Smart money on Tampa Bay’s Cash
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – Retired Florida State baseball coach Mike Martin remembers the moment, though it was 21 years ago. Martin, the winningest manager in the history of Division I baseball, heard the impact and raced to the infield during batting practice before a 1999 NCAA Super Regional game. His third baseman was down after being hit by a line drive: It was Tampa’s Kevin Cash.
“Hits Kevin dead in the face, just above the eye,” Martin said. “There’s blood everywhere. It was horrific. We took him straight to the table. Blood gushing. I don’t know what to say. I say, ‘K.C. …” he looks up at me through one eye, blood everywhere, and says, ‘Don’t you change that lineup!’ ”
Then there was early September at Yankee Stadium. The Tampa Bay Rays were losing to the Yankees in the ninth inning when New York closer Aroldis Chapman fired a 101-mph fastball over the head of Rays utility man Mike Brosseau. Dugouts emptied. After the game, Cash issued a veiled threat, which earned him a one-game suspension.
“I have a whole damn stable of pitchers that throw 98 miles per hour,” he said.
Cash had his players’ backs. It went over big with them, so big that it inspired Rays pitchers who had T-shirts made with horses on them. The Stable. Joe Maddon, Cash’s predecessor, the master showman and manager who first put the Rays on baseball’s map, could not have done better.
Meet a very stable genius. Cash, 42, in his sixth year as Tampa Bay manager, has the 39-20 Rays buzz sawing into the playoffs for the second consecutive year, all during a pandemic-plagued, protocol-heavy short season. The Rays have the best record in the American League and clinched the AL East for the first time since 2010. They want to win as much as their manager. As if to prove that point, the day after Chapman threw wild high, and galvanized by Cash, Brosseau hit two homers as the Rays beat the Yankees for the eighth time in 10 games this season.
“‘Galvanizing’ is probably a better question for the guys,” Cash said before the Rays played the Phillies on Friday in the COVID quiet at Tropicana Field. “I know what Mike Brosseau did the next day was pretty spectacular for all of us.”
He added, “As far as the horse Tshirt, I don’t have one.”
That’s classic Cash, comfortable in his own skin and skills.
These Rays pitch, hit, field, run and improvise, together. It’s hard to wade through the collective, the Ray Way. It makes it profoundly easy to wonder if Cash is even managing this club at all, that maybe he’s simply the guy who takes the lineups and pitching matchups off a computer printout sent down by the brainy, cutting-edge, metricsmad Rays front office.
That’s fine with Cash. The contract extension he received before last season, which runs through 2024, is enough for him.
Cash was 228-258 across his first three seasons in Tampa Bay, where he also played for two seasons. Was he up to the challenge of following Maddon? People wondered. Now look. Just don’t expect Cash to provide a soundtrack to this movie. He does not own a drum, much less beat it.
“I hate it,” Cash said late last season. “It’s about players. This game is about players.”
He should be AL Manager of the Year. Last year, Cash finished third in the voting, well behind Twins manager Rocco Baldelli, one of Cash’s former coaches. Cash was pulling for Baldelli. Meanwhile, the Rays won 96 games and a wild-card game in Oakland and took Houston to the full five games before falling in the division series. That playoff loss gnaws at Cash, so it gnaws at his players. They follow his lead, as they did after Chapman fired at them and Cash fired back.
“I think it just speaks to his character,” Rays catcher Mike Zunino said. “He comes in every day as the same guy, even whether we’re winning or losing. He’s himself, and it allows players to be themselves.”
Cash has mentors, like Indians manager Terry Francona, who had Cash on his 2007 world champion Red Sox. Cash also played on a Series winner for the Yankees in 2009 under manager Joe Girardi, who was manager in the Phillies dugout on Friday night at the Trop. Cash was a sponge wherever he stopped in eight years in the majors as a player. Nor did he forget the lessons Martin taught in Tallahassee.
“What Mike Martin did exceptionally with every player, he made sure you were a better player leaving there than you were when you came in,” Cash said. “There’s a lot to taking 15 ground balls full speed than 50 ground balls half speed.”
It’s always about someone else with Cash, never him. He still plays the career .183 major-league hitter for his players. “Swing it, Cashy!” they yell when someone weakly hits a ball in BP. Cash eats it up.
“I don’t know what it is, but you have to have fun every day at the ballpark,” Rays pitcher Tyler Glasnow said. “And he has as much fun as anyone else. He just handles the stress extremely well, and I think that kind of relays into the players.”
Cash’s style has never mattered more than in this crazed COVID season. Plus, there were expectations for the Rays after they won 186 games over the previous two seasons. The Rays had the manager for that job. The manager of the year, in fact. Even when they get down, or someone tries to knock them down, the Rays get back up. Like the man in charge.
“That’s K.C.,” Mike Martin said. Don’t you change that lineup card, or. the man who signs it. And somebody give Kevin Cash a T-shirt.