There is a very good chance that the Tampa Bay Rays are going to cease to exist in the next decade.
David Price gets traded (To this day I claim it was a dumb, dumb, dumb trade). Andrew Freedman is gone to the Los Angeles Dodgers (expect them to make major changes within the organization). But the biggest of all is the departure of longtime manager Joe Maddon.
Joe Maddon isn’t just a manager, he was the heart and soul of the Rays. 754-705 with the team, and an astounding 446-365 record this decade. He started the winning culture of a franchise that had seen pretty much none of it in the first decade of existence. Not even the mighty Lou Pinella was able to shake things up back in the early 2000s---even though we can attribute this partially to the abysmal budget, extremely tough division, and questionable upper management moves. Joe Maddon literally turned the fortunes of this baseball club around in a direction the baseball world had never seen. To go from 10 straight losing seasons to going to the World Series and suddenly being relevant against the Red Sox and Yankees was unimaginable, unexpected, and a euphoria to a league that had seen the big budget squads have all the fun. The Rays even with this disappointing season have one of the 5 best records since the 2008 season when the dropped the Devil from its name.
Maddon is creative, patient (which is a diehard requirement being in the Rays organization), easygoing, accepting, and just the perfect guy to run rookies, has-beens, wanna-bes, and under-the-radar players looking for just a little bit of baseball skills TLC. He is a man that knows that the cluster of players will change every single year and he must find a way to keep the attitude, keep the culture, and keep the sanity intact as the revolving door of prospects and low-budget players kept rolling.
His best ability is draining as much talent and value as he can off of the players that show up in the Tampa doorstep once everyone else abandons them. The Devil Rays/Rays used to be the final stop for veterans before Maddon, as we saw Tino Martinez, Wade Boggs, Fred McGriff, Greg Vaughn, Vinny Castilla, and Jose Canseco make their way here before their careers had finished. Now, we saw the likes of Fernando Rodney, Kyle Farnsworth, Troy Percival, Sam Fuld, and Ben Zobrist arrive and suddenly thrive when wearing the colors of the Rays.
And to continue talking about the subtle and nearly underrated genius of Joe Maddon, look at the impact of Rays players when they went elsewhere. Carl Crawford became a valuable asset in the Dodgers organization. Rafael Soriano and Fernando Rodney became successful closers after exiting Tampa. Johnny Gomes became a champ with the Red Sox in 2013 by becoming an extremely valuable secret weapon. Wade Davis and James Shields helped transform the Kansas City Royals into American League champions. Sam Fuld went from near Cubs burnout into yearly valuable asset as he improved the Twins and the Athletics with his defensive skills and never-say-die style of play. Players improve when entering the Rays circle, and Maddon and company are major components as to why. Maddon even revolutionized certain techniques, like the crazy outfield/infield shifts, new heavier emphasis on set-up men, and even the rise of importance of the unsung utility men can be attributed to Maddon.
And could any manager other than Joe Maddon propel that extremely improbable 2011 Rays team to the playoffs? I think not...............
Even though any team can nab good rookies here and there, it takes good managers to allow them to grow and mold into superstars. A lesser manager can damage a player, like when Tommy Lasorda overused Fernando Valenzuela back in the 80s, or when Dusty Baker ruined the arms of Kerry Wood and Mark Prior. Under Joe Maddon, nobody gets overused, nobody gets overworked, and people hardly get put in a tough spot. Joe Maddon has the utmost faith in all his players and staff, which might actually be his only downfall----as Derek Shelton had his rough patches in terms of improving the offense. Even though the offensive efficacy was consistently amongst the best in the major leagues, when the Rays slumped they definitely slumped. If there is anything I can fault Joe Maddon with, is that he sometimes has too much faith in his players: Jose Molina being the favorite example.
The fact is, we have gotten a bit spoiled with the success of the Rays. Say what you will about the Moneyball techniques of the Athletics, the As still spend an average of $20 million more than the Rays each year—and do keep their players much, much longer. The Rays are always at the bottom of the spending rankings. And the other intangibles of baseball don’t help either: Tampa itself is a smaller market, the stadium situation is abysmal, the attendance is beyond awful, and the threats of relocation consistently glare upon the franchise. San Antonio, Montreal, Portland, Mexico City, Charlotte, and even to a far lesser extent Brooklyn are licking their chops, waiting for MLB to finally lose patience of the Tampa Bay ordeal. And yet somehow in spite of all this, Joe Maddon keeps the Rays relevant, keeps them in the conversation, and keeps them in the loop-------even with an average of less than 20,000 a game in an area with over 4 million, and also certified as one of the top areas for the coveted 18-40 age range in the nation.
And now, I am going to be quite frank here: The Rays are sinking. They pissed off Maddon secretly when they traded David Price for essentially nothing. They could have kept him for the rest of the year and attempted a nice run—especially considering that 3 of the 4 top AL teams got plagued with injuries and/or suckiness (Tigers, Orioles, Athletics especially) towards the end of the season. But instead of gunning for it, management trades him away and remains satisfied with a mediocre season because they were able to cut costs. And quite frankly that may have been the beginning of the end of the Joe Maddon era. Similar to when Lou Pinella criticized the front office for the similar technique of never aiming for immediate success, Maddon clearly was running out of patience with the revolving door style of team maintenance.
So what now? Joe Maddon was the strange case of being the face of the franchise, simply because he was our go-to person for when we needed good news, we needed reassurance, and we needed someone to calm the waters and remind us that everything was going to be okay. He was the face of the low-budget, indie, out-of-the-box image of the Rays, and with him gone I can guarantee you that even with familiar faces in the infield and in the pitcher’s slot the entire dynamic has been visibly shaken to its core.
This might be the nail on the coffin, unless St. Petersburg, Tampa, Orlando, Lakeland, and all the political heads in between the I-4 zone come up with a way to build a new stadium, build a new future, find new fans, and figure out a way to prevent the Rays from moving away from Florida. Bud Selig has been extremely patient (to a point of being comatose) but who knows if our upcoming commissioner will have the same willingness to wait. Baseball is inches behind the NFL in terms of revenue and with the upcoming television contracts prepared to set the profits on fire, it might be down the road when MLB will actually be making more money than any other American sports league. They are honestly a few rule changes, a couple relocations, and a few Spanish teams away from accomplishing that. Seriously, a Puerto Rican, Mexican, and/or Dominican team would flip the script on their earnings. So there are no more excuses about the low payroll, no more excuses as to why in a league with more parity than ever are there even more budget cuts. 90+ million people visit Florida a year, with 53+ million in Central Florida alone. No excuses.
Joe Maddon has been just as pissed about the stadium situation as the average Rays fan, especially one that lives in Central Florida and farther away from the insanity of visiting the stadium in the ONLY bad part of Tampa Bay (raises hand). Him leaving might be the ultimate “YOU BETTER FIX THIS SITH RIGHT NOW” card as he hasn’t even announced another team, hasn’t even ruled out the Rays in 2015. He still might come back. But as of now, he sees the poor situation the Rays management has put him, his players, and his few remaining loyal fans in, and it was time for some drastic action. Joe Maddon’s drastic action was just walking away from the rising flames.
The ball is in the court of the Rays organization. We have lost the best pitcher, manager, AND president in the history of the organization. If nothing is done to stop the bleeding, we will definitely see our wonderful players of Tampa Bay wearing different colors.......
Red….White….Blue colors….
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