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BoSox Need To Catch Some RaysJuly 9th, 2008
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Maybe the American League East won’t be much of a race, after all.
Doing their best Boston Celtics impersonation, the Tampa Bay Rays, in just a calendar year, have gone from worst to first. And while Matt Garza and Jason Bartlett don’t quite equate to the big ticket acquisition of Kevin Garnett from Minnesota, the two cogs have chipped in and helped change the dynamic of the once hapless Rays—a club that previously seemed destined forever to finish well-below .500 every season, continuing a long-standing tradition of being the butt end of countless jokes and jabs.
With a 55-32 record and .632 winning percentage heading into Monday’s afternoon contest against the Kansas City Royals, the Rays have upgraded from basement dweller status to baseball’s penthouse suite. And with a recent sweep of the second place Boston Red Sox, the red-hot Rays, winners of seven in a row and 11 of their last 12 games, sit atop the AL East with a didn’t-see-that-coming seven game lead in the loss column.
The combination of a steady rotation, a very deep bullpen, and a much-improved defense has led the Rays to a turnaround of epic proportions. Easily the headline story through the first-half of the 2008 season, Tampa Bay’s unexpected emergence, in fact, shouldn’t be all that unexpected.
Although, perhaps, a year ahead of schedule, the Rays, with already established young talent on the roster and an influx of minor league prospects on the precipice of major league debuts (pitchers David Price and Jake McGee as well as shortstop Reid Brignac, to name a few), have quietly been a team on the rise for a longer time than one might first consider.
Through quality drafts and plenty of shrewd trades over the years, Tampa Bay—following years of signing the latest retread superstar (Greg Vaughn, Vinny Castilla, Jose Canseco, etc.) to wasteful dollars—is now reaping the benefits of a front office that actually knows what they’re doing.
The Rays’ transformation from the league’s perennial losers to parvenu bona fide contenders, in actuality, first begin way back at the 2004 trade deadline when the pre-exorcized franchise stumbled upon the road to Damascus in the form of Jim Duquette and the New York Mets.
In a desperate attempt to improve a bumbling rotation and, in turn, save his job as the Mets general manager, Duquette, the cousin of former Red Sox GM Dan Duquette, arguably pulled the trigger on one of the worst trades in major league history after he sent a top-notch pitching prospect by the name of Scott Kazmir to Tampa Bay in exchange for the immortal Victor Zambrano.
The already foolish trade became even more foolish over the subsequent years as Kazmir has since developed into one of the best left-handed starters in the game today while Zambrano, after a series of arm injuries, now pumps gas at Citgo from 9-to-5, five days a week (actually, the New York Yankees, of all teams, recently inquired about his services).
But the fleecing of the Mets for Kazmir is just one of the many moves that has worked together to turn the expansion franchise in the right direction. Indeed, the most significant changes may not have even been roster-related, but rather the dramatic overhaul of the Tampa Bay management team.
After posting a miserable 28-61 record by the All-Star break in 2005, the team still known then as the Devil Rays managed a mini-turnaround of their own in the second half of the season, going 39-34 the rest of the way. But despite the promising end to an otherwise dismal campaign, Rays’ manager Lou Piniella, boiling over with the frustrations of what he believed to be a lack of commitment to winning by the ownership, reached a settlement with the team in order to be released from the final year of his contract.
Following the Piniella-Rays’ divorce, Stuart Sternberg, who had purchased a large stake in the franchise the previous year, took hold of the reigns from Vince Naimoli as the club’s principal owner. Perhaps heeding Piniella’s words, Sternberg acted quickly as he reshaped the front office by firing Chuck LaMar, who had been the team’s GM since Tampa Bay’s inaugural season back in 1995.
Soon thereafter, Sternberg handed Andrew Friedman, the club’s director of baseball development since the start of 2004 season (a position largely responsible for the draft), the role of executive vice president of baseball operations. Sternberg then paired the young acting GM with Gerry Hunsicker, naming the former Houston Astros’ showrunner as the senior VP of baseball operations.
With upper management in place, the Tampa Bay collective then set out to find their ideal field manager. During the winter months, the Devil Rays eventually found Piniella’s replacement, hiring Joe Maddon and his black-framed glasses, a duo that formed the long-time bench coach for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.
Of course, plethora of changes on the management front aside, the product on the field remained a work in progress. But while the 2006 season proved to be another futile year in terms of winning percentage for Tampa Bay, the front office made the best of it, embarking on a slew of trades that included the acquisitions of pitchers Edwin Jackson and J.P. Howell as well as catcher Dioner Navarro—three key pieces to the current rendition of the club.
During the off-season to follow, the Devil Rays continued on with their methodical approach to building a competitive roster. As the organization worked on converting infielder B.J. Upton to center field, the front office secured the rights to negotiate a contract with Japanese infielder Akinori Iwamura. In signing the former Tokyo Yakult Swallows’ star to a three-year, $7.7 million dollar contract (which also included a $4.5 million posting fee), Tampa Bay’s management team sent a clear message: we’re ready to compete.
But sometimes the best intentions don’t work out quite as planned.
The 2007 season was a disastrous one for the Devil Rays as they finished with the worst record in baseball. Yet, the season wasn’t a total loss. The last-minute spring training pickup of first baseman Carlos Peña, who barely made the team out of camp, turned out to be a silver lining within a dark and cloudy season—another piece to the puzzle. Earning comeback player of the year honors, the former Northeastern product set franchise records in home runs (46) and RBI (121) as well as in on-base and slugging percentage.
As the 2008 season rolled in, and as the Devil made his way out of Tampa Bay, the Rays continued to wheel and deal. Friedman traded a thought-to-be future cornerstone of the team in Delmon Young to the Twins for right-handed starter Matt Garza and shortstop Jason Bartlett. The Devil Rays proceeded to sign veteran closer Troy Percival, who would take over ninth inning duties and join a revamped bullpen that included Dan Wheeler and Grant Balfour—two relievers acquired the year prior.
Tampa Bay then picked up a couple of experienced left-handed bats in Cliff Floyd and Eric Hinske—two players with World Series rings—to fill key platoon roles on the roster and provide leadership within a still-ripe clubhouse. And top third base prospect Evan Longoria, selected third overall in the 2006 amateur draft, inked a six-year deal with multiple team options not even a month into what has been a shoe-in rookie of the year season—an astute signing by Friedman that buys out the talented Longoria’s arbitration years and assures the presence of his power bat in the middle of the Rays’ lineup well into the next decade.
In short, the front office had promised to increase the team’s payroll, which, at $27 million in 2007, ranked lowest in the majors. Following free agency, trades, and contract extensions to existing players on the roster, the franchise had done just that, raising their payroll to $43 million—a measly number when compared to their older siblings in the AL East, but nonetheless a good sign for the now ever-expanding Tampa Bay fandom.
No, these certainly aren’t your older brother’s Devil Rays. In fact, there isn’t a Devilish thing about this group anymore.
Prior to the start of the season, Sternberg unveiled that no longer would the team’s moniker associate itself with that mischievous Devil. In the press release issued this past November that revealed the official name change, Sternberg, displaying sage intuition, stated: “We are now the ‘Rays’—a beacon that radiates throughout Tampa Bay and across the entire state of Florida.”
And that beacon is shining pretty brightly these days.”
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