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Rays To Emphasize Wins Over Development

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Marc Lancaster, The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 28, 2007

ST. PETERSBURG - If everything goes as planned, there will be a referendum on the ballot next November in which St. Petersburg residents will decide whether to allow the Rays to build a new stadium on the downtown waterfront.

Even if that proposal, which will be unveiled to the public for the first time today, doesn't involve additional taxpayer expense, the fate of the referendum may come down to how St. Petersburg residents feel about the overall state of their baseball team.

Another 90-loss season in 2008 certainly wouldn't help the Rays' case as they ask the public for a vote of confidence, but the men in charge of Tampa Bay's baseball operations don't feel compelled to make any over-the-top moves this winter as part of a stadium campaign strategy.

"In baseball operations, we're trying very hard to insulate ourselves from that," Rays executive vice president Andrew Friedman said Tuesday. "They're very independent events, and it's premature to factor that in at all into our line of thinking. Obviously if it gets approved it will at some point start to factor into our thought process, but how so and how much is yet to be determined. We feel a tremendous amount of pressure to improve this team independent of any outside factors, so that's what we're focused on doing."

Though Friedman indicated Tuesday that the team has some flexibility to exceed the payroll benchmark established a few months ago by principal owner Stuart Sternberg - somewhere in the low $30 millions - a spending spree isn't in the offing. Nonetheless, the Rays finally seem poised to emphasize victories over development.

"A lot of our focus in '06 and '07 was on the future, and I think we're at a point now where our M.O. is changing," Friedman said. "This is a good opportunity for us to start being more aggressive, to focus on the now, more than we were able to in previous years. It gets back to the personnel we have in the upper minors and at the major-league level, that we feel like it's the right time to really start moving this thing forward."

MORE TESTS: Friedman said OF Rocco Baldelli is undergoing additional tests in an effort to determine whether there might be an underlying medical problem at the root of his chronic hamstring troubles. Baldelli said at the new uniform unveiling this month that he was still awaiting the results of some tests he had taken late in the season.

"I think we're getting a lot closer, and I'm hopeful by spring training we're going to have the knowledge to be able to put Rocco in a position to get 500-plus at-bats," said Friedman.

SIGNINGS: The Rays signed C Hector Gimenez, IF/OF Chris Richard and OF Jon Weber. All will be invited to major-league camp next spring.

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