Tampa disa-Ray is unfair to fans & less thrifty teams
TAMPA — The three-team trade that brought infielder Brandon Drury to the Yankees and sent Tampa Bay Rays favorite Steven Souza Jr. to Arizona has served to further emphasize the tale of two teams in the same city — one loading up, the other stripping down — and the looming, much bigger problem in baseball called competitive balance.
There is joy aplenty over at Steinbrenner Field where hordes of early spring training fans swarm through the gates each morning to watch the big show in town — Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton taking batting practice. But tune in to WDAE 620 AM, the local sports talk radio station, and it’s a very different story for the actual hometown team here — nothing but outrage and disgust for the Rays, who are dumping payroll and trading away all their best players while at the same time holding out their hands for community support for a new stadium.
Yes, the Rays are now rivaling Derek Jeter’s Miami Marlins in South Florida when it comes to tanking. Over the past few weeks, the Rays have traded away their franchise player, Evan Longoria, last year’s most valuable Ray; Souza Jr.; their No. 3 starter Jake Odorizzi; their 27-homer leftfielder, Corey Dickerson; and allowed last year’s leading run producer (38 HR/85 RBI), Logan Morrison, and No. 2 starter Alex Cobb to leave as a free agents. That’s 115 homers, 311 RBI and 22 rotation wins gone, but more importantly to owner Stuart Sternberg it’s nearly $35 million in payroll off the books.
Like the Marlins and the Pittsburgh Pirates (who traded away their franchise player, Andrew McCutchen and No. 1 starter Gerrit Cole this winter), the Rays have essentially told their fans: There is no need to come out to the ballpark this season. We won’t be competing. But they have done it with an added wrinkle. A few days before the opening of spring training, Sternberg announced the Rays have settled on a site, in the historic Ybor City section of Tampa, for a new ballpark, and thus began his pitch to civic and business leaders for their support for the project.
Meanwhile, what no one is pointing out is that Sternberg will be getting upwards of $60 million in revenue sharing this year, in addition to $50 million in found money with the Rays’ share of MLB’s sale of BAMtech to Disney. That’s over $100 million for DOING NOTHING — and they can’t afford to keep Logan Morrison? The same with Jeter in Miami. Over $100 million in free money and he couldn’t afford to keep Christian Yelich?
It’s an absolute disgrace for baseball. For years, former commissioner Bud Selig insisted the only way to achieve competitive balance in baseball was for a payroll luxury tax as a spending prohibitive on the large market teams and revenue sharing as an incentive for the small market teams. And yet, because of teams like the Rays, Marlins and Pirates (the one team that has yet to sign a free agent this season), the payroll disparity is as huge this year as it’s ever been as these teams are taking their revenue sharing and BAM money and putting it in their pockets rather than spending it on players. The Players Association pretty much screwed themselves in this latest labor agreement that barely raises the luxury payroll tax and puts increased draft pick/international signing money compensation for free agents, and the only way they’re going to be able to reverse this is to get some form of minimum payroll restrictions on the clubs in the next CBA. Good luck. But by then, Sternberg and the Rays conceivably will be on their way to Montreal, having turned this town off to baseball for good.
“Stuart Naimoli (a disparaging reference to the much-loathed original Rays owner Vince Naimoli) is asking us to pay major league prices to watch a minor league team. Outrageous!” was a typical call to WDAE this week. And even “Dickie V,” Dick Vitale, one of Sternberg’s best friends and a longtime season-ticket holder for Rays games, called on Sternberg to sell the team Wednesday. “I’ve spent over a half million on Rays tickets over the last 15 years,” Vitale said. “We’re getting rid of all our best players and replacing them with no-names. This just isn’t fair.”
The rest of the small market teams who ARE spending money — like the Rockies and Padres — don’t think it’s fair either. Not when Sternberg’s Rays and Jeter’s Marlins get an increase in revenue sharing — at their expense — because of low attendance.
My suggestion to the fans of Tampa this spring is to come over to Steinbrenner Field and watch the Yankees, especially the kids who aren’t going to make the team. The Yankees’ Triple-A team in Scranton, which likely will have Clint Frazier, Jake Cave and Billy McKinney in the outfield, Tyler Austin at first base, Tyler Wade at shortstop and Chance Adams, Luis Cessa, Albert Abreu and Justus Sheffield in the rotation, figures to be a better — and definitely more interesting — team than the one the Rays will trot out at Tropicana Field this year.