Tampa Bay Devil Rays

[kyleb]

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A good friend of mine is a big rays fan and I was talking about how they might be the worst team in professional sports.

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Sir please.

[hobbes9324]

For a couple of reasons.

1) Having a nice farm system is useless if you can't hold on to the players. Tampa has shown no signs of wanting (or being able) to spend money. It's been pretty clearly shown that a player's prime years are from about age 26 to 31 (ignoring DH's and freaks like Roger). They have lots of talent, but it's not going to be in a Tampa uniform for more than a year or two.

2) They live in a bad neighborhood. The Yankees, Red Sox, and (admittedly poorly) Baltimore spend money like crazy. They'll eat contracts, make terrible trades in terms of short term gain vs. long term value - but it kills TB, who can't do any of those things. If they were in any other division, maybe.

But not here. Unless they get new owners with lots of cash. And if they do, they won't be the Tampa Bay Rays - they'll be the Las Vegas Gamblers, or something like that...

MM MD

[wheatrich]

except you are completely wrong hobbes.

See Athletics, Oakland.

If Tampa just blew $ like those teams they'd be a [censored] team with a high payroll. All you need is intelligent people in your organization (with all the idiots running around disguised as intelligent baseball people (see any non writer hired by espn for example) it can't be that hard to run a franchise better than some people currently are)

[kyleb]

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Having a nice farm system is useless if you can't hold on to the players.

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False.

[hobbes9324]

You're missing the point.

Baseball is different from other sports. It's VERY common for teams to go decades without winning a world series. In the NFL, if you're not the Cardinals, you have a shot. In baseball, every year there are at least four or five teams that have essentially NO [censored] CHANCE of winning. Tampa Bay has been one of these for their entire existance. The fact that they have managed to accumulate some nice young players is good, but I don't see any signs they're moving up any time soon. They're TWENTY [censored] games under 500 at the all star break. You think they're close?

You're right about one thing, though. Oakland is run well, and competes with a lower payroll than the Yankees and Red Sox. The won a series just recently....oh yeah - EIGHTEEN YEARS AGO. In a weaker division. They haven't been back since, and they aren't going this year, either.

So how am I completely wrong? Tampa is going to magically grow a brilliant front office and be the A's of the east? They're going to hire a genius off the street (you, maybe?) to run their operation?

Or will they continue to flail around, losing good players to other teams because they can't compete, and being unable to sign a free agent worth [censored] because, after all, who wants to play in Tampa?

I'm betting on the latter.

MM MD

[Thremp]

hobbes,

Please don't post here about baseball anymore. Someone might believe you.

[kyleb]

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So how am I completely wrong?

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You're wrong for a lot of reasons, but this might be the dumbest part of what you said:

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Tampa is going to magically grow a brilliant front office and be the A's of the east? They're going to hire a genius off the street (you, maybe?) to run their operation?

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They are already run by a top notch front office.

Anyway, like Thremp said, stop posting about baseball.

[Lord_Strife]

For anyone that was interested in the deal I made, the bet is me putting up $10,000 against his $1,000 until the end of the 2018 season and i really feel i'll have to get really unlucky to win this bet because I think i got the best value here

[ImStillBen]

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For anyone that was interested in the deal I made, the bet is me putting up $10,000 against his $1,000 until the end of the 2018 season and i really feel i'll have to get really unlucky to win this bet because I think i got the best value here

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I'll take his end.

[gtrunner57]

Just curious - do you have $10,000 somewhere with no liquidity for 10 years?