The Tampa Rays invest for the long haul — and win.
All-Star left fielder Carl Crawford suffered through
six dismal seasons for the Rays before this year.
327 games below .500
In the ten seasons that they played before this one, the Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays lost 327 more games than they won. Year after year, they struggled to touch 70 wins, much less contend for anything. And plenty of baseball-watchers, myself included, wrote them off forever since they played in the same division with the two richest teams in baseball (the Red Sox and the Yankees) along with two more of baseball’s “haves” (Baltimore and Toronto).
Yet here the Rays are, division winners for the regular season and about to play Boston for the American League pennant — and all on the lowest payroll ($44 million) in their league. They’re still 295 games below .500 across the history of the franchise, but that sting could be washed away by four more wins and a trip to the World Series.
Over and over on this blog, I try to stress the importance of building an enterprise for the long haul. Anne Mulcahy does it, Warren Buffett does it, Jamie Dimon does it, you should do it. This Alan Schwarz article from the New York Times talks about how the Rays have done the same thing since new ownership took over the team late in 2005.
The Rays Had a Plan, and Stuck to It
[Rays manager Joe Maddon in 2006:] “Because of the negativity that’s been attached to this group for such a long period of time, eradicating that just doesn’t happen overnight. What we’re doing right now is to stop the madness, and do what we think is the right thing to do from this moment on.”
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Baseball always hears about rebuilding plans, but usually when they’re just beginning (during apologetic trade-deadline fire sales) or when they’re ending (with handshakes all around). What distinguishes the Rays’ rebuilding plan is the unwavering confidence with which it was continuously executed.
Read the article — it’s not too baseball-geeky for non-fans — and ponder what lessons your company might derive from it. If you ever wanted an example of a hapless organization, you need look no further than the pre-2005 Rays. And if they can improve, so can you.
By the way, the success of the Rays this year, like the playoff runs of the Oakland Athletics and Minnesota Twins earlier in this decade, ought to shine a harsh spotlight on the complacent, ill-run franchises (Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Kansas City, and Washington leap to mind) that have wallowed in incompetence for too many years. The baseball fans in those cities deserve better — and the Rays offer one example of how to achieve it.
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(Photo by John-Morgan.)
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I’m glad that their plan is paying off in the long run, but one must be careful to make sure that their plan really will work in the long run, instead of stubbornly sticking with a bad plan with the idea that it one day will be successful.
How to determine that.. I couldn’t tell you, but the best thing is just to keep an eye on your business and the market around you.
CP — There are, indeed, plenty of examples of leaders (in sports, business, politics, etc.) who stuck to a bad plan in the dogged belief that it would work eventually. If you’re looking for the single thing that will save you from that predictively, you’ll probably be looking for a long time.
I would, however, counsel you — or any business — to think in terms of capacity development, upside, and downside. If a particular move builds your capacity and opens up considerable upside while not exposing you to much downside, it’s probably a good move.
In baseball terms, it’s the difference between the franchises that stockpile and develop good pitchers up and down their organizations (cf. Oakland & Atlanta for many years, or Boston in the past few years) and the ones who sign a particular elite pitcher on the hope that he’ll take them to the Promised Land. (Easy example: the Chan Ho Park signing by the Rangers a few years back.)
In the first case, if a single pitcher blows out his arm, you shrug and figure that it’s part of the process. But if your marquee guy blows out his arm, you’re sunk.
I completely understand you in the terms of capacity development. It’s like investing in some great prospects and spending the time to develop these prospects, to where one day, in the long run, they’ll be major impact players. The danger is, however, making sure that you have the ability to harvest this potential.
As well, what of the case of after spending say.. 5 years.. developing and harvesting this new group of young talent. Couldn’t this put you at risk of then having to try to retain this talent from being bought off or stolen by bigger, better, wealthier competitors?
CP — Retaining the talent is *always* part of the equation, from the moment you start, just like in any other line of work. The challenge for Tampa (and Oakland, Minnesota, et al.) is to keep the pipeline filled with still more new talent. You go out of your way to retain the best of the best (like Evan Longoria in Tampa), but you’re also prepared to live with losing marquee players to free agency (like Jason Giambi when he left Oakland).
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