Major League Baseball

Rays enter strange offseason with goal fixing issues from down year

Published Sep. 29, 2014 3:37 p.m. ET

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ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- The Tampa Bay Rays' season began in late March with an optimistic outlook that appeared like wishful thinking come mid-August, the transformation proof that baseball can be a fickle game that scatters the best of intentions. By Monday, there was little new left to say about a year of unmet hope.

"Tough," utility man Sean Rodriguez said in a corridor outside the Rays clubhouse at Tropicana Field. "The last month was obviously not a September that any of us have enjoyed as much as we have in the past."

Tampa Bay's season ended Sunday at 77-85 with a forgettable 7-2 loss to the Cleveland Indians at Progressive Field, but the sight of a handful of players packing up their stalls late on the morning after seemed like semantics. In reality, the end had arrived many days before, when the Rays' tragic number reached zero following a loss to the Chicago White Sox on Sept. 19. This is a franchise that has made October play a habit in recent years, either through 11th-hour dramatics or otherwise. This abrupt end felt nothing short of strange.

Certainly, there will be a next season, when a core that includes Evan Longoria, Alex Cobb and others returns. Still, revisiting an outlier was bizarre.

"I guess it's a little bit surprising just on how everything did turn out," reliever Brad Boxberger said. "It's not what any of us expected or even saw coming in spring training and early in the year."

Of course, the Rays' duty is to make sure something similar doesn't happen next year. Given their financial realities that make an $80 million Opening Day payroll appear large, the Rays exist on a fine line between Cinderella success story and a small-market franchise struggling to compete. The fact that the scene Monday, with cardboard boxes and dark blue duffle bags placed throughout the clubhouse, felt odd to witness in late September is a testament to the rise Tampa Bay has enjoyed since the 2008 season's start.

But this is new territory for these Rays, who had produced no fewer than 84 victories in a single season since the renaissance's beginning before this campaign. This shortcoming should be treated as an unwanted grounding moment, a sour flavor to absorb and spit out as soon as possible.

There was the 1-14 stretch from May 26-June 10, when an early one- or two-run deficit felt too large to overcome.

"We've got to find ways to create runs," said hitting coach Derek Shelton, who mentored a roster that produced 612 runs, which ranked 27th in the majors. "We're going to have our core group of guys back, so we have to find a way to do it differently."

There was the span of spotty pitching, before Cobb and right-hander Jake Odorizzi settled and Boxberger and Jake McGee emerged as the Rays' best late-inning options. Tampa Bay closed with a 3.56 ERA, which ranks fifth in the American League, but that total could have been better.

"It's really shocking," reliever Joel Peralta said. "We came in here thinking that at this point that we'd be going to the playoffs, and it didn't happen. ... I think we never put defense, hitting and pitching together."

There were the early injuries to Cobb, left-hander Matt Moore, outfielder Wil Myers and others that scrambled the front office's best-laid plans. No one could have predicted in the spring that Myers would hit just .222 with six home runs and 35 RBI, and both Cesar Ramos and Erik Bedard would hold spots within the starting rotation.

"It was a tough year for the team," Myers said. "Just one of those years that a lot of weird things happened."

The Rays have always prided themselves in enduring no matter the environment, though. This is a franchise that excelled despite the trades of Matt Garza and James Shields, plus the departures of outfielders Carl Crawford and B.J. Upton. Manager Joe Maddon, executive vice president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman and other Rays management have earned the reputation as some of baseball's most creative men for a reason. Life has been good for them in most years since 2008, but this underwhelming season will provide a special kind of challenge as Tampa Bay's minds brainstorm for ways to reach October once more.

How to make the current weaknesses become catalysts to improve, not evolve into a reputation?

"I think everybody in the clubhouse would have agreed, and a lot of people around baseball would have agreed that we would have been in the playoffs," outfielder Matt Joyce said. "It's a funny game. It's just the way it goes sometime."

This season, now done, has felt like an inexplicable anomaly for a while.

The Rays enter the offseason with an obvious but difficult goal: Place the empty hope of 2014 in the past and make everyone re-acquainted with the Rays' way of competing for a playoff berth. This must happen as fast as possible. There can be no negative carryover into next spring.

The Opening Day optimism from last March feels distant, but that's the way it is for most teams this time of year. The Rays had built themselves into an exception, and their task is capturing the good feelings again after an encounter with the bad.

You can follow Andrew Astleford on Twitter @aastleford or email him at aastleford@gmail.com.

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