two-city club to attract free agents, Glasnow now wants to look ahead.
“Let’s try to build a future here in Tampa instead of trying to leave,” he said, noting that the big winners in Major League Baseball’s recent decision should logically be Rays fans.
Team owner Stuart Sternberg, who finds himself in a tight spot, will now be tasked with securing the construction of a new stadium in Tampa for a full-time club.
“I have no intention of selling or moving the team out of the region,” Sternberg said Thursday, when commenting on Major League Baseball’s executive committee rejection of the sister cities project. We will explore our options in the region.”
