The Rays make money. They just don't make huge amounts. The owner is lying through his teeth. Yeah if he cuts payroll they'll make more. It the Marlins way! And Minneapolis/St.Paul isn't a small market. Making a ordinal ranking is a bad way to look at things, especially when you have 2 teams in New York, LA, Chicago and San Francisco. The Minneapolis/ St. Paul metro area is 16th in the nation at 3.2m in line with Seattle, San Diego, and St Louis (at 2.8m). Tampa is weird because while its at 2.7m that doesn't include the Orlando metro area of 2m. The small amrkets in baseball are Milwaukee (who is almost a class by itself), Kansas city, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh (though Pittsburgh isn't really that small).