Rockies will open 2025 regular season at a spring-training facility

The Colorado Rockies will open the 2025 regular season against the Tampa Bay Rays at the New York Yankees’ spring-training facility.

Very little of that sentence would have made sense a month and a half ago. But once Hurricane Milton roared through west-central Florida and left tattered remnants of the Tropicana Field roof and untold water damage to the once-enclosed venue in its wake, the Rays were left scrambling for a home in which to play their 2025 season.

Thursday, word broke that their home would be across Tampa Bay, at George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa. Named after the late Yankees owner, it is located across the street from Raymond James Stadium. The 11,026-seat venue has hosted Yankees spring-training games since 1996. It is also home to a Florida State League A-ball team, the Tampa Tarpons.

It will be the smallest regular-season venue in Major League Baseball.

Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg has been the Rays’ only home since they debuted in 1998, when they were known as the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. The team is scheduled to move into a new stadium in 2028 located near the Trop, which opened in 1990 as the Florida Suncoast Dome before a brief, three-year stint in which it was called the ThunderDome and hosted the NHL’s Tampa Bay Lightning and the now-extinct Arena Football League’s Tampa Bay Storm.

Funding for a new Rays stadium has been approved, but construction has yet to begin. And with a reported price tag of $56 million for Tropicana Field repairs, there remain lingering questions as to whether the Rays and St. Petersburg will even opt to fix the Trop in time for a 2026 return.

Playing outside in Florida in the summer comes with myriad drawbacks, starting with oppressive heat and humidity and extending to the near-daily thunderstorms that will bring a constant rain-delay threat into play.

But the Rockies are lucky. By opening the season in Tampa, they are likely to avoid the miserable conditions of the late spring and summer months.

Indeed, it might feel as though spring training extends for another three days, although it will be on the other side of the country from the Rockies’ February and March home of Salt River Fields in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Perhaps that will help the Rockies get off to a better start than they did last season.