Purging Marlins a model to avoid
The Rays hope to manage things well enough never to have to rip the team apart.
By MARC TOPKIN, Times Staff Writer
Published December 6, 2007
NASHVILLE - No matter how many hours he spent trapped in the team suite, room service sandwiches he ate and e-mails and calls to agents and other teams he exchanged without getting a deal completed, Rays executive vice president Andrew Freidman still had a lot better Wednesday than Marlins counterpart Larry Beinfest.
While Friedman pursued trades and free-agent offers for a left-handed hitting outfielder, Beinfest stood in the glare of the media room lights and had to explain that he had just traded two of the game's most talented young players, third baseman Miguel Cabrera and left-hander Dontrelle Willis, because he couldn't afford to keep them. Worse, he got only prospects albeit good ones in return, further retarding the rebuilding of a Florida team that won the World Series just five seasons ago.
Talentwise, it would be akin to Friedman having to dump B.J. Upton and Scott Kazmir in the same type of deal.
And it's a position he hopes never to have to be in.
As the Rays build for what they hope is near-term success, they do so hoping, though in a market similar to the Marlins in attendance and revenues, that by managing their roster and finances they can sustain it and avoid the volatility that forces their instate counterparts to continually build up and tear down their team.
"In smaller revenue markets we always have to be mindful of future years beyond just the following season," Friedman said. "Even when we're winning 90-plus games, we're still going to always have to factor that in so we don't get into a situation where we fall off a cliff and take 6-8 years to rebuild what we've built."
Keys are maintaining a flow of prospects to keep the 25-man roster stocked and with depth behind it, managing service time (which affects how quickly players become eligible for arbitration and free agency) and making realistic evaluations of their chances to win.
And at best, they'd hope to be somewhere between perennial contenders like the Red Sox and Yankees and binge-and-purgers like the Marlins.
"I think it's very difficult to expect us to be able to compete 10 out of 10 years," Friedman said. "So what's important for us is to be able to compete six to seven, as many of those years as we possibly can, but in the three-four other years that we haven't fallen off the cliff, so to speak, that we can retool as quickly as possible to compete in this division."
The low-revenue teams have to be proactive - in scouting, player development, player procurement - to avoid having to demolish what they've built, said Rays senior VP Gerry Hunsicker, former GM of the Astros. An example, he said, was trading Delmon Young, a first-year major-leaguer with potential to be a longtime All-Star, to the Twins to acquire a No.3 starter in Matt Garza and a shortstop in Jason Bartlett, filling two key holes with players who are young, have low salaries and are under the Rays' control for years to come.
"No one feels sorry for anybody in this business," Hunsicker said. "You need to use that to drive you to be more productive within your own operation. We have to get more out of our resources than our competition, bottom line."
Marc Topkin can be reached at topkin@sptimes.com View his blog at blogs.tampabay.com/rays.