As much as baseball fans hate Tropicana Field, maybe it had its perks after all. The Tampa Bay Rays and Milwaukee Brewers are set to enter a rain delay for the second straight game, and the weather doesn't look promising for much of the afternoon, per Weather.com.
The Rays took the first two games of this series in one-run affairs. Thanks to the damaged roof at Tropicana Field, the Rays will play their home games in 2025 at George Steinbrenner Field, which is typically used as the New York Yankees spring training complex. While playing games at a smaller stadium closer to actual Rays fans is a win for the franchise as a whole, it does come with some complications. Namely, the Rays are at risk of weather delays for the first time in awhile.
UPDATE: The Rays announced an intended start time of 2:20pm ET. While there is rain in the forecast well past that point, it appears these teams hope to get the game in before a much-needed getaway day.
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What time will the Rays vs Brewers game start?
Your guess is as good as ours on this front. First pitch had been scheduled for 1:40pm ET, but the forecast would not abide by these rules. The weather in the Tampa area is always unpredictable this time of year. Weather.com projects scattered thunderstorms around 2pm ET, which should make way for even heavier rain and storms later in the afternoon. If a game is played on Sunday at all, it's likely to start after 5pm ET, per the hourly forecast.
Steinbrenner Field weather forecast in Tampa for Sunday, May 11
There is a 60 percent chance of scattered thunderstorms starting at 2pm ET in Tampa, which won't help matters as the Rays and Brewers try to get their Sunday Mother's Day game underway from Steinbrenner Field. In the following hours, the forecast is only expected to worsen, with scattered storms making way for heavy thunderstorms starting in the 3pm ET hour.
With this kind of delay, it would not be surprising to see the scheduled starting pitchers changed by the time the game does officially get underway. As of this writing, the scheduled starters were Chad Patrick and Drew Rasmussen.
We'll have more on this story momentarily.