MAKING IT WORK: The Rays continue to win with a meager $40.1 million payroll with the right collection of reclamation projects (Kyle Farnsworth), youngsters (Jeremy Hellickson, above), and bargains (Casey Kotchman). (AP)
MAKING IT WORK: The Rays continue to win with a meager $40.1 million payroll with the right collection of reclamation projects (Kyle Farnsworth), youngsters (Jeremy Hellickson), and bargains (Casey Kotchman, above). (REUTERS)
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Baseball poverty isn’t a blessing. But it is not quite the curse you probably think it is.
Exhibit A is the Tampa Bay Rays, who for all intents and purposes should be the sorriest lot in the sport this year.
They lost essentially their entire bullpen to free
agency — notably what was the majors’ best finishing combo in 2010, Joaquin Benoit and Rafael Soriano. Plus, in either free agency or trades, they lost their long-time left fielder (Carl Crawford), first baseman (Carlos Pena) and shortstop (Jason Bartlett) plus one of their best starters (Matt Garza). That was part of them losing $30 million in payroll.
Then the Rays lost their first six games this season and eight of nine, scoring 11 runs in the eight losses. Two games into the season, they lost their best player, Evan Longoria, for a month with an oblique injury. And they also lost attendance, a pretty hard act considering how skimpy it was to start.
Yet with all that losing here are the Rays, winners.
Tampa Bay has had scads of reasons to crawl into a sports fetal position and, instead, when the Yankees arrive in St. Petersburg, Fla., for a two-game series beginning tomorrow they will find the Rays thriving. The Yankees and Red Sox draw the national TV assignment yet again tonight, but the team that has won two of the last three AL East titles is the Rays, who lead the division again this season. In fact, through Friday they had 300 wins since the beginning of the 2008 season, only the Yankees and Phillies (both wiith 307) had more.
“We should be failing; everything is stacked against us,” Tampa Bay owner Stu Sternberg said by phone. “A lot of other teams in our position fail. We live on the edge. We are very close to success and failure.”
One reason they lean toward success is baseball poverty. Or, more accurately: Finding the advantages in working with the second-lowest payroll in the majors ($40.1 million).
This is not about pitying the deep pockets of the Yankees and Red Sox; merely recognizing some problems even come with bountiful resources. Remember there is no more inefficient way to spend money than on big free-agent contracts; the dollars-for-performance success rate throughout the life of those deals is tiny. And it feels as if it is getting smaller as more diligence in testing for performance-enhancers has made contracts that take players into their declining years even riskier.
Yet the Yankees and Red Sox can’t stop their spending. Because they have the money. Because they have voracious fan bases/business models that constantly must be fed more stars. Because the
annual/historic call to win is intense. So the Yankees and Red Sox end up convincing themselves to do what they know logically is not right whether it is overspend in Japan (Kei Igawa/Daisuke Matsuzaka) or lay down big bucks on OK, but not special, starting pitching (Carl Pavano/John Lackey).
The Yankees and Red Sox do what Tampa Bay will not, such as overpay a reliever (Soriano) or give a player with modest power who depends on his legs (Crawford) a seven-year contract into his mid-30s. The Rays wouldn’t make these moves if they had the money; not having it just allows the parting to be less controversial.
The equivalent occurs in the NFL. Front offices know certain players will not perform well during the life of long-term contracts. So they let the player go and publicly say it is because of the salary cap, which gets fans angry at a system. The team was getting rid of the player regardless of the system, but now has a sweet alibi to explain removing a fan favorite.
Also, by having limited money, the Rays can remove a large segment of available players from their thinking. The Yankees, for example, scrutinize every player available in free agency from Cliff Lee and Crawford and Jayson Werth to minor league free agents. Tampa Bay just eliminates the big guys. That allows the Rays to concentrate more time, people and energy on a smaller pool of players; which helps explain their above-average hit rate on players such as Ben Zobrist and Matt Joyce.
“We only walk the aisles of five-and-dime stores, so we know those like the back of our hand,” Sternberg said.
For example, the Rays lost 78 percent of their relief innings with the free-agency departures of Soriano, Benoit, Grant Balfour, Dan Wheeler, Chad Qualls, Lance Cormier and Randy Choate. So that was the area they fixated on in the offseason. The dumpster diving brought Juan Cruz, Joel Peralta and, yes, a so-far-successful closer named Kyle Farnsworth (7 of 8 in saves, 1.35 ERA). The overall pen has a 2.84 ERA and a .212 batting average against.
“We are like someone who is blind having a better sense of hearing or someone who loses their left arm and develops a strong right arm,” Sternberg said. “We eliminate half the population [of available players] so our sense of what is available to us is probably stronger. But, you know what, I’d rather have my left arm and live with my right arm being a little weaker.”
Of course, he would rather have the big money to invest in the product. Obviously, the Yankees and Red Sox get to spend more to cover up mistakes they made in previous spending binges. So Tampa Bay must limit mistakes. That the Rays do is a tribute to what is recognized as the most seamless power structure — from ownership through GM Andrew Friedman to manager Joe Maddon — in the sport.
“Everybody is all in on the same philosophy,” one AL personnel man said.
That has enabled
Tampa Bay to build what is a consensus top-five farm system that the Rays will significantly augment in two weeks. Thanks to compensation picks from all the departed free agents, Tampa Bay has 10 of the first 60 selections and 13 in total through the first three rounds of what is considered the deepest draft in at least a decade.
So the poor Rays look as if they are going to be rich in talented players for quite a while. In other words, low payroll or not, they aren’t going away.
joel.sherman@nypost.com