Fandom Purgatory with the Tampa Bay Rays

I love baseball to death, as does most of America. Don’t let the sports media fool you, baseball is still a success story despite the people running it constantly making silly mistakes to stunt its potential growth.

But yea, I love this wild, crazy, unpredictable sport.

Which is why it pains me to feel like I’m in a state of purgatory.

This is not a discussion about the state of baseball or MLB, as the league is still healthy, making money, enjoying strong regular season numbers, and undergoing a brand new generation of baseball that has wildly changed the rules as well as even integrated Negro League Baseball numbers to the official books. This is all good, even with Manfred still being a terrible commissioner.

I’m talking about the Tampa Bay Rays.

I’m not really focused on them this season, getting nowhere near as much attention from me when compared to seasons in the past, and the team isn’t even too too different from the squad in 2023. But it all feels pointless as the organization has zero desires to step up and try to compete more financially, all while trying to cheapen their way out of the current stadium situation by building in the exact same place where attendance issues persist---and making it yet another fully-domed stadium.

The Tampa Bay Rays continue being at the bottom of the payroll standings, continue digging through the rejected bins of professional baseball to fill out their roster, and have no desire to ever exit the doldrums of payroll and attendance as they continue letting go of talent, and never quite make the effort in landing even one superstar. Wander Franco is a poor example, because the giant contract was essentially trapping a decent player in a giant team-friendly deal that’s hard to pass up when you’re so young and still unproven. Let’s be honest, we really going to doll out the same Franco-esque contract for already-proven popular star Randy Arozarena? Even the Kansas City Royals have their superstar with Salvador Perez.

It just feels like after 2020 and 2021’s wild success, there was no effort to really find the necessary final pieces to remain a World Series threat, we haven’t made a big splash for a few seasons now, and worst of all there hasn’t been a push to elevate the experience of being a Rays fan with an actual solution to improve attendance. Instead they have closed off a third of the stadium, while proposing a very weak solution with a new stadium on the SAME area despite the location actually being the primary issue for the attendance woes.

Of course one can make the argument that the Rays need time to recover from the Wilmer Franco disaster that was definitely not their fault, and I’m sure some will point to the spectacular April 2023 when the Rays looked like they were never going to lose a game. But a team as supposedly more organized and more intelligent than the average sports franchise surely should have had a Plan B in mind, right? Surely the Rays would know how to quickly restructure if say their most important player were to be unavailable, right? But it doesn’t appear that way, it just looks like the Rays are satisfied to still be able to compete quietly while racking up the revenue-sharing profits.

So as a fan, what is there to actually be excited about? Yea the playoffs are still within reach under the expanded format, but so what? We’ve seen the Orioles, Blue Jays, and the Yankees make some killer moves in the off-season, there’s an actual level of effort to their roster upgrades----and those three are in the same division! The road to the World Series is longer than ever, and has become the toughest in years with many less-popular teams making strides, whether it be the Orioles, the Royals, and even the Mariners (who are on top of the tough AL West).

We’re in the same boring stadium with even less space and features than in years past. We don’t have a future star player to rest hopes on. We don’t have a proportionate increase in payroll, no new ideas, no new identity, no surprise hit star emerging, and it feels like the same machine churning through as the game has changed dramatically, hoping to produce more consistent results related to 2021 or that infamous April 2023 stretch. The Rays are a slight victim of the wild ever-changing ways of baseball, but also a victim of their own sustained success.

At the very least, sign Evan Longoria and let him retire as a Ray, give us something cool to look forward to.

Like I said, I love the game and the current season of baseball has been fun. The Yankees with Juan Soto so damn back in the spotlight, even as Los Angeles with Ohtani becoming the polarizing mecca of the sport. But the 2024 Tampa Bay Rays feels like those infamous post-Golden Age Simpsons seasons----more of the same, but with diminished results and less inclination to confront its growing shortcomings.

Maybe this is all just a plea to move the team to actual Tampa….