The Buhner.com Blog

Some who are viewing this blog for the first time may notice a lot of criticism toward the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Why pick on them? What’d they ever do to you?

Simply stated, the Devil Rays are possibly the worst franchise in Major League Baseball. This is an across-the-board thing. It’s not a thing where they have the worst record. (which they might). They make the worst management decisions, have the worst uniforms, and have the worst stadium.

Simply stated, if you watch the Rays for a game, it looks like you’re watching a minor league team. The way they play doesn’t help.

This is a Tampa Bay Devil Rays home jersey.

This is what it looks like on a player.

Tampa’s main color, outside of black and white, is forest green, which is interesting considering the team is located in Tampa, not known for their forests. Forrest green in relation to water is more reminiscent of algae. Lovely imagery.

Their other team “color” is purple, which is not only not often seen in Devil Ray uniforms, but isn’t a color I often mix with forest green anyway. The Rays, only in existence for seven years, have already made over their uniforms from the originals.

Which wasn’t a bad decision. The “our team color is every color!” theme just wasn’t working. OK, so merchandising is out the window. But their hats aren’t horrible, so maybe I’ll buy a hat and visit the stadium. Let’s look at Tropicana Field, shall we?

Tropicana Field opened in 1990. Unfortunately, the Devil Rays moved in eight years later. By that time, the Field was already outdated. Topicana was build on the same basis as Cincinnati and Pittsburgh’s old stadiums - stadiums that have since been demolished. The stadium was renovated in 1998 for the Rays arrival, which didn’t really help.

In 2000, the Devil Rays replaced the AstroTurf already in place at Tropicana with “FieldTurf”, which according to the company that makes it, is “artificial grass that has all the characteristics of natural grass”. Looking at pictures of the new field, it looks like it’s made out of corduroy.

Tampa residents, whom supposedly would do anything to get a baseball team in Tampa in the past (almost getting the White Sox, Giants, and Mariners before expansion), vote down proposals to get a new stadium built.

So, no merchandise anyone wants to buy, and no stadium people are willing to go to. Well, if you don’t want to go to the stadium because it’s ugly, you’ll go for the team.

Therein lies the main problem.

The finger will always be pointed that the Devil Rays are in economic distress and can’t compete, especially since they’re in the same division as the Yankees and Red Sox. While no one’s going to have the market share that New York has, the Tampa/St. Pete area has the #13 TV market in the country, larger than that of Phoenix, Denver, St. Louis, and nearly the same as Seattle. Add into that the #20 market, Orlando, and the Rays could get a decent amount of money from television revenue, if they put a product out on the field that could actually compete.

Tampa tried to do that as a starting expansion team. While many expansion teams start slow, develop their young players, and strengthen their system while taking their lumps, Tampa went out and used Tampa (a strong baseball hotbed) as a draw for free agents to come play there. Veterans came, too. Tampa traded or signed veterans like Wade Boggs, Fred McGriff, Roberto Hernandez, Wilson Alvarez, Dave Martinez, and Paul Sorrento. They signed Cuban defector Rolando Arrojo. They made decisions to win immediately, or at least make an impact. The only problem with this was that the players the Rays went out and got weren’t the type of players that could carry a team - most were either too old to be the contributers they once were (like Boggs and McGriff) or were complimentary players who were exposed when they became the focus in the lineup. Paul Sorrento batted .269 with 31 home runs surrounded by Griffey, Buhner, A-Rod, Edgar Martinez, and Russ Davis in the ‘97 Mariners lineup. Surrounded by Quinton McCracken, Boggs, McGriff, and Dave Martinez, he hit .225 with 17 home runs.

If the ‘98 Devil Rays had just signed veterans and done nothing else, that would have been fine. But in an effort to get “ready today” players, the Rays traded away players who could contribute to them in the future - names like Bobby Abreu (traded for light hitting shortstop Kevin Stocker) and Dmitri Young (traded for 28 year old failed prospect Mike Kelly). Brendan Donnelly and Jose Guillen are also players who spent time with the Rays organization before going elsewhere.

One might think Tampa would have learned from their mistakes, but not Tampa. The Devil Rays continued to sign veterans like Jose Canseco (34) and Bobby Witt (35) in 1999, but 2000 was the free fall.

As failed free agent signees like Paul Sorrento and Bobby Witt departed, team management chose to shake up the team. Rolando Arrojo, once the toast of Tampa in ‘98 and coming off a mediocre ‘99 season, was sent to Colorado for the inflated stats (and contract) of Vinny Castilla. Greg Vaughn (four years, $34 million), Gerald Williams (two years, $5.75 million), and Juan Guzman (two years, $12.5 million) were all signed. Between trades and free agent signings, Tampa spent over $66 million in contracts to pick up Castilla, Vaughn, Williams, Guzman, and discounted Steve Trachsel ($1 million for one year).

The results that first season were mixed - Vaughn and Williams played decent, but Williams’ .274 batting average and 21 home runs masked a .312 on-base percentage and a 50% failure rate stealing bases. Vaughn actually raised his average to .254 (from .245 the previous season), but drove in 44 less runs and hit 28 home runs, down from 45 the previous season and 50 the year before that. Castilla played in 85 games in 2000, hitting only 6 home runs and batting .221. He would play only 24 more games for Tampa before being released. Guzman pitched only 1 2/3 in his Tampa career, giving up 8 earned runs in one game, and never pitching for them again.

Vaughn and Williams would eventually crash and burn themselves - Williams batted .207 in 62 games for Tampa before getting his release, while Vaughn batted .233 with 24 home runs in 2001 and a hearty .163 with 8 home runs in 2002 until Tampa finally released him before the start of the 2003 season, in the final year of his $34 million contract.

Deciding (whether by choice or by the fact they had no money left to spend after the expenditures of 2000) to cut payroll and go toward youth, Tampa realized that they had no minor league system, or at least not one with any major prospects. The 2001 and 2002 seasons saw the Devil Rays roll out “prospects” like Steve Cox, Brent Abernathy, Jason Tyner, Russ Johnson, Damian Rolls, Felix Martinez, Jared Sandberg, Ryan Rupe, Bobby Seay, Jason Conti, and Felix Escalona. Generally, these were non-prospects that were released by other franchises, older former prospects from other franchises who never panned out, failed prospects drafted by Tampa, promising prospects who got rushed to the majors too early, or in the case of Seay and Matt White, a high schooler given a major league signing bonus due to a loophole during Tampa’s spending days.

Where does the problem lie? Is it scouting? Money management? Player management? Probably a combination of all of that. With better scouting, the team knows who to trade for and who to hold onto. Minor league scouting is where teams are developed, especially teams that have low payrolls like Tampa. Being able to find the players in an opposing teams minor league system to trade your veteran for and develop them into your future cheap starters (and possible future stars) is key for a small money team. A perfect example of this is Milwaukee and Danny Kolb. Kolb was a failed starter prospect with Texas who bounced back and forth in their system before Milwaukee acquired him in the spring of 2003 where he went to the minors to begin the season. Milwaukee eventually brought him up for bullpen depth, he moved into the closer role, and flourished. He did again in 2004, and when Milwaukee was faced with the prospect of keeping Kolb and his increasing salary (thanks to arbitration) or dealing him off, they dealt him when his value was highest to Atlanta for one of Atlanta’s top prospects. The cost for Milwaukee to acquire Kolb? Minimal. But Milwaukee’s scouts had the presence of mind to pick him off the scrap heap, use him wisely, then send him off when he’s worth most for good prospects.

The thing that makes me pick on Tampa so much is that they don’t do things like this - they spent stupidly when they had money to blow, then cried poverty when that money was gone (with minimal return on said investment), stating that if they had the money that other teams did, they’d be able to compete. In 2000 (the year of Castilla, Vaughn, and Guzman), Tampa had a major league payroll of $61,231,853 - good for 11th in baseball, and more than the Cubs, Mariners, Giants, Astros, Phillies, and White Sox. It’s easy to have sympathy for a team that can’t keep its good players because they can’t afford when they go free agent, but Tampa isn’t losing their players to free agency - they never had them to begin with.

That’s why I pick on Tampa. And they’re still not learning. In a now different economic environment in baseball, where there are true “haves” and “have nots”, there is a blueprint for the “have nots” to start following. Tampa won’t follow it, and will find every other excuse in the world to blame for their failure.

I’m just going to point it out as it happens.