00:00You know, one of the more underreported stories this year in Major League Baseball, not that the American League was
00:06good this year, was the job that the Tampa Bay Rays have done this season.
00:11They started the season off this year looking for a new stadium.
00:15New ownership came in, and they ended up getting that deal done for the city of Tampa and for the
00:21region.
00:21The Tampa Bay Rays, over the last 14 years, have been the third winningest baseball team in all of Major
00:30League Baseball.
00:32That's incredible.
00:33With the 27th ranked payroll, pretty much each and every single year, you want to know the real money ball?
00:40You're looking at it.
00:42Eric Neander, the general manager of that team, is such a savant at putting together great rosters.
00:49This goes even back to when Andrew Friedman was there as the initial general manager of that baseball team.
00:56And by the way, do you think there's any coincidence that Andrew Friedman is now the general manager of the
01:02Los Angeles Dodgers?
01:03And not only do the Dodgers have an open checkbook, but the Dodgers have one of the best minor league
01:09systems in all of Major League Baseball.
01:11They're rich on the farm.
01:13Like they were rich, and they are rich right now on the farm with the Rays and how they build
01:17their baseball team in Durham.
01:19It's an incredible job of baseball smarts and how they run.
01:25Make no mistake about it.
01:27Okay?
01:27How they run their team.
01:29This is a team with $101 million payroll.
01:34Take a look at the New York Mets.
01:36How they have absolutely died on the vine with incompetence and incompetent moves.
01:43You spend over $300 million on a payroll, and you're now watching a baseball team that spends $100 million.
01:55$100 million.
01:57The entire left side of the Mets is equal to the payroll of what the Rays do.
02:03Kevin Cash, the general manager, or excuse me, the manager of the team, is truly one of the greatest managers
02:09in the game today.
02:11Look what they've done in progressions of how they've gone from Andrew Friedman to now Eric Neander, from Joe Maddon
02:19to Kevin Cash.
02:20And it's been a seamless transition.
02:22How many places and how many organizations in all of sports makes that transition like that?
02:29Hey, look.
02:30They may not get a lot of people at the Trop.
02:32The Yankees will be in town because the Yankees own Tampa, really.
02:37The Yankees and George Steinbrenner, when he was alive, have their facility and their baseball facility right there on Dale
02:44Mabry.
02:45When you show up to Tampa, it's really a Yankee city, not a Tampa Bay Rays city.
02:51But the Rays do it in spite of all that.
02:54People don't cover this team enough because you know why?
02:57It's not New York, it's not Boston, it's not Chicago, and it's not Los Angeles.
03:02You win that amount of games in the Tiffany division, the American League East, where teams normally spend north of
03:09$250 million.
03:11And there's a Rays pounding you every year and winning positions in the playoffs and winning an AL East flag.
03:19It's incredible.
