The Rays Way? Good people, forward thinking, no fear of failure

PORT CHARLOTTE — History dictates that the start of a revolution can be hard to define.

Eduardo Pérez believes he was not only a witness, but a participant.

It was the start of the 2005 season for the struggling Devil Rays, who had lost 90-plus games in each of their first seven seasons.

Andrew Friedman, one of three employees embedded in the front office representing the new Stuart Sternberg-led ownership group that would assume control after the season, took his a walk through the Tropicana Field clubhouse packed with the players.

“People don’t know this, but I actually remember saying to him, ‘Look, we have no (cell phone) signal in here — is there any way we can get WiFi?’ ” Pérez recalled. “So the first thing he did was put in WiFi. I was like, ‘This is cool.’ That was a game changer for the players.”

And Pérez — then a veteran reserve infielder/outfielder, currently an ESPN broadcaster — quickly realized it was just the start of things to come.

“That was the first time that we saw a difference in the era,” he said. “From there, we knew that it was going to be more advanced when it comes to the metrics, more advanced where the information was coming from, that they were going to listen to the players.

“It was going to be different. It had to be a different formula to try to compete against the big boys in this division."

Sternberg’s group took over from original owner Vince Naimoli in October 2005 and needed a couple seasons to implement its extensive plan. “To re-jigger,” Sternberg called it, admitting now “we were the first tanking team, basically.”

In 2008, they made a very public declaration that things had changed, at least cosmetically, rebranding the entire franchise in terms of name, colors, logos and attitude.

Then under quirky new manager Joe Maddon and a low payroll squad of mostly unheralded players tired of losing, they showed things were also different on the field, making a stunning run to the World Series.

The Rays era had begun.

And the game has never been the same.

“Since 2008 — so it’s not like we’re cherry picking a few years here — we’ve had the third-best record in all of baseball. Better than the Cardinals. Better than the Red Sox. Better than the Astros,” Sternberg said.

“Now, we’ve got no championships, I get it. But the Dodgers have won one in the last, what, 36 years? And they beat us (in 2020). Maybe we’re a healthy (reliever) Nick Anderson away from being World Series champions at this point.

“It’s crazy. Just crazy.”

Is there a secret sauce?

What the Rays have done, with a payroll annually among the game’s smallest — often barely a third of their big-market rivals — and a regularly rotating roster is remarkable enough.

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Their 1,355-1,1,25 (.548) record over the last 16 seasons is behind only the Dodgers and Yankees. Their nine postseason appearances in that span, including two pennants, match the fourth most. They’ve had two Cy Young award winners, four Rookies of the Year and four top managers.

But the better story, the one that may never be fully shared, is how.

What is the Rays Way?

There is no simple answer.

From interviews with more than 20 baseball executives, staff and players, there do seem to be some general themes.

How they collect, process and implement data. The way they treat people and create a relaxed culture. A willingness to try different things and be pliable in their plans.

One area that stands out is the quality of the information the Rays gather — analytical, statistical, scouting, background — and how they interpret and apply it.

As teams have caught up to the Rays, upgrading technology and building out staffs, much of the data has become somewhat similar league wide and commonly shared.

But the Rays still have advantages in how they apply it, specifically in the final stage of getting it to the players in usable form.

“Guys from other organizations always ask, ‘What’s the secret sauce?’ ” said reliever Shawn Armstrong. “I tell them, ‘There’s no secret sauce.’ It’s just the personalization from top to bottom. The simplicity of the things they give each individual. And the culture they built here is special. Everyone’s on the same page.”

Another edge is how the Rays, through data and scouting, routinely identify overlooked and undervalued players, from the lowest levels of the minors to major-league free agents and trade candidates, and find ways to maximize their talent and production. “They’re master evaluators,” starter Zach Eflin said.

Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred sees their use of information as one of their distinct edges.

“I think that the Rays have used analytical tools probably more effectively than any organization in baseball,” he said. “They have focused on efficiency because of their limited economic resources and have done a phenomenal job with the resources they have available.”

Several former and current Rays employees say the bigger advantage may be in the people they have, and the way — from Sternberg down — they do their business.

“The Rays Way is people and culture,” said Peter Bendix, who worked his way from intern to general manager during 15 years in the front office, then left in November to run the Marlins.

“Truly. It is having really good people, and a really good culture and putting those people in position to succeed, to develop and to grow."

And that leads to winning games?

“Absolutely,” Bendix said. “Everything stems from that. If you don’t have good people, and you don’t have a good culture, you’re going to have all sorts of things that prevent you from winning games. That’s the Rays Way, the secret sauce.”

A caring, constructive environment

Those people, and that culture, impact the team in different ways.

Stability is one.

Though the roster is churned regularly, team executives like Friedman (who went to the Dodgers after 2014) and Bendix have been poached, and several coaches have been hired away as managers, the top tier of management — Sternberg and team presidents Brian Auld and Matt Silverman — have remained in place.

As have their guiding principles, such as being patient rather than reactionary, remaining loyal and promoting from within. For example, Erik Neander, the current baseball operations president, started as in intern in 2007.

“That stability is something that I think a lot of organizations strive for,” said Derek Shelton, the Rays’ hitting coach from 2010-16 and now the Pirates manager.

“I think since Stu took over that’s been the Rays Way. I can speak from experience — we went through some lean years there offensively and the fact that I was there seven years. They are very loyal to their people, and I think that starts at the top. That’s probably the gold standard of the Rays Way.”

There are other identifying threads that wind through the organization.

Communication and collaboration. Positivity and humility. Honesty. A family atmosphere. Open dialogue and office doors.

“It’s a special culture we have here," said bench coach Rodney Linares, who spent 21 years with the Astros before coming to Tampa Bay. “It’s unique."

Some of the methodologies get all the way to the players, many of whom talk often about how things are different with the Rays.

“Nothing against Cleveland, that organization there is good. But when I was there, I didn’t feel the family environment that we have here, or even more than family, whatever that word is,” said team MVP Yandy Diaz, acquired in a December 2018 trade, via Rays communications director Elvis Martinez.

“They make you feel really comfortable first off, and then they make you feel like you’re the best player in the world. And they support you that way."

In creating that positive and supportive atmosphere, the Rays also find ways to maximize production by determining the best ways to utilize the talent they have at the time.

Rather than force a player into a role that isn’t going to work well, they will change the job description. Or, if the personnel on hand warrants it, their style of play.

“The team has an excellent idea of what they’re trying to accomplish, and they’re really good at solving those problems, and building really good baseball teams," said Twins manager Rocco Baldelli, a former Rays player, executive and coach.

“They don’t have a particular path that they take. It’s many, many, many different paths. And they just decide which one is going to work in each given instance.

“The Rays Way is whatever is going to work.”

A system to admire and envy

Neander encourages the baseball operations staff to toss out different ideas with no fear of repercussion.

“It’s that mindset of showing people you are allowed to fail if you’re trying to get it right,” manager Kevin Cash said. “It’s OK. If we fail nine times and we win that one time, we learn something from it.”

Sternberg espouses a similar philosophy, citing both a “no-blame approach” for mistakes and no bragging over individual credit for success.

He considers the team “a flat organization” where employees don’t feel they are rungs below the decision makers. More “horizontal, not vertical," he said.

And he believes strongly that while they change methodologies and adjust their practices, the team philosophy and approach remain consistent overall. “We haven’t wavered off it,” he said. “We don’t change anything dramatic. We make tweaks, tweaks, tweaks, tweaks.”

He models it more like a Japanese style of management.

“They ask everybody to just improve things by .01% or .1% and if you do a lot of that it adds up to a good amount of change over time," he said. “As opposed to the American way, which is necessary a lot of times, where it’s just one big ‘That’s it, we’ve got to switch lanes, switch gears.’ "

Understandably, the success the upstart Rays have had becomes a major topic within the industry.

Big-market teams don’t like how the Rays take their revenue sharing money and beat them. Other small-market teams want to be more like the Rays.

Twins top executive Joe Pohlad, in a radio interview last month, addressed his team’s reduction in payroll by mentioning the Rays and pointing out “there are other ways to win."

Players union chief Tony Clark, whose charge includes maximizing pay for his constituents, naturally isn’t a fan of that approach, noting that teams ultimately need to pay for good players to win.

“It’s always interesting when one organization sees another organization do something and assumes that it can be mimicked in a short period of time," Clark said. “There are people that are very good at certain things that for others, no matter if you think you have the secret sauce, doesn’t manifest itself the same way. …

“There’s a reason that the Rays have succeeded and no one else has in the same type of conversation. History would suggest that staring from the outside in and this belief that in a copycat league you can simply cut and paste, it just doesn’t work that way.”

Even some of the Rays’ division rivals admire what they’ve done and how they’ve done it.

“I think it’s incredible," said Orioles general manager Mike Elias, a former Astros executive. “They have a culture, being loose, playing hard, not worrying about who’s coming and going on the roster, whether it’s injury or free agency, or making an uncomfortable trade at a deadline.

“Cash has those guys just playing without any of that stuff on their mind. And they’ve done it for so long that I think it’s the kind of thing that’s it’s a culture that they’ve built up. It’s almost the mindset that they have.

“You know when you’re going in to play them, regardless of who’s on the team — and it’s often somebody that they picked up the night before — that they’re going to just play well that day. It’s pretty impressive.”

Or, you could say, it’s the Rays Way.

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