Tampa Bay Devil Rays

Recently on the Tampa Bay Devil Rays' official site, the headline "RAYS WIN INTRASQUAD GAME" was prominently displayed. The bad news is that the headline wasn't a joke. That's how thin on the ground success is going to be for the Rays this year, as it has been since the inception of the franchise.

So are the Devil Rays doomed?

Certainly not. There is every reason to believe that a policy of building with high-upside, toolsy prospects can work; it has worked in the past and it will work again for someone in the future. The excellent Royals teams of the 70s and the excellent Blue Jays teams of the 80s were both built in this manner, and if there was one franchise that the Rays should be consciously imitating, it is those Jays teams.

In the Jays’ first four seasons, they were as bad as you can reasonably be. They went 54-107, 59-102, and 53-109 under Roy Hartsfield, then 67-95 under Bobby Mattick. Then, in 1981, they had a terrible first half and suddenly were very competitive - if still a losing team - after the strike. The Rays are about in the same position now - a year behind those Jays teams, mostly because of the terrible miscalculation they made in 1998 and then again in 2000 of investing heavily in the free-agent market, misallocating resources.

Since that time, the approach has been immeasurably better, but still a long way from where it needs to be. The Rays' poor record at selecting and developing young talent is the stuff of legend, on top of which were the losses of three first-round picks in four years to free-agent compensation. Promising D-Rays youngsters have failed time and again in the transition from the minors to the bigs, with outfielders Jason Tyner and Jason Conti the two most recent examples. Players have been rushed ridiculously quickly, with Ryan Rupe and Felix Escalona being two notable examples.

Players have been signed to major-league deals based almost solely on false hopes (Bobby Seay, who is still with the club after years of scuffling in the minors). Worst of all, though, has been the constant shuffling of medicore veterans in and out of the major league lineup. In the past five years, this team has seen massive changes every year. Among the fifteen regular spots (eight starters, a DH, five pitchers and one closer) the Rays have seen nine holdovers only once. That's serious roster churning. And now there is another group of talented young players ready to join the big club and turn the roster over again.

Despite last year's brutal 55-106 record, accomplished with a roster that was not notably young (though the youngest in the AL) it’s much too early for the Devil Rays to abandon ship now, particularly with an exciting group of talent beginning to come out of the system - and a group of young outfielders (Baldelli, Crawford, and Hamilton) mirroring the three 21-year-olds the aforementioned Jays were developing in 1981 (Bell, Moseby, and Barfield). The Rays have Kennedy, Brazelton, James, and Bierbrodt where those Jays had Stieb, Clancy, Luis Leal, and Jim Gott. There is every reason to believe that this could be the season that the Rays begin to turn the corner. That doesn’t mean that they would have a good season; the ‘81 Jays were worse than ever in the first half, going a pathetic 16-42. With many of the kids playing every day for the first time, things looked worse than ever on the surface. But the learning curve was steep - as it always is for the youngest players - and improvement is extremely rapid. In the second half, the team was much improved (at 21-27) and in 1982 they were respectable for the first time. By 1983 they were contenders as that group of young players has jelled into the best young nucleus in baseball. If the Devil Rays can mange to walk the tightrope between injury and false hope, they might be fortunate enough to see their core develop in the same way.

What did the Jays do to get themselves there? They had fired Roy Hartsfield, who had been there to teach and to dispense hardboiled baseball wisdom to the Toronto scribes, and replaced him with another teacher in Bobby Mattick. After the ‘81 season, they hired an experienced professional manager in Bobby Cox. They stayed extremely aggressive in scouting talent, employing the Rule 5 and pumping dollars into their Caribbean scouting operation, and began developing their Academy in the Dominican, the first [second?] such operation there. They used a blitz of advertising, designed to keep the fans continually interested and to convince that this was a team on the way up, not a moribund franchise. Most of all, they kept the roster relatively stable. The Jays tried to avoid the schizophrenic turnover that they were encouraged to do on all sides, refusing to pick up middling free agents who would take time away from the youngsters - at least after 1981.

The Rays haven't had the teachers in place but they have hired a truly professional manager in Lou Piniella. Hal McRae, who Piniella replaces, was a truly awful choice for a developing team; rough and blustery like Piniella, McRae never seemed particularly interested in teaching the young players and hated the rebuilding process. Piniella has credibility that McRae never had, and that adds a lot to a young team building towards their first success. The Rays now need to borrow more elements of that Pat Gillick formula - be aggressive in scouting and grabbing young talent at all times, promote the team as best as possible, and stay away from the quick fixes - especially those that cost money.

Baseball has changed a great deal in 20 years, and it would not be a good idea for the Rays to ape every move the Jays made back in the early 80s. But there are lessons from that success (both good and bad) that they should keep in the forefront of their minds. And on that note...

1. Ask yourself how each move you make will help the first Devil Rays contender.

This point is self-explanatory. Make sure to consider second-order effects, too, of the moves you make now. It might seem attractive to get that player up to MLB now, but if he’ll be a super-two in the year you’re first competing, you may have just blew two million dollars of that team’s salary budget. If he’s not dominating AAA yet, he can still learn lots there, and you save everyone some grief.

2. Keep the fans coming - any way you can

It doesn’t matter how you do it, but the more moribund the franchise seems, the deeper the hole is you have to dig out of. Fans don’t want to show up, players you trade for don’t want to play there, youngsters get discouraged. Be as creative as you can, and make sure that everyone knows that good times are right around the corner.

3. Get rid of the crappy veterans

You need to acknowledge that you made a mistake bringing in Anderson and Ordonez and Lee... Seek a way to get some return for them, but do it quickly and get them gone. The worst thing you can do to Brent Abernathy is to have him sit on the bench while Anderson plays all the time, and Lou - given his combative desire to win, will do exactly that because Anderson is a better player - probably - than Abernathy is right now.

Likewise, Travis Lee is going to push Aubrey Huff to DH, which is just stupid. Huff is much more valuable at first than he is at DH, and so Lee is costing him development time and hurting his value to the team. Why DH Huff when you could DH Baldelli, or Greg Vaughn, or Ben Grieve, and have the young guys play the outfield and Huff at first base?

4. No more major league deals

Never sign another draftee to a major league deal. More than any other team in baseball, you need those roster spots. Signing a player to a big-league deal after the draft also starts his clock on arbitration and free agency much too early.

5. Straighten out your draft priorities

The top rounds should be for guys who are likely to develop into good players, and the low rounds for longshots. That means doing more of what you did in the 2001 draft, taking college players and consciously picking longer-shots in the lower round... which netted a pretty good 18th-rounder in Jonny Gomes.

6. Stick to the plan

Don’t panic if the team struggles badly. If they do, blame the crummy new veterans. At least they make good scapegoats.

7. Keep your resume updated

This isn't a plan for the Devil Rays, but keep in mind that you may not be here long. For the good of the franchise, though, try to take Bonifay and Thrift down with you if you go... if one of them gets the job there’s no hope.

8. Hire a consultant team

You guys could really use some additional information on players, because whoever is advising you isn’t giving you the whole story. No one would suggest that you should throw over your scouting staff and start listening to a bunch of sabermetricians whose work you don’t even trust anyway... but it won’t cost much to set up a parallel scouting staff of young talent, three or four young stats-savvy folks who can scout the majors and minors - even college ball - both on paper and in person.

Don’t integrate them with your current system, or you're going to just create more arguments than you can solve, but make clear to both sides that you are going to consider both sets of information in making moves. You don’t have to ever do what they say, just read the stuff with an open mind... Soon you’ll find yourself at least listening, and you may find it helps.

If you don’t know where to start, e-mail Jim Furtado here at Primer. He can put you in touch with some people.

That's perhaps an overly radical suggestion, and a more sensible approach might be to simply start expanding the team's development vision past teaching baseball skills to athletic guys who haven’t developed them yet. In the end, you may find it simpler (and less fractious) to just fire your scouting staff and hiring more progressive thinkers who are open to both sides of the coin.

9. Move your minor-league affiliates.

Your players keep getting shot. Might we suggest Canada? It's less dangerous.

10. Keep Lou and his coaches on a very short leash.

You are <I>paying</I> him, you’re his boss, don’t let him boss you and make damn sure he pays attention to HIS to-do list. And speaking of which...

1. Watch those pitch counts

Yes, we know that it hasn’t been conclusively proven that high pitch counts cause injuries. We do know, though, that young pitchers are fragile, and that working them too hard might cause them to get hurt. Why take chances? Keep a short leash on the 25-and-under guys and let your bullpen share more of the load.

2. Let your players succeed

Try to put your good young players in positions where they can reasonably succeed. The opportunity to succeed sometimes means protecting them from failure. Don’t leave young pitchers out there to get shelled. Draw the heat from the media. Pump them up whenever possible. Confidence is important, and it may be in short supply if you plunge toward 100 losses again.

3. Keep your temper

Yeah, right. Still, this is an important principle. No one says that you have to accept losing, but if your response to adversity is to throw a tantrum, you’re imparting the wrong lesson. Winning games, strange though this sounds, isn't your goal this year, and you can accomplish as much this year winning 55 games as you can winning 70, if you do it in the right way.

4. Keep an eye on your coaches

The type on instruction that these young players get now will have a magnifying effect down the road. Make sure that the coaches are doing their jobs; make sure that the young players are getting most of the attention, and most of all make sure that the coaches do what they can to keep the relationship tight and positive. The only reason to get into a young guy’s face this year is for not listening or not working.

Finally, make sure that the coaches are imparting the right lessons. It’s very tempting to tell a young player with talent to do what he has always done - that will usually bring him he most success in the immediate future (the next game, the coming week, the current month). It’s harder to work with a player to refine the mechanics of his play, whether it be his swing, his delivery, his setup behind the plate, or the path he takes to the ball. It‘s harder for the player to do, and it makes for struggles along the way.

In the end, though, tearing down and rebuilding is what needs to be done to turn talented young players - all but the most talented - into great players. There’s a sense that the reason so few Devil Rays youngsters have improved into very good players isn‘t because they’ve lacked talent, but rather because in being rushed, they haven’t had the time or the low-pressure luxury to build themselves into better players. As a consequence, they get by in MLB, but they lack the solid technical underpinning or foundation on which they can improve.

5. Use your roster

Even on a team as bad as the Devil Rays, there are no useless players. Every one of the guys you are likely to see can do some things, or even just one thing, well. You need to use all those guys, and in particular all the young guys. There is little that these young players can gain from sitting on the bench, but there is a lot they can learn from being played regularly, particularly if attention is paid to how they can be used most effectively.

So what is their roster likely to be?

Projected Starters

Projected Rotation Starters

Two of the three odd men out from the above list, plus

Toby Hall is the team’s catcher of the present - and given the state of their catching prospects, of the future as well. You can expect him at least to continue to scuffle along at a reasonable pace, and he should really be an average starting catcher, which means that the Rays will have one average player in their starting lineup. It’s possible that it’s quite possible that Hall could be the best Ray this year. He has been a terrific minor league hitter, with 28 home runs and a .328 average in 163 games at AAA. It's time for Hall to show that sort of bat at the big league level... he has the bonus of a very good throwing arm, a necessity with a younger staff who may not be as good at holding runners as a group of veterans would be.

The only other catcher currently on the 25-man roster is Pete LaForest, who is not expected to challenge for any time and has hurt himself by getting stuck in Canada with visa problems. In actual fact, NRI Jorge Fabregas is likely to be the backup. Fabregas is just a glove, really... he is a lefthanded batter but no hitter.

The Devil Rays are going into 2003 with a definite plan: they were going to flash the leather, keep games close, and help out the fledgling pitching staff. To that end, Chuck LaMar acquired Rey Ordoñez and his Gold Glove reputation from New York and signed slick-fielding Travis Lee to man first base.

As is the Devil Ray Way, every plan gets strangled in its execution. Even the best defenders have to hit at some point, and Ordoñez and Lee sure aren’t going to do that. More importantly, good field/no hit defenders are a dime-a-dozen, yet the Devil Rays opts to burn valuable resources (money) on Lee and Ordoñez (garbage) when they had better options for accomplishing their goals at a cheaper price (efficiency).

At least Travis Lee won’t cost but $500,000 for 2003, with up to $500,000 in incentives. What they have to watch out for is a career season - there’s a $4 million option for 2004 that Tampa Bay needs to avoid at all costs. Of course, Lee is so consistently mediocre that he’ll probably "break out" by reaching league average levels. Tampa needs to avoid that option at all costs … which probably means a long-term contract is in the works right now.

That Ordoñez is going to make $6.25 million this season is stunning, considering that last season, of all players who qualified for the batting title, only Neifi Perez and Tampa Bay’s own Brent Abernathy had lower OPSs. That it was also Ordoñez’s third best performance in seven seasons is either gut-wrenchingly painful or gut-bustingly funny. Throw in the fact that he’s a weak bunter due to poor bat control and a surprisingly slow runner with little base-stealing ability, and you’re laughing through your tears. Ordoñez is a good-but-not-great defender, and the Gold Gloves in his trophy case are more of a testament to his flash and creativity with the glove than of his actual defensive contributions. The only positive here is that Ordoñez is in the final year of his ridiculous contract.

The platoon duo of Marlon Anderson and Brent Abernathy is so bad, they’re going to exceed most analysts’ projections and still be terrible. For this organization, it’s worth the playing time they’re given only because there’s nobody else to play second base. Abernathy’s ceiling looked like a league-average infielder; he’s running out of time. Protecting Anderson from lefty pitching could turn him into a decent contributor, and Piniella is having him work out at third base and shortstop, trying to turn him into a Mark McLemore-type, multi-positional utility man.

Jared Sandberg brings some pop to third base, but power’s only useful if you actually hit the ball. Sandberg looks totally mystified by big league breaking pitches, often flailing away at curveballs away or lunging out in front of change-ups. When Sandberg swings, he misses the ball 40% of the time. He’s still young, but needs to dramatically improve his pitch recognition. Ultimately, I don’t think it will be good enough to make him an acceptably regular. As befits a Sandberg, he’s solid with the glove, which will keep him in Piniella’s good graces for the near future.

Aubrey Huff is an anomaly among Devil Ray regulars in that he controls the strike zone. The strike zone is baseball’s version of the line of scrimmage in football or the post area in basketball - if you can’t control of it, you’ll get beat by those who do. This doesn’t mean a player has to draw 100 walks to be useful; it just means that players who have the understanding and discipline to lay off pitches outside their hitting zone will get better pitches to hit. Huff is that type of hitter. Although he drew just 30 unintentional walks in 113 games, he still managed .313/.364/.520 because he drilled any hittable pitch he saw.

Everything about him screams "projectable superstar." He’s big (6 ft. 4 in., 220 lbs.), very strong (23 homers in 454 at-bats), and he’s about to turn 26. Jason Giambi comparisons abound, and while that may be a little optimistic, he’s one of the better hitters in the league right now with the potential to grow into Giambi Lite.

In an ideal world, the Devil Rays after the all-star break will be playing an outfield of Carl Crawford in center, Rocco Baldelli in left, and Josh Hamilton in right. However, until then Ben Grieve and Greg Vaughn will try to get themselves traded in the corner spots. Piniella has made noises early in spring training about making Greg Vaughn a leadoff hitter, for which he is as well suited as Craig is for the Kirov Ballet. With a run element ratio of less than one over the past two years, and an on-base percentage scuffling around .300 in that same period, Vaughn has much more value coming up after whatever decent hitters the Rays have, not before them.

Grieve has gone backwards at a prodigious pace since becoming a Devil Ray, but there's no reason that with proper coaching (less Hal McRae might help a lot here) he couldn't return to hitting the ball with authority.

Still, every year, statheads get pumped up about prospects with skills who don’t have the athletic ability to wield those skills at the major league level. Grieve seems to epitomize this comment. He’s patient, has some power, but certainly doesn’t possess the raw athleticism of Crawford, Hamilton or Baldelli. Grieve’s ahead in the skills department, but he just doesn't appear to be physically able to get much better than he is now. That may be a reason the A’s shipped him out even though he was exactly the type of hitter Oakland strives to develop. If Grieve does hit well to start the year, the Tampa brass should look to flip him immediately for pitching. If nothing else, they can scuffle along with Jason Conti until Baldelli or Hamilton is ready.

The three young guys are the most interesting players the Rays have. Crawford is a speedy leadoff-type man with a little power. The drawback is that right now he doesn’t get on base. Crawford would make a terrific #9 hitter, the problem being that he plays left field and that the Rays are already projecting about four #9 hitters in the lineup. For a 20-year-old, Crawford held his own at the MLB level, which is a terrific achievement. To extend the 1981 Blue Jays comparison, Crawford compares extremely well to Lloyd Moseby as a rookie... if he could have a Moseby sort of peak, I think the Rays should be quite happy. The real question for Crawford like Rays rookies, is whether he will be hurt by being put in a position where he will mostly fail.

Baldelli is likely to start the year at AAA Durham, but provided he can continue the form that saw him become the Baseball America Minor League Player of the Year, he will probably be in Tampa Bay before June. Like a lot of Tampa Bay's young talents, Baldelli is in desperate need of tutelage in controlling the strike zone, and once he is further along he is likely to terrorize pitchers league-wide. He has terrific "young player's skills" - he hits line drives hard to all fields, has good speed and is a centerfielder with good range; he may end up in center eventually with Crawford in left.

Hamilton is a former #1 overall pick, an outfielder with an absolute rocket for an arm (which is why we project him to right field) and a good power hitter. He might even start the year at AA, a level he played at in 2001 but not 2002 as he was coming back from injury. He is widely acknowledged to have all the tools, and was #41 on Primer's Top Prospects list.

Sometimes, as with potato chips and tax refunds, quantity is quality. And sometimes, quantity just means you’ve got a lot of stuff lying around. Chuck LaMar’s hopes and dreams lie in the dual arms of his young outfield and a developing starting rotation. To back up the young starters, the Devil Rays have invited what seems to be everyone from the cast of "Fame" to compete for a roster spot this spring. Even Mel Rojas - yes, that Mel Rojas - is in camp. I’ve listed eight starters instead of the normal five, and I expect all eight to get innings for Tampa Bay this season.

Joe Kennedy is young (not quite 24), left-handed, he’s durable, has three big league pitches, has excellent mechanics, and would make a terrific middle-rotation starter for almost any team in the league. It’s just his luck that he has to play for the one team in the league that can screw it all up for him. Because of a horrific bullpen, Kennedy was forced to go deep into games, getting through the 7th in 17 of his 30 starts. During his most effective stretch late in the season, Kennedy threw 39 innings with a 2.31 ERA with pitch counts numbering 107, 115, 124, 115, and 124. Predictably, he gave up 20 runs in his next three starts. As tough as he is, with the mileage he’s logged on his arm, he’s cruisin’ for a bruisin’. His mechanics will help keep him healthy, but the stress of fatigue will be a constant threat to his medium- and long-term health.

Nick Bierbrodt, Dewon Brazelton, and Delvin James are the new batch of arms being offered as sacrifice to Mount Piniella. All three throw hard, but all three need time to develop better second and third pitch options. It doesn’t help that all three are coming off injuries, will likely be subject to some high-pitch count games, and won’t have a bullpen to help them out. Brazelton and James in particular need more seasoning, but that’s not going to happen in this organization. If Piniella is serious about developing this trio, they’ll get every opportunity to be successful - but their arms must be protected from overwork and their egos must be sheltered from undue pressure. The "Suck it up, kid" mentality needs to go in the can. The troika, in quick order:

Victor Zambrano is penciled into the rotation for 2003, but should really be in the bullpen despite his relatively successful two-month stint as a starter after being slapped around along with the rest of the bullpen for the first half of the season. Zambrano’s most effective when he’s allowed to go all out for one or two innings because he really doesn’t have the stuff to be anything more than a spot starter.

New acquisition Steve Parris, like Zambrano, is more of a placeholder than anything else, buying the organization some cheap innings while they try to beg, borrow, and steal some actual talent. Parris is 35, and finished the season with a "dead arm" in Toronto trying to come back early from shoulder surgery, so he’s probably a bad bet to stay healthy soaking up big pitch counts. He should fit right in.

Why Kansas City waived Dan Reichert is a mystery, with the only possible explanation being that they are dumb. He’d been one of the Royals’ top pitching prospect for a long time before he reached the majors, and possesses a big league fastball, an excellent curve, and a slider that’s been compared to Kevin Brown's. His control has been keeping him from achieving big league success, but he did shave a walk per 9 innings off last season, so even if he doesn’t break out in a big way, he’ll at least be on track to get a whole lot better.

Jim Parque, another reclamation project trying to come back from a torn labrum, will get a long look in camp and some opportunities during the season since he’s one of the few pitchers in the organization with any sort of major league success. Any future success he has won’t be coming this year while he gets his act together after a horrible 2002.

For a major league pitcher, the Devil Rays' bullpen is essentially the Last Chance Saloon. This is the last stop before AAA or retirement, the last available major-league position. If you can't land a spot here, you really can't land a spot anywhere... which is why the Mel Rojases of the world end up here. Rojas is throwing well, and stands a chance of making the squad. According to reports, Piniella plans to keep twelve pitchers even at the start of the season.

Three of the above candidates for starter positions won't make the rotation at first, and so two of them are likely to make the bullpen, particularly Parque or Bierbrodt, who are lefthanded... this team is crying out for lefthanded pitching. There are no outstanding pitchers in the bullpen, and a lot of candidates, so sorting through them is rather difficult. The best of the lot currently in camp are Travis Harper, Travis Phelps, and Jorge Sosa. Harper has the fastball to be successful, but tends to be expensive with the home run. Phelps is an excellent reliever, who would probably make as good a closer as anyone else the Rays are likely to try in that spot (there's talk of that spot going to Rojas or to journeyman Wayne Gomes); he makes guys swing and miss. Sosa was Rule 5 selection (the Rays claimed him on waivers from Milwaukee who had originally selected him) who could probably benefit from some minor league time at AA or AAA, but may get a job anyway. If nothing else, Sosa is a testament to smart roster use, and wasn't any worse as the last man in the D-Rays bullpen than anyone else they could have used there.

Finally, Hans Smith is likely to become a token lefthander in the pen due to the shortage of lefties. A massive 6-9, 265, Smith came to baseball a little late but has been decent in the minors so far. If the Devil Rays have their wits about them when everyone else is trying to cram NRIs onto their rosters, a young lefty with more experience and talent than Smith will be picked up and given the bullpen slot in Smith's place.

PO Player       G  AB  R   H 2B 3B HR RBI BB  SO SB CS   BA  OBP  SLG
C  Hall       117 450 60 135 30  1 14  75 23  39  1  2 .300 .334 .464
1B Lee        146 506 65 132 29  2 16  77 62 101  5  3 .261 .342 .421
2B Anderson   142 520 66 142 29  5 10  56 41  72  8  4 .273 .326 .406
3B Sandberg   127 446 63 104 27  1 19  65 47 149  3  2 .233 .306 .426
SS Ordonez    134 423 45 109 23  3  2  43 26  44  2  2 .258 .301 .340
LF Vaughn     104 374 55  84 18  1 18  57 59 121  7  3 .225 .330 .422
CF Crawford   160 647 85 173 31  9  8  73 31  96 27 14 .267 .301 .380
RF Grieve     142 510 71 137 31  1 18  78 76 134  7  1 .269 .363 .439
DH Huff       139 531 75 157 35  1 22  72 42  77  3  2 .296 .347 .490
c  Fabregas    55 144 11  30  4  1  3  18  6  14  0  0 .208 .240 .313
if Abernathy  128 498 64 130 27  3  5  46 33  49 13  7 .261 .301 .357
ut Rolls       88 332 54  92 22  1  4  24 17  40 13  8 .277 .312 .386
of Hamilton    62 191 28  47 11  1  2  10  9  36  8  2 .246 .280 .346
of Baldelli    48 172 28  54 11  1  5  19  4  24  3  6 .314 .330 .477

PO Player     W  L  ERA  G GS  IP   H ER HR BB  SO
SP Kennedy    7  6 3.80 29 29 194 200 82 19 46 126
SP Zambrano   5  6 4.81 50  7 101 103 54 13 52  75
SP Parris     7  9 5.37 22 22 129 149 77 23 48  71
SP Bierbrodt  3  3 4.67 15 14  81  80 42 12 38  70
SP Brazelton  2  3 4.47 26 26 147 149 73 11 78  95
SP Parque     6  8 5.73 28 25 143 165 91 31 56  89
SP JamesD     4  3 4.31 25 15  96 103 46 11 28  56
SP Reichert   7  7 4.73 33 14 118 124 62 12 58  74
RP Harper     7 10 5.18 31 21 139 159 80 26 41  81
RP Phelps     5  5 4.30 43  9  92  86 44 11 46  84
RP Sosa       1  2 5.50 33 16 103 117 63 15 53  55