Say this about the off-season.
Evidently, the Tampa Bay Rays couldn’t wait to get started on it.
The Rays’ off-season officially began Tuesday when general manager Matt Silverman and manager Kevin Cash sat in front of a room and answered questions about a season that died too soon and one that has yet to arrive. Both men sounded confident about the season to come despite their fourth-place finish.
“We have our group in place,” Silverman said of a team that was rebuilt last off-season and, as such, will require only tweaking this year.
Last year, the Rays had to replace general manager Andrew Friedman, manager Joe Maddon and players Ben Zobrist, Joel Peralta and Will Myers. It left a lot of new faces for the lineup.
Despite injuries, those new faces led the team to a 40-30 beginning only to fade in the second half of the season.
“When we were 40-30, we were beneficiaries of some good luck,” Silverman said. “We were playing well, but we weren’t as good as that record indicated. We actually played better the rest of the year; it just didn’t translate into wins. We lost a lot of close games.”
This time, it is the further blossoming of young talent that leads to the hope of the Rays. Kevin Kiermaier was a gold-glove candidate in center, and Mikie Mahtook has fans buzzing. Cash said he expects Steven Souza Jr. to be a much better player next season.
Silverman identified catcher and shortstop as positions where the Rays have decisions to make.
Rene Rivera was the catcher last off-season, but he seems to have been passed by both Curt Casali and J.P. Arencibia. Does the team bring Rivera back?
There is an opposite problem at shortstop. The team was thrilled with the play it got from Asdrubal Cabrera, but he’s a free agent. That means the Rays will wait to see his market value, but they may be in the market for a one-year shortstop to bridge to part-timers Tim Beckham and Nick Franklin or youngster Daniel Robertson.
The Rays, as usual, have a lot of arms. But can one of them blossom into the ace of the staff. Chris Archer, Drew Smyly and Jake Odorizzi have talent, but most of them hovered around the .500 level this year. Throw in Alex Cobb and Matt Moore, and you could end up with trade bait with Erasmo Ramirez or Nathan Karns.
“We try not to dwell on what could have been,” Silverman said. “But you do some. We’re human. We win one game a month more than we did, and we’re having a different press conference.”
Why didn’t it happen?
“We don’t really have the luxury of bad breaks,” Silverman said. “We built this team without much margin for error and in fact we probably need some good breaks along the way for us to make it into the post season. We didn’t get those breaks this year.”
Cash said he thinks his team will be better for all of the close games it was in this season.
“We did hit a rough patch,” Cash said. “We have to nip those situations a lot quicker.”
