Building a champion: the Rays

ALCS MVP Matt garza arrived in Tampa Bay in a trade that turned the entire team around, in more ways than one. AP Jon Heyman's Mailbag Got a question or comment for Jon? Name: Email: Hometown: Question: SEND Follow Jon Heyman on Twitter

On Monday, SI.com's Jon Heyman examined how the Phillies were built. Today, he takes a look at the American League champion Tampa Bay Rays.

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- The Tampa Bay Rays are four victories from completing the greatest turnaround in baseball history, a worst-to-first move that normally happens only in Hollywood. No one could have believed this was possible so soon.

Although, if one person believed in them at all, it was their 31-year-old general manager, Andrew Friedman, who envisioned them going where they had never been before (no, not the World Series -- that would have been crazy talk). Friedman said the other day that he believed when the season began that the Rays could be competitive, which in itself would have marked a major step forward. "I don't get too caught up in expectations. But I thought we'd be .500,'' Friedman said.

As the leader of a team that had never come within 10 games of that mark and was coming off yet another typically awful 67-95 season, even that is a prediction he didn't dare enunciate publicly until recently, so as not to appear overly bold, or even overmatched. The reality is, no one else saw the Rays even reaching that mark, not after a decade of only disasters with yet another unproven roster in baseball's best division.

Friedman, the lead baseball man in a very smart and very young regime that includes young owner Stuart Sternberg (49), president Matt Silverman (32) and savvy baseball veteran Gerry Hunsicker, took over baseball's most impossibly bad franchise three years ago. The difference from the first regime was obvious immediately. The new guys had a plan. They thought about things. They also took chances, like parting with established manager Lou Piniella and replacing him with the untested Joe Maddon, who is erudite and patient, the perfect man for the up-and-coming team they envisioned.

There were no immediate miracles, though. That came a couple winters after the new guys took over, when they set out with the usual limited budget (their player payroll is about $40 million, which is higher only than the Florida Marlins) to change the fortunes of a franchise, to avoid repeating or resembling in any way any of their previous decade of disaster. Understanding that it would take more than just dropping the Devil from their name, Friedman and Co. endeavored last winter to improve four key areas ...

1) Their pitching, especially their historically bad bullpen;

2) Their defense, especially at shortstop where they had historically been mediocre;

3) Their depth, which is always a tricky thing for a team with no money to spend, and;

4) Their clubhouse. (This is the one that Rays executives don't like to talk to much about, presumably so as not to cast aspersions on the players who were jettisoned to achieve this goal.) But along with the name change they actually did excise a couple players who were slightly devilish, the temperamental Elijah Dukes and immature Delmon Young.

They batted 1.000 on those goals, accomplishing Nos. 1, 2 and 4 with a single trade of Young to the Twins for hard-throwing pitcher Matt Garza and superb defensive shortstop Jason Bartlett. Garza twice outpitched Red Sox phenom Jon Lester to win the ALCS MVP, and Bartlett, despite a grand total of one regular-season home run, has been mentioned by Rays watchers as a possible season MVP (realistically, superb two-way rookie third baseman Evan Longoria is their MVP, but the very suggestion speaks volumes about Bartlett's defense).

Garza's a fellow the Rays had been targeting for years in smaller trades but were only able to acquire when they agreed to deal Young, a talented right-handed hitter in need of an attitude adjustment. Friedman generously allowed that he never would have made this swap "in a vacuum,'' a nod to Young's talent. But despite their youth, Friedman and his front office understand that they don't work in a vacuum but in the real world, where attitude and character count. Besides excising Dukes and Young, the other move to bolster the clubhouse and camaraderie was to sign Cliff Floyd, a well-known all-around good guy (Friedman downplays this aspect of Floyd's equation as he believes it minimizes his on-field contributions, which have been considerable).

Garza became a key member of an excellent rotation, which had never before been a strength. But Bartlett was a necessity. Friedman felt that the newcomer Longoria would give the Rays excellent defense at third and that Akinori Iwamura would be better at second than he was at third (two-for-two there), but as the GM also said, "We felt our biggest weakness was going to be at shortstop, which was the most important position.''

The starting staff, never great, was still eons ahead of a bullpen that bordered on minor-league last year. The pen's collective improvement has been nothing short of startling, despite a paucity of extremely hard throwers. Friedman credits some of their success to "a diversity of looks ... different repertoires and arm angles.'' J.P. Howell, a failure as a starter, and Grant Balfour, unwanted in Minnesota, have been untouchable at times. "Phenomenal'' is the one word Friedman uses to describe the performance of that unit.

The plan has been sound, and the moves phenomenal. But of course it also didn't hurt that the team finished at or very close to the bottom for its first 10 years, leading to a slew of ultra-talented draft choices. The first pick of the new regime, made by scouting director R.J. Harrison, was Longoria, such a superb player already that if a draft of all major leaguers were held today, some GMs would take him first. Friedman recalls, though, that when it came to making their first pick (the No. 3 pick overall), they badly wanted to take a pitcher. "Our philosophy is to improve pitching depth when possible,'' Friedman said. "But he made it difficult to take a pitcher.'' (Had they taken the pitcher, it probably would have been Tim Lincecum, so that wouldn't haven't been too bad, either.)

Two years later Harrison took that talented left-hander, selecting Vanderbilt star David Price, the just-promoted rookie who closed out the ALCS and looks like a future star. This team knows how to draft.

Friedman's predecessor, Chuck LaMar, has been accepting plaudits for his contributions to the Rays, and it's true that his eight straight unsuccessful seasons resulted in an unprecedented decade of draft opportunities. LaMar's crew, led by scouting director Dan Jennings, found talent, too, drafting B.J. Upton, James Shields, Carl Crawford and Rocco Baldelli. Jennings also selected Josh Hamilton No. 1 overall in 1999, although Hamilton, now a star with the Rangers, never did a thing for the Rays (Friedman has lost sleep over letting Hamilton go in the 2006 Rule 5 draft, but it's hard to see how he could have protected him off 15 Class-A games and a slew of suspensions).

Upton, who became a hit after moving from shortstop to centerfield ("he was just never comfortable at shortstop in the minors,'' one opposing scout observed), and ace Shields were excellent picks of the first regime. And Scott Kazmir represented the one time when an opposing team gave in to LaMar's consistently ludicrous trade requests. Yet, all in all, LaMar, now a Phillies scout, was ill-equipped for the job he held for 10 years in Tampa, as he has admitted in recent years. By installing Friedman in LaMar's place, the Rays went from worst to first in terms of GMs, as well.