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Rays Rumors: Smith, Deadline, McKay, Montreal Plan

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The Rays’ recent slump has seen them go 7-13, including a four-game sweep at Yankee Stadium, thus dropping them down the standings in the AL East rather precipitously. Tampa Bay had a half-game lead over New York as recently as June 10, but the Rays suddenly face a seven-game deficit in the division. As such, the team has had to “back off its trade pursuits,” Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reports (subscription required). Tampa Bay still holds a Wild Card position in the AL, so it’s not as if the team will operate as a seller this month, but teams are often less aggressive at the deadline when they believe they’re playing for a one-game playoff as opposed to a guaranteed berth in the division series. Giants closer Will Smith had been a “primary target” for the Rays, Rosenthal adds, but it’s not clear if they’ll aggressively pursue him now.

Tampa Bay faces a critical stretch of games over the next few weeks, as they’ll play the eight times Yankees and the hapless Orioles seven times in their next 15 games. That’ll provide ample opportunity to either climb back into the division race but could also create a near-insurmountable gap if New York once again dominates the series. The outcome of the Rays’ next stretch of games will likely go a long way in dictating how strongly they’ll pursue bullpen upgrades in trade talks with the Giants and other sellers.

More on the Rays…

  • Top prospect Brendan McKay opened his Major League career with five perfect innings this weekend, which was (obviously) enough to earn him another start at the big league level. MLB.com’s Juan Toribio writes that the Rays will make a decision after that game whether to keep McKay in the Majors or send him back to Triple-A Durham. It’s possible that Tampa Bay could option McKay to get a fresh arm for the final couple of games leading into the All-Star break, even if the plan is to recall him shortly after the break and plug him right back into the rotation. The former No. 4 overall pick doesn’t look like he has much left to prove in the minors after posting a combined 1.22 ERA in 66 1/3 innings of Double-A and Triple-A work, but his workload figures to be closely monitored; McKay has thrown 72 1/3 innings in 2019 after tossing just 78 1/3 innings in all of 2018.
  • The Rays’ proposed timeshare between St. Petersburg and Montreal was met with a heavy dose of skepticism and negative fan reaction, but Rays leadership remains committed to the idea, writes Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times. Rays owner Stuart Sternberg and president Brian Auld feel that split-city arrangements will eventually become more commonplace in professional sports. President Matthew Silverman also spoke of how the still-theoretical alignment would impact the team’s payroll, believing it could push the Rays to a middle-of-the-pack organization in that regard. “If this comes to fruition, we’re going to have more resources, and more resources means a higher payroll, and a higher payroll is good for all players within baseball,” said Silverman. There are still innumerable hurdles to be cleared, but as Topkin examines at length, the proposal appears to be more a plan that genuinely intrigues Rays leadership than a ploy to increase leverage in preexisting stadium talks.

Latest On Rays’ Pursuit Of New Stadium

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The Rays’ quest for a new stadium has been an ongoing saga for years, but things took a small step forward yesterday, as Jeff Patterson of WFLA Channel 8 in Tampa reported that Hillsborough County Commissioner Ken Hagan announced a proposed site for a new stadium. The new Ybor City site would move the Rays from St. Petersburg to Tampa, hopefully leading to an increase in attendance thanks to a more desirable location and a newer facility.

“This is another important step in the site selection process, and we are grateful for the time and attention that went into making it a possibility,” said Rays president Brian Auld in an official statement on the proposal. “We look forward to getting to work evaluating this option, along with those in Pinellas County, including the Tropicana Field site, as a potential future home for Rays baseball in Tampa Bay for years to come.”

Certainly, the proposed site doesn’t guarantee that the Rays will break ground on a new Ybor City facility just yet. To the contrary, as Auld indicated in his comment, the Rays are only just scratching the surface of evaluating the newly proposed construction site, and they’ll likely do the same with other potential locations before ultimately determining a course of action. There’s also the matter of the Rays’ current lease at Tropicana Field, which reportedly runs through the 2027 season. Terminating that lease early will come with its own set of financial repercussions, including millions of dollars that’ll need to be paid out to the city of St. Petersburg as well as the forfeiture of a 50 percent share of development rights at the Tropicana Field site, as WFLA’s Mark Douglas writes.

The level of effort required to navigate such a large business endeavor, of course, is enormous, and with that in mind the Rays are set to shuffle their front office mix, Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times reports. President of baseball operations Matt Silverman is set to take on a broader role and serve as a co-president with Auld, per Topkin’s report, moving further away from the baseball operations mix and into a more overarching role with the front office. Silverman’s roots with the Rays are on the business side of the operation, and he’d previously been an integral part of the stadium talks before shifting to president of baseball operations in the wake of Andrew Friedman’s departure.

Silverman’s new title isn’t yet clear (nor are any other new titles that may emerge), but the change may not be as drastic as one would expect upon first glance. Despite keeping the “president of baseball ops” title, Silverman effectively handed day-to-day oversight of baseball operations over to Erik Neander and Chaim Bloom a year ago. Both vice presidents at the time, Neander was named the team’s new general manager, while Bloom was bumped to senior vice president of baseball operations.

As such, a shift of Silverman’s focus more to the business side of the equation doesn’t necessarily reflect a seismic shift in the team’s operational hierarchy, though it’s possible that he’ll have less overall say in baseball decision-making, with Neander and Bloom factoring even more heavily into those processes.

AL East Notes: O’Day, Rays, Capuano

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Michael Saunders’ recovery from a torn meniscus is “kind of a miracle,” Blue Jays manager John Gibbons told reporters, including Mark Zwolinski of the Toronto Star.  Saunders is already back to baseball activities in camp less than two weeks after deciding to have the injured cartilage removed completely.  It was originally thought that the injury would sideline Saunders for the first half of the season, but he now has a shot at the Opening Day lineup and, at worst, should be back on the field by mid-April.  Here’s some more from around the AL East…

  • Orioles right-hander Darren O’Day said the club has yet to discuss a new contract with him, MASNsports.com’s Roch Kubatko reports.  While O’Day said he’d enjoy staying in Baltimore, he also noted that team will have a lot of other business to handle, as O’Day is one of 11 Orioles who will be free agents after the season.
  • “Pitching and defense is how we build this team and it’s going to be the way we continue to succeed,” Rays GM Matt Silverman told Steve Phillips and Todd Hollandsworth of MLB Network Radio interview (audio link), though Silverman also believes the lineup is “much more balanced…and much more formidable 1-through-9.”  This balance, Silverman feels, will help Tampa string together more big innings and have more luck scoring runs.  “A lot of it [the scoring problems] had to do with situational stuff and things that not necessarily were flukish, but things that we thought would revert back to the mean.  We put a lot of guys on base, we just didn’t get them home,” Silverman said.
  • Phillips and Hollandsworth also interviewed Evan Longoria during their visit to the Rays’ camp (audio link), and the third baseman said that he’s hoping to finish his career in a Tampa Bay uniform.  Longoria’s contract with the club runs through 2022, which would be his age-36 season, plus the Rays have a club option on his services for 2023.  While Longoria expressed his desire to be a one-franchise guy, he did hint that this would be contingent on the Rays continuing to be a winner.  “From the beginning, I really wanted to be one of…those rare guys who get to spend their whole career in one place,” Longoria said.  “I’ve been lucky enough to be on good teams and that’s really what makes guys want to stay places….For as long as that’s happening, I’m happy being here.”
  • Estimates on how long Chris Capuano will be sidelined with his strained right quad range from “at least the first week or two of the season” (as the southpaw told MLB.com’s Bryan Hoch) to all of April.  Yankees manager Joe Girardi told reporters, including ESPN New York’s Andrew Marchand that Capuano “is not going to do anything, at least for a couple of weeks. Nothing. The problem is we are so early in the process, you are almost going to have to start over.”

Reactions To & Fallout From Friedman Joining Dodgers

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Earlier today, the Dodgers and Rays announced the stunning news that Rays GM Andrew Friedman would leave his post to become the new president of baseball operations for the Dodgers. The move shook the baseball world and, obviously, comes with some significant ramifications not only for the teams involved but for the entire game.

MLBTR’s Zach Links participated in the conference call after the announcement, and reported on the thoughts and observations of owner Stuart Sternberg and new GM Matthew Silverman. Hare are some more reactions and fallout from the news of the day …

  • For the Dodgers, the move to add Friedman is a part of a broader shift towards modernizing baseball operations, Mark Saxon of ESPNLosAngeles.com reports. If the launch of big spending and major moves was phase one of the new ownership group’s plans, then Friedman will be entrusted to engineer phase two: a bid to make the Dodgers the powerhouse franchise and brand of the 21st century, driven by a traditional scout-and-develop approach that is informed and supplemented by analytics and a robust war chest.
  • Baseball America’s John Manuel opines that Friedman got out of the Rays organization at the right time (Twitter link). The Rays have had some rough drafts in recent years, resulting in a thin farm system, while the Dodgers’ minor league system has far more high-end prospects, he writes.
  • ESPN’s Buster Olney suggests that Friedman is likely to hire a GM to work underneath him, much like the Theo Epstein/Jed Hoyer pairing with the Cubs (Twitter link). Olney speculates that Red Sox assistant GM Mike Hazen and Yankees assistant GM Billy Eppler are candidates.
  • One Dodgers source told Ramona Shelburne of ESPNLosAngeles.com that the Dodgers’ failed pursuit of David Price this summer, ironically, heightened their interest in Friedman. Said the source: “They always asked for the right prospects. Not just the guys everybody knows, either.”
  • On the managerial front, the Dodgers are expected to stick with Don Mattingly for next year, Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times tweets. Meanwhile, Joe Maddon said he remains committed to steering the Rays, and even said he expects to talk extension over the coming offseason, as Roger Mooney of the Tampa Tribune reports on Twitter.
  • Sam Miller of Baseball Prospectus writes (subscription required) that Friedman will bring his “black box” of subtle tricks with him to Los Angeles, and will likely make his impact in many nuanced ways. Dave Cameron of Fangraphs says that the Dodgers seem likely to launch into a tighter spending model more reminiscent of the recent-vintage Red Sox, with Friedman hopefully delivering continued on-field results at a lower price tag.

Rays Ponder Life Without Andrew Friedman

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With Andrew Friedman heading west, the Rays are confident that the newly-promoted Matthew Silverman can continue to work creatively with a limited budget to field a competitive team.  At the same time, it’s clear that Friedman will be sorely missed on both a professional and personal level.  Silverman, still just 38 years old, got the promotion of a lifetime, but he isn’t exactly doing cartwheels down the aisles of Tropicana Field tonight.

“It’s a difficult day for me,” the former team president and new president of baseball operations admitted on today’s conference call.  “It’s one filled with sadness as one of my best friends in life has moved away and taken a different job.  That’s the primary emotion, though I’m sure I’ll feel differently a few days or a few weeks from now.”

For those of us outside of the Rays and Dodgers organizations, whispers that Friedman could leave for Los Angeles only surfaced late last week when Bill Plaschke of the Los Angeles Times reported that he would be the Dodgers’ top target if Ned Colletti was ousted.  Rays owner Stuart Sternberg indicated that talks started up earlier than that, though he declined to “put a timetable on it.”  The Rays will receive no compensation from the Dodgers for their top exec thanks to Sternberg’s no-contract policy for the upper crust of club officials.  I asked Sternberg if he ever considered altering his policy for Friedman considering the interest he could garner from rival clubs.

“That’s our policy, for better or for worse.  There are positives with it and negatives with it,” Sternberg said, emphasizing that most employees within the organization have contracts, just not the top baseball people. “It’s a unique situation with Andrew and Matt and [new team president Brian Auld]…I put my reputation in their hands and they in mine as well and we have a real level of trust.  When it comes to the contract that’s what it’s really all about and it was never really a consideration with Andrew.”

When asked if he fears Friedman taking other Rays employees with him to L.A., Sternberg referred back to the level of trust that they share.  Whether it’s through a handshake or just a tacit understanding, both Sternberg and Silverman expressed confidence that Friedman won’t poach anyone from Tampa Bay.  That extends to manager Joe Maddon who told the owner that he wants to stay on board despite Friedman’s departure.  “I don’t expect anyone to be joining him in L.A.,” Sternberg flatly stated.   Reading between the lines, it appears that the owner doesn’t have poaching protection in writing.  If that’s the case, he doesn’t sound the least bit concerned about it.

Sternberg will miss Friedman, whom he entrusted with the GM role at the age of 28, and Silverman learned that watching your best friend move to a new town doesn’t get any easier when you’re in your late 30s.  Still, the Rays aren’t throwing themselves a pity party.  Sternberg knew that, eventually, a team with deeper pockets would whisk Friedman away.  When the Dodgers came calling, he didn’t think about looking out-of-house for a second.  All along, he knew that he had a highly capable understudy in Silverman who was ready to take the reins.

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