Smart guy. This team figures to be dangerous for quite a while. What will really be interesting, to me, is to see how they're able to adjust to the transition from "perennial losers overloaded with talent" to "competitive team". In several years when this generation of talent has passed, what will the team look like then?

This is a moderately interesting article -- shorter than I expected -- but I've already read similar things about how John Henry was bringing a Wall Street mentality to Boston.

In fact, I'm not certain that this article is describing anything different than what Moneyball was trying to get at -- except it's brief, and not nearly as snotty.

I don't think you need to go to Wall Street to learn the financial secrets of the Rays - any panhandler could offer you similar fiscal wisdom. Just change the cardboard sign to, "Will Field Baseball Team for Free Millions."

What does drafting good players have to do with free millions?

What does drafting good players have to do with free millions?

Does the term "pre-arbitration" ring a bell?

The Delmon trade really started our transformation because of the areas we were able to address

That was the point where I became convinced that the Rays had a chance to be good (they're even better than I expected), for exactly the reason Friedman says here. It was a trade that clearly reflected a desire to improve the team - identify your strengths (young outfielders), identify your weaknesses (defense, especially at SS; starting pitching, bullpen), and use the former (Young) to strengthen the latter (Bartlett, Garza). Just a classic talent trade - the kind of trade that teams make when their principal concern is the team's won-lost record.

(they're even better than I expected)

I expected them to be this good. However, I'm worried that they are in a free-fall. They've lost 6 straight going into today's game and are currently losing to Cleveland 5-2 in the 6th. The losing is starting to look ugly, like a ship unable to turn in port.

The Rays have lost six straight and are trailing right now. By the end of the season, they may prove to be not quite so far ahead of expectations as we think they are now. What will really be interesting to me, is how they adjust to not drafting first or second all the time.

By the end of the season, they may prove to be not quite so far ahead of expectations as we think they are now.

Good point. In one of the Hardball Times Annual, somebody (I think it was John Brittain) did a, "What would the season have looked like if it had been played in reverse?" article (I'm thinking it was the one after the 2005 season). It's interesting. A team that starts out, say, 50-31, and then stumbles in the 2nd-half to finish with 85 wins creates a very different perspective than one that opens the season 35-46 and rallies in the second half to pull out 85 wins.

Sorry but this has been bugging me...
all season we've heard about Bartlet's defensive rep, but when did he become a good defensive SS?

Wasn't there a lot of talk about his poor defense in MN?
Didn't he get bounced around and sent down a few times?
Wasn't he frequently benched for lesser guys like Juan Castro and Nick Punto?
I thought the saber conv. wis. was that he wasn't great defensively, but Gardy was being silly in playing better defenders in his place.

I liked the trade for the Rays at the time, but Bartlett's been terrible, like Tony Pena jr. terrible.
I mean I understand why they did it, but the Twins surely got the better of the deal--and I LOVE the Rays.

Sorry but this has been bugging me...
all season we've heard about Bartlet's defensive rep, but when did he become a good defensive SS?

Well, it's more a matter of who he was replacing, which was more of an upgrade from bad-year Jeteresque to roughly league average. That alone was probably worth a win or two in the standings for the Rays. For a point of reference, and recognizing that range factor is a very crude tool, Harris was a half a play below average per 9 innings at SS on a teams which put an above average number of balls in play, and a full play below average in his time at 2B. That's just straight out awful.

Whose last week was worse, the Rays or Wall Street?

Trick question.

The answer is Huston Street's sorry ass.

But what about Zobrist?

I'm just saying 1)it seems Bartlet's defensive rep changed simply because he was traded to a surprise team and stopped hitting well and 2)if you wanted a light hitting avg defensive SS young don;t give up a Delmon Young for him.

The trade was Young for Garza with the exchange of a valuable utility man for a 9-hole SS as an afterthought.

PS-Man shortstop as a position is REALLY down eh? not many really great guys on both sides of the ball.

What does drafting good players have to do with free millions?

A sign of progress is getting Yankees fans to stop bellyaching, "they just take the free millions from revenue sharing and pocket it, instead of spending it to improve their team," and start bellyaching, "they just take the free millions and spend it to improve their team". Especially since the Rays' spending habits haven't materially changed.

UZR loves Bartlett, so he's had a good defensive rep for awhile now, at least among saber types. He's third among shortstops who played at least a season's worth of games between 03 and 07 in UZR for that time period.

If the Rays are as smart as that Friedman quote makes them sound, I'm worried for the Red Sox over the next 5 years.

I had Bartlett as a good defender, he was a big reason why I thought the Rays were due for a good season.

TotalZone had him at +8 in range last year. +8 for Stats Zone rating, +10 from my interpretation of RZR.

He must have been even better in 2005-06 because my projection was +13 for him.

edit: NWM, didn't see #13

But what about Zobrist?

Zobrist has been a terrible defensive SS when the Rays gave him a shot. Jason Bartlett has been a better player than Delmon Young. Potential? Young has that, but Bartlett is more valuable right now.

What Wall Street philosophy? Use other people's money?

When EF Huston talks, people listen.

Bartlett has great range, esp on turf and good physical tools (arm, pivot) but had a bunch of errors also due to yips and forgetting to cover the bag. He's not "dependable" but he's a strong defender.

Yeah, looks like I formed that (wrong) opinion from:
1) assuming Gardo was jerking him around because of hisdefense (when actually he jerked him around because he's Gardo)
and
2) some old AG.com posts:

"Jason Bartlett is a promising prospect who appears to be the future at shortstop for the Twins. As has been the case with a lot of guys who have appeared to be the future at a given position for Minnesota in the last decade or so, the team's management has decided he needs additional seasoning in the minors. Bartlett hit .331/.415/.472 in 67 games at Triple-A last year after hitting .296/.380/.425 in 139 games at Double-A in 2003, so he has certainly conquered the high minor leagues. However, he looked awful in a very brief stint with the Twins last season and the team seems to have concerns about his defense.

Imagine being a promising young shortstop prospect who has heard concerns from the organization about your defense, only to see them go out and sign Castro, the ultimate good-glove/no-hit shortstop, to a two-year deal during the offseason. It's like a young girl getting engaged to a guy with wedding plans in a year or so, the fiance complaining about her cooking, and then going out and hiring a less attractive, older female housekeeper who can do nothing but cook. Bartlett and the cooking-impaired girl probably know they shouldn't be that threatened, but there's still that woman cooking dinner in the kitchen.

Personally, I would give Bartlett a chance at shortstop to see what he can do right now. He's 24 years old, he has proven he can succeed in the high minors for two straight years, he is relatively highly thought of as a prospect, and he plays a position the team is very weak at currently. Of course, there's a decent chance I'm crazy, but it's also worth remembering that I didn't give Castro a million bucks a year for the next two seasons. Oh, and really, in the grand scheme of things, who cares if she can cook? "

"
# When Jason Bartlett was in Minnesota, the local media misguidedly focused on his error totals when evaluating his defense at shortstop, ignoring his range and the relative uselessness of errors when analyzing defense. It didn't take long for that to change following last week's trade to Tampa Bay, with Devil Rays beat writer Marc Topkin offering the following note about Bartlett's defense in the St. Petersburg Times:

Though his .960 fielding percentage was among the worst for shortstops, he ranked much higher in terms of zone rating, range factor, chances and plus/minus, a complicated evaluation system from the Fielding Bible that rates how many more or fewer plays an individual makes compared to an average player at his position. Bartlett's plus-45 over the last three seasons is second best in the majors.

It would have been nice to read something like that from a mainstream media outlet while Bartlett was still with the Twins."