The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Teams poach Rays'approach
Analytics let franchise win without overpaying.
LOSANGELES— When Nathan Eovaldi joined the Boston Red Sox this summer, his old team was a source of curiosity in his new clubhouse. Eovaldi had pitched for the Tampa Bay Rays, baseball’s most innovative think tank. The Rays did not reach the playoffs, but their surprise 90-win season commanded attention.
“When I got traded over here, that was some of the questions I was asked: ‘Why are the Rays so good? What are they doing over there to be so successful?’” Eovaldi said Friday before Game 3 of the World Series. “And it starts with the management.”
Two Tampa Bay coaches became managers last week: Rocco Baldelli, who had been the Rays’ major league field coordinator, was hired by the Minnesota Twins, and bench coach Charlie Montoyo took over the Toronto Blue Jays.
The New York Mets also interviewed Chaim Bloom, the Rays’ senior vice president for baseball operations, for their general manager position before turning their focus to agent Brodie Van Wagenen.
This is not a new trend. A decade ago, the Rays cata- pulted from perennial also- rans to World Series participants, beating the Red Sox — then the reigning champions — in the 2008 Amer- ican League Championship Series. That began a run of four playoff appearances in six seasons, with a low payroll and a lot of innovation.
“They focus very much on discipline and analysis, and that tends to cultivate people who are not from the mainstream — people who are really observing what’s going on that other, more conventional people might not think about,” said Stan Kasten, the Dodgers’ pres- ident and chief executive.
“I think with everyone there, there is a perception that they have a skill-set or experiences that may be different from some other teams. So it doesn’t surprise me that they have, probably, an above-average rate of grad- uations into higher jobs.”
The Dodgers hired Andrew Friedman away from the Rays four years ago, making him president of baseball operations. The Dodgers continued winning the National League West and claimed the past two NL pennants.
Friedman has modernized the Dodgers’ decision-mak- ing, and the organization has developed a knack for lowrisk, high-reward acquisitions. Players like Max Muncy and Chris Taylor, who were afterthoughts with their previous teams, have become essential to the Dodgers. Kasten said Friedman and his staff made more surprise discoveries because they had found more ways to gain an advantage.
“Ned Colletti and his gang did great work,” Kasten said, referring to the Dodgers’ previous general manager. “But when we decided to make a change going forward, there were a lot of things we needed to do that were different — and analytics is a very, very shorthand way of describing it. It’s just more analysis, more science, more deep diving into all kinds of things to get the 1 percent, 2 percent, 3 percent edges where you could find something.”
The Red Sox won 108 regular-season games this year but had trouble with the Rays, beating them in just five of their 12 meetings after April 10. One of their losses was to Jalen Beeks, a pitcher they traded in the Eovaldi deal. Eovaldi has been a postseason stalwart, winning two starts in the playoffs and helping Boston win the two World Series games atFenway Park with stellar work in relief.
“The Rays did a tremen- dous job of taking care of me and not rushing me in any way, and allowing me to get to the point where I am now,” said Eovaldi, who signed with Tampa Bay after tearing his ulnar collateral ligament as a New York Yankee in 2016. “They were able to make the big trade and send me over here for Beeks, and he was able to come in and help them win some big games, and they finished the year with 90 wins. Now for me to be over here, it’s in huge part to them.”
Eovaldi was one of the few Tampa Bay pitchers who func- tioned as a traditional starter. The team used relievers to open many games, with 71 starts this season lasting no more than three innings — by far the most of any team in more than a century of available data.
The strategy helped the Rays to a 3.74 ERA — second in the AL to the Hous- ton Astros — and their contact-heavy offense produced more runs than last season’s Rays, when they went 80-82 with a lineupbuilt on power hitters prone to striking out.
Commissioner Rob Manfred desperately wants games to move at a brisker pace, and he said before Game 2 that he hoped more teams would emphasize putting the ball in play. The increasing league-wide emphasis on analytics, Manfred said, does not concern him.
“I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about whether analytics are a good thing or a bad thing,” he said. “And the reason for that is: They are a real thing. We have them, they’re going to continue to use them, and there’s nothing you can do to stop peo- ple from thinking about the game however the heck it is they want to think about the game.”
Some pitchers, though, are skeptical about the con- sequences of the Rays’pitch- ing strategy, which was imitated at times by the Milwaukee Brewers in the postseason, and by teams like the Minnesota Twins in the regular season.
Clayton Kershaw of the Dodgers and Dallas Keuchel of the Astros have both pointed out this month that the declining emphasis on traditional starters could drive down salaries at one of baseball’s highest-paying positions.
“We saw a dramatic shift this year in how certain staffs functioned, and so how it manifests itself moving forward is something we’re going to pay attention to,” said Tony Clark, the executive director of the players’ association. “... We are documenting what is happening and how it’s going to manifest itself moving forward.”
One thing is clear: Losing teams want to imitate a winner, especially the franchise that does it in the most creative, cost-effective way.