The Rays are reducing their stadium capacity, and that isn’t necessarily good

Photo by Julio Aguilar/Getty ImagesNews item:

.@RaysBaseball announce this morning they are closing the upper deck of the Trop and reducing capacity for games there to between 25K and 26K, further reducing what was already the smallest capacity in MLB.

— Eric Fisher (@EricFisherSBJ) January 4, 2019 Now, this reduction in capacity will likely not affect the Rays total attendance. Despite contending for an A.L. wild-card spot in 2018 and winning 90 games, the Rays drew a crowd of 30,000 or more just once last year — Opening Day vs. the Red Sox. They topped 26,000 just three other times, all games against the Yankees. (One of those is pictured above, the second-largest crowd of the year, 29,831…