Marlins and Mets to Play in Puerto Rico

Major League Baseball announced Thursday the Florida Marlins and New York Mets are switching their three-game set on June 28-30 from Miami to San Juan, Puerto Rico. The games were originally slated to be played at Sun Life Stadium, the Marlins home stadium. Now, Florida will be the home team in San Juan. The games will be played at Hiram Bithorn Stadium, a 19,000-seat artificial-turf facility that has attracted big league games in the past. From a league standpoint, the Marlins-Mets series will be the first MLB regular-season games played internationally since the Boston Red Sox and Oakland A's opened their 2008 campaigns in Japan. It won't be the first time the Marlins and Mets play regular-season games in San Juan, either. When the Montreal Expos played home games in Hiram Bithorn Stadium in 2003-04, both teams made one trip to Puerto Rico in each season. The Marlins have been open about wanting to expand their marketing efforts into Latin America. Playing meaningful games in Puerto Rico is a start. This is a great decision for the Marlins, the Marlins don't have the largest fan-base and have always been looking for ways to expand it; this will bring attention to South Florida baseball in Puerto Rico and hopefully the Marlins will gain a few fans after playing in San Juan. This is a Monday through Wednesday series so it wasn't probably going to draw huge crowds in the Marlins home Stadium so moving it to San Juan is a great way to expand their fan-base and get a larger audience for the game.