Baseball Prospectus finds new ways to insult the Rays
Baseball Prospectus compares the Rays way of operating to the people firing air traffic controllers. We think that insults the reader’s intelligence more than it does the Rays.
Sometimes being a Rays fan feels like being part of a dysfunctional and much-maligned family. We are aware — hyperaware! — of our family problems. We resent having to share Thanksgiving with our sexist uncle or our aunt who embezzled the PTA bake sale funds. But when outsiders level idle insults at our miscreant relatives, we still take it personally.
That brings us to this year’s Rays preview in Baseball Prospectus, written by Forbes staff writer and Baseball Prospectus annual contributor Daniel Epstein, which shares BP’s 2025 projection of 82 wins for the Rays. That number seems realistic, if maybe a little pessimistic.
If you squint, the write up identifies an unspectacular team with a shot to be competitive, but you’d never guess that given the the amount of vitriol with a thick layer of snark Mr. Epstein levels at the team.
For example he writes:
Hey, look! [Ryan] Pepiot is projected to be their best pitcher. Given that he posted a 101 DRA- last season, that doesn’t say much about the quality of the rotation. It’s like they built the whole thing out of third and fourth starters.
But he then goes one to note that the Rays have two pitchers — Shane McClanahan and Taj Bradley — with much bigger upside and two more — Shane Baz and Drew Rasmussen — coming back from injury. While we’d rather have a rotation of five healthy aces, isn’t this similar to most team rotations — a few solid back end starters and several pitchers with the chance to do more?
In another instance, Epstein acknowledges the strength of the Rays farm system:
The efficiency machine keeps chugging along because the Rays also have the most productive player development system. They took the no. 1 spot in our organizational rankings on the strength of a top-10 overall prospect in Carson Williams and more than a dozen OFP 55 guys—and Junior Caminero didn’t even qualify. All those 55s include seven or eight right-handed pitchers, two first basemen, and a handful of shortstops.
But he turns that into a criticism. You can’t use them all, he argues, so surely they will just “rot on the vine.”
Yes, the Rays do indeed have a top system, but which of these top prospects has been left to rot? (He doesn’t explain).
He next notes, correctly, that prospects can be packaged to trade for established major leaguers, suggesting that Garrett Crochet (who was traded to the Red Sox), or Kyle Tucker (who went to the Cubs for, of all people, Isaac Paredes ) could have been with the Rays if only the Rays had tried.
Ironically, the better critique of the Rays’ ruthlessness is staring us right in the face: Issac Paredes.
The former Ray was traded last year for Christopher Morel, Hunter Bigge, and a smattering of other prospects. This is the party line on the Rays: they will trade you for parts if you’re getting expensive or running out of service time.
Of course, in that framing it’s hard to tell exactly who that bad guys are here. Trading away (one of) your superstars for prospects and bit parts? It’s terrible to trade Isaac Paredes. And yet, in this example, it’s also terrible to trade for Isaac Paredes, because the Astros clearly should have gotten more from the Rays.
This sums up the doublethink on display in this season review.
The Rays are both penny-pinching dumpster-divers squeezing blood from stones...and also too dunderheaded and short-sighting to see that you can’t play all these prospects at once! A baseball diamond only has four bases, silly quants! You can’t put shortstops everywhere! You have to sell those players to another team, so they can gobble up those prospects, I’m sure they’ll find a spot for them.
Hats off to the author, it’s pretty efficient to make these two arguments at once.
Also, we think any conversation about the Rays right now still has to mention the Wander situation.
Franco was promoted to the majors at age 20 — as opposed to rotting on the vine — and signed to a nine-figure long-term contract. Now we know he will most likely never play for the team again, and there is a Wander-sized hole in the budget and the lineup.
Oh and by the way the Willy Adames trade Epstein uses as evidence that the Rays only care about money? That made room for Franco’s promotion. Imagine the blowback if the Rays had stuck with Adames to delay Franco’s service time!
Why trading Tyler Glasnow is NOT like eliminating cancer research
Our main source of irritation with this article is not, however, Epstein’s evaluation of particular players or trades. It’s his effort to fit his critique of the Rays into a highly charged political frame.
In this effort he fails along multiuple dimensions.
He subtitles his article “welcome to the department of baseball efficiency,” a clear reference to the headline grabbing “Department of Government Efficiency” which, under Elon Musk, has been ruthlessly waylaying federal information systems and firing federal government workers, including those who land airplanes, protect us from pandemics, and keep our national parks open.
The reader is likely now on the alert — this team isn’t just bad at baseball, it’s... evil! And lest we miss the reference in that subtitle:
There comes a point when overaggressive efficiency becomes inefficient, counterproductive, and deleterious. This applies to baseball and the world at large. In pursuit of the strictest efficiency, a person or entity can dismantle initiatives that provide substantial public benefit, even if they aren’t profitable, such as cancer research, keeping planes in the air, special education, vaccines, medical benefits for seniors and veterans, consumer fraud protection, national defense, disaster relief, auditing millionaire and billionaire tax evaders, and studying the effects of climate change. The most efficient use of money is not to spend it at all, but then you’ll have nothing but money as you starve and shiver. If you’re a stakeholder—such as a Rays fan or an American taxpayer—you’re not getting your money back no matter how efficient everything becomes, and you’re left with nothing at all.
Where do we start?
How about the word “efficiency.” Efficiency means getting the most out of your resources, which may mean making investments today that pay off tomorrow. Firing essential employees with no notice is not efficiency. Eliminating all the people in your organization with institutional knowledge is not efficiency. Hampering the work of your revenue-creating agency is not efficiency. Slashing investments in research is not efficiency. The reader knows that. The author presumably knows that. So why adopt this conceit?
The way the current administration is treating areas like cancer research and keeping planes in the air is exactly the opposite of the way the Rays operate. The Rays are investing in the future, not mortgaging it for short term gains.
It’s because the Rays don’t have Dodger-sized revenue streams to put into the payroll that they invest in player development, high level analytics, scouting, and training. They treat their players well, according many of those former players, even those traded away. And they can’t afford to jettison talent without knowing where the next talent is coming from.
The Rays can be brutal about trading beloved players, but those trades are usually for other players they think can bring equal or more value in both the short and long term, and thereby keep the team competitive (the Rays do have the third most wins in baseball since 2008, behind only the Dodgers and Yankees).
Making those strategic decisions can be framed as tragic, but it is wholly dissimilar to the misguided actions of the oligarchs who are tearing down public institutions with the goal of destroying them.
There are writers here at DRaysBay who are federal employees, public school teachers, and doctors. We see the impacts of these disruptions every day. The suggestion that failing to trade for Kyle Tucker is comparable to telling essential workers they no longer have a job as of tomorrow does not square with our lived experience. Instead, we would argue it is inefficient, counterproductive, and deleterious.
We’re not asking you to stick to sports. Our fandom is a personal expression of and connection to our home, and the personal is political. But, especially now, when a word like “efficiency” gets used as a slogan for a backwards and inefficient process, we simply ask respected institutions like Baseball Prospectus make an attempt to understand metaphors before they use them.