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November 5, 2008

On the Beat

Honeymoons and Divorces

by John Perrotto

Joe Maddon is getting married on Saturday, and he will then head to Europe for his honeymoon. "We're going to try to see a lot of Europe on foot with backpacks and that kind of stuff, see some old churches and all the other sites, but we'll also stay at some really nice hotels," Maddon said. "It's something we're looking forward to very much."

The Rays manager may also spend his honeymoon thinking about Port Charlotte, Florida. He was certainly thinking of that sleepy town on Florida's Gulf Coast during the Rays' first post-season run that ended a week ago tonight with a loss to the Phillies in the World Series.

The Rays' season had been over for just a few minutes and Maddon was already looking ahead, telling a group of reporters about how great it was that the organization was moving its spring training headquarters from St. Petersburg to Port Charlotte in February. "We go to spring training next year with all this momentum built up from this season, validating all the concepts we had put out there and making it easier to sell the program," Maddon said. "I'm not just talking about the major leaguers. I'm talking about the minor league side of the program. We're going to have the major leaguers and the minor leaguers in the same complex for the first time, and it's going to make it so much easier for myself and the coaching staff to go over and talk to the minor league kids. There's a Ray way of doing things now, and I'm looking forward to spreading the word throughout the organization."

Maddon and everyone else in the organization have no doubt that the Ray way of doing things will have staying power. While the Rays seemingly came out of nowhere to win the American League pennant this year, they are confident that they won't be one-year wonders. "Absolutely not," Maddon said. "When we first started putting this thing together three years ago, it was with the idea that we were going to build an organization that would be consistently competitive. We didn't want to have one good team and then go back to losing for 10 more years. In the long run, that doesn't get you anywhere. We want to keep coming back to the postseason. We want to make this an annual affair. I really believe we can do that. I view this season and what happened in the postseason as just the beginning."

The Rays are indeed set up to be competitive for many years to come; they have all of their core players under contract through the 2010 season, with only first baseman Carlos Pena and left fielder Carl Crawford eligible for free agency that year, and right-hander Edwin Jackson and shortstop Jason Bartlett the only two who could leave after 2011. This is exactly what the Rays were hoping for when Stuart Sternberg bought the club from Vince Naimoli after the 2005 season and installed the youthful management tandem of president Matt Silverman and vice president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman. Friedman, who hired Maddon as manager, knew that former GM Chuck LaMar had left behind such young talents as Crawford and B.J. Upton. The organization also possessed what is now three-fifths of the starting rotation: left-hander Scott Kazmir and right-handers James Shields and Andy Sonnanstine.