Tampa Bay Relocation

The Tampa Bay Devil Rays would like to be relocated to Santa Ana California. The new stadium (yet to be named) will cost $147.2M of which the city would pay $74.5M, Sponsors would pay for $41.8M leaving $30.8M for our fine organization to pay with the $34.2M cash we have available.

Proposed Dimensions:
Altitude: 110
Left Field: 325
Left Center: 385
Center: 415
Right Center: 375
Right: 330

Playing Field:
Infield Quality: Excellent
Infield Grass: Short
Visibility: Good
Foul Ground: Average

Structure: Open
Surface: Natural Grass

Seating:
Capacity: 41,250
Convenience: Average
Comfort: Average
Sight Lines: Average

Stadium Effects:
HR: 95
BA: 105
2B: 100
3B: 95
Ks: 100
DP: 105
Errors: 80

The building of this stadium would increase fan loyalty from 75 to 83. It will increase my payroll budget around 30M to $73.3M with my expenses being the same.

Due to the team moving West the divisions will look different:
AL East- 5 teams
Baltimore
Boston
Cleveland
New York
Toronto

AL Central- 5 teams
Chicago
Detroit
Kansas City
Minnesota
Texas

AL West- 4 teams
Los Angeles
Oakland
Santa Ana (formerly TBD)
Seattle

The other option would be to leave the divisions alone for a season or even permanently. The precedent has been set with the memphis grizzleys playing in the South West, Dallas Cowboys playing in the East, St. Louis Rams in the West. Even the texas rangers should be in the central.

Other things to consider:
- The Florida Marlin will benefit due to being the only team in the area allowing them to draw more fans.
-LAA, LAD, OAK, SDP and SFG do not worry. I checked you payroll budgets and there are unchanged so a 6th CA team will not affect you.
- I will likely change my team name since Devil Rays doesnt really make sense for a California team.
- This change likely needs to be done now because as it is, my team is expected to lose between $10M and $20 and I will not have the necessary funds to finance the move.
- If the admins/mods don't want to change everything due to short notice I propose they allow me to put the money down now so I can make the move next season. I will end the season in debt but should be able to make up that money in one season in my new park. NOTE: Id prefer the change to take place for the upcoming season as I am poised to make a run at the World Series with my one year of Jeremy Bonderman.

Questions, comments, issues?

There is now an alternative plan on the table:

In this new plan:
- I pay for the stadium at the beginning of this coming season.
- Stay where I am as the construction will take place during the season.
- Move to Santa Ana for the next season
- Likely end up in debt at the end of this season.
- Keep the divisions the way they are with the only difference being my switching to the AL West keeping the 2 divisions with 5 teams and one with 4 but the one with 4 will now the the AL East.
- More in depth details will likely be forthcoming

How Will This Affect the Other CA Teams? Good question and something I was honestly concerned with. So I did a little research. Using the 6a file (only change is my depth chart is updated) I ran two 10 season sims. The first sim was with the Devil Rays still being in Tampa. The second sim had the Devil Rays located in sunny Santa Ana. After each 10 season sim, I recorded the average attendance, revenue and profit. Ill show you the data and let you interpret the result for yourselves.

Team Att w/ TB Rev w/ TB Profit w/TB Att w/ SA Rev w/ SA Profit w/ SA
LAA 44,276.00 $101,106,910.00 -$8,192,108.00 43,850.00 $100,136,571.00 -$7,832,821.00
OAK 20,337.00 $68,014,372.00 -$1,880,739.00 21,012.00 $68,669,474.00 $1,811,980.00
LAD 42,107.00 $105,819,120.00 $45,250,623.00 41,553.00 $107,038,379.00 $45,015,915.00
SDP 22,852.00 $61,027,180.00 $46,276,312.00 23,771.00 $62,767,583.00 $46,643,311.00
SFG 32,834.00 $117,287,654.00 $8,290,172.00 35,437.00 $121,625,337.00 $10,122,078.00
TBD/SA 19,717.00 $54,832,533.00 -$30,082,766.00 40,978.00 $83,394,837.00 $633,741.00

Because Im really nice and know that its very difficult to make the above numbers mean anything, I made you guys graphs!


(ignore the weird box in the middle, i dont know what it is)





As you can clearly see, all the current CA teams' attendance, revenue and profit stayed pretty much the same. The slight changes are negligible in my eyes and are simply due to the randomness of sims. In fact, 3/5 of the teams actually drew more fans and made more money than they would have.

You can also clearly see why I want to move.

Questions, comment, issues?