Unless you're brand new to baseball fandom -- and if that's the case, welcome! -- you know by now that few teams around the sport have managed to maximize player performance like the Rays. It's become a point of consternation among fans of other clubs and an oft-memed joke on social media, but the Rays have a knack for unearthing hidden gems like practically no other club in the game. In recent seasons, they've turned low-profile pickups of Jeffrey Springs, Drew Rasmussen, Ryan Yarbrough and Collin McHugh into high-end performances. They've signed mid-range free agents like Zach Eflin and Charlie Morton and coaxed borderline ace-level performance from them. They've bought low on former top prospects like Tyler Glasnow and struck gold.
That doesn't even factor in buy-low pickups of position players like Isaac Paredes, Randy Arozarena, Harold Ramirez, Jose Siri and others. The Rays may have dropped "Devil" from their name back in 2007, but there are plenty of fans who still lament the Rays' devil magic, which has propelled the team to near-perennial contention despite consistent bottom-of-the-league payrolls.
And if you haven't been paying attention over the past calendar year -- they've done it again.
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I don’t care what team it is. I will always follow a team that employs a guy named Joe Rock
Logical way to look at Rays situation is they never pay anybody anything, so therefore anyone they have is going to be a budget/surplus type pickup as it is.
Every single team in the league will hit a HR from scouring thru the rubbish heap for a find. Yes, TB has done a remarkable job of doing just that. They have also done a remarkable job of never paying anyone, keeping near bottom payrolls, keeping an empty stadium.
Tired long ago of seeing this tripe of how Tampa is good at signing discards, when it’s the only way they can compete, due to their buisnes model they forced themselves into.
Could go on and on. So many harp and harp on this exact same thing and it’s sickening. Where is all the outrage (selective) when this team unloads any contract that just begins to pay anyone? Oh man..
Way more impressive than just throwing 300 million plus contracts at all the top free agents
I know right? Like the 182m, 11 year Wander Franco con..er….nevermind
Idk I’d be pretty impressed if the rays did that.
The 300m contact that is.
They spend nothing, they win nothing, they deserve nothing. Next! Ahahaha!
As a Rays fan it’s incredibly frustrating. I blame the owners of course. And I absolutely agree with everything you said. All of us fans know when a player is on his way out (when he performs amazingly well and they can flip said player in a trade or let them walk before arbitration). Lots of casual fans have accepted this as normal, but it’s far from that. A cheap owner with no skin in the baseball game cheaping out on team spending and giving less craps about attendance. If it made sense for him he’d likely try to move the team as soon as he could. He doesn’t care about the fans or the community… Only money. I wish one day the team will be released from his grasp and maybe then they can actually win a WS. Luck runs out eventually, it always does, so even if a bunch of scrap heap players have career years, that luck always runs out in the playoffs.
If Sternberg wants to know what loosening the purse strings looks like, he just needs to look at the Dodgers, where Friedman is absolutely killing it with a combo of Rays-like savvy and the ability to write a check once in awhile. And sometimes *cough* Ohtani *cough* not until after he retires..
Rays in the Bay
As a Rays fan it’s incredibly frustrating.
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I understand. 95 wins and making the playoffs every year must be horrible.
@Joe
Yeah. Going to St Pete and seeing how little fans actually care about their baseball team is jarring. Guess there’s too many transplants from up north. They love the lightning down there but not the Rays.
And what did those 95 wins get us? No wins in the postseason. I’d rather be terrible and have hope for the future in the draft rather than being competitive. I’m ready for a rebuild!
RitB: If the owner doesn’t give a sheet about attendance, that means he doesn’t need attendance to stay rich—meaning he’s getting paid, very well!, some other way.
So who’s clandestinely financing this team, and why??
He’s getting money from TV deals because the Rays have a pretty lucrative one that reaches beyond Tampa Bay. He pockets that money and spends about 10% on the team. He artificially keeps tickets low because he knows locals won’t pay to watch patchwork teams play, and he can make a pretty penny when the Yankees and Red Sox and Cubs are in town.
I genuinely believe Sternberg has zero interest in growing the team… Even if he gets that new stadium. He has to pay for half of that so I expect the Rays to just be awful in the new stadium (although an optimist might think that’s the time for a big shift in mentality towards the team by Sternberg and Co).
It’s not just signing and developing guys that they’re good at. It’s discarding the guys at the right time too. Even on small moves like Luke Raley.
Yeah, I get it that they want to monetize, buuuuut…
rays are brilliant at scouting as well as flipping players and developing unknowns into all stars/cy youngs.
BUT they are also very prone to developing players that end up riddled with injuries, going down with TJ and other ailments. if a pitcher ends up in tampa 2 things are likely- he’ll win a cy young, and he’ll have TJ surgery
The type of pitches they teach leads to a higher incidence of arm surgery.
Really?? what pitch is that? because they value different pitching types with different specialties.
It’s tough to pinpoint why but when they buy low on middling relievers and convert them to starters, they get some run out of them but they get injured. They are getting starters on the super cheap this way but have to keep developing and hitting on every move. This year it finally looks like some of the magic is running out, but oddly enough, it seems like the more established guys (Aroz, Diaz, Civale, Fairbanks) are the ones hurting the team the most.
the magic’s still there for the pitchers. littell and eflin have been good. pepiot is going to win a cy young someday for tampa. and taj is back tmrw, he might give the tm a boost. its the offense thats off to a slow start. yandy hitting .220, arozarena .140, siri .170
tampa’s got great coaches and small market tms give players the confidence to flourish bec theres zero pressure in a place like tampa bay as opposed to larger markets like boston, new york, la, chicago. same can be said about small market teams like minnesota, cleveland, milwaukee
It actually happened
Max Muncy wants a word… Because the Dodgers do the same thing
Max muncy and who else, I can only think of Chris Taylor
would you count phillips as well as muncy?
Besides Taylor and Muncy, you had Justin Turner. Evan Phillips. Tyler Anderson one season. Andrew Heaney borderline one season. They also maximize bullpen guys like Vesia, C Martin, Brasier, Almonte, etc. as Friedman doesn’t believe in spending too much money on bullpen.
That’s not a lot of guys, a lot of them are about average or slightly above average in terms of their stats with the dodgers
Turner and muncy and Phillips are the most distinguished (and the Anderson season) but none of them have ever lasted (turner and muncy had like 2 great seasons)
Friedman was the architect of the Rays model. He started what they’ve done down there. No surprise the Dodgers can do it too.
What does this have to do with transactions and rumors?