Tampa Bay Rays’ Kevin Cash Should Be AL Manager of the Year
As of September 9th, the Tampa Bay Rays were eight games back of the Oakland A’s for the second Wild Card berth in the American League; trailed the AL East-leading Boston Red Sox by 19 games. Statistically speaking, they had less than a 1% chance of making the playoffs, and that number is only getting smaller by the day. Their skipper, Kevin Cash, should still be named AL Manager of the Year.
Bear with me.
Cash vs. Cora
The Manager of the Year honor will almost certainly go to first-year manager Alex Cora, as his Red Sox looked to be making a run at the all-time wins record for much of the year, and will most likely finish with baseball’s best record in 2018. Another rookie skipper, Aaron Boone, at the helm of the young, over-achieving New York Yankees, is poised to finish high on the ballot as well. If not for Cora and “the Sawx,” he might be the frontrunner.
But three very, very important things separate Cora and Boone from Kevin Cash: Talent, the Money that buys it, and the Expectations that follow both.
In both Boston and New York, 2018 began with optimism. The Red Sox had just added J.D. Martinez to an already powerful offense (that expected rebounds from key players like Mookie Betts and Xander Bogaerts), while Yankees fans were excited to see another growth spurt from their astoundingly young and powerful core. Per Spotrac.com, the Red Sox 2018 payroll is upward of $225 million, tops in Major League Baseball, and the Yankees came in at (a remarkably-low-but-still-very-substantial) $175 million+, good for sixth in the MLB, just behind the Washington Nationals. Both teams were expected to deliver compelling baseball from April through September, and would have left their fanbases disappointed if they failed to hang around for a bit more Fall foliage.
The Tampa Bay Rays, by contrast, sport a 2018 payroll under $75 million, 29th lowest out of 30 MLB teams. Their highest-paid player this season is Kevin Kiermaier, making $5.67 million (mostly for his Gold Glove outfield play). Other than Kiermaier, the only players earning more than $1 million this year are Carlos Gomez, Sergio Romo, and C.J. Cron. In the interest of parallel construction vis-a-vis Talent, Money, and Expectations, we can sum it up like this: the Rays kicked off 2018 Bad, Broke, and Uninspiring.
And yet, here we are.
At press time, the Rays are 79 – 64, trailing only Boston and New York in the AL East. That record would put them in the mix for a Wild Card berth in the National League. And they’ve even played headache for those high-payroll division rivals to boot, going went 8 – 11 against Boston, including a late-August sweep, while topping the Yankees at 8 – 7 on the year. Not too shabby for the 29th lowest payroll in baseball.
Many of today’s managers are maligned diminished as glorified babysitters; their responsibilities reduced to managing personalities. “Personalities” often co-occur with stardom, which is likely why Kevin Cash had to figure out something else to do. So he decided to break baseball a little bit, in a far less annoying way than many franchises have been doing recently.
The Opener
No story about Kevin Cash and the 2018 Tampa Bay Rays would be complete without talking about the “Opener”.
Perhaps the most notable aspect of the Rays’ season is the team’s unorthodox use of relievers. To date, 16 different pitchers on Tampa’s staff have been credited with a start in 2018, several being traditional relievers. Foremost among them is Ryne Stanek (25 “starts” in 50 appearances), while Sergio Romo and Diego Castillo are credited with 5+ starts – throwing fewer than 25 pitches per start.
Cash has also done peculiarly awesome things like play a pitcher at first base, and foster a supportive environment for the game’s most fun-loving player, Carlos Gomez, to truly blossom (as an individual, if not a baseball player).
So, while Alex Cora will probably get the nod for AL Manager of the Year, and Aaron Boone and AJ Hinch round out a good-job-top-three, Kevin Cash deserves a look. He’s taken a small-market team with few talents (and fewer fans), and over-performed every analyst’s expectation. He’s innovated, brought some spice and controversy to a gentrifying game, and managed to keep Carlos Gomez alive while doing it. The Rays might not be setting the league on fire in the win column, but they aren’t dowsing the flames either. Cash has done just a bit less winning than big-market counterparts, but he’s done it with a lot less to work with.
At the end of the day, a manager is supposed to not lose his team games – Kevin Cash has been worth more than a few wins on his own, not to mention providing something worth watching, if just for its curiousity.
