After 2008 success, Rays just weren't hungry enough

They weren't hungry enough.

To repeat, they weren't hungry enough.

That sound you heard, if you heard it at all, was the Tampa Bay Rays' season ending.

The idea of a repeat was long dead when the Rays won their 81st game last week, beating the Baltimore Orioles before 10,000 or so souls at Tropicana Field. Roger Mooney of the Bradenton Herald was sitting next to me in the press box. He looked out at the thin house and said he'd been to bigger weddings.

For years, the very idea of winning 81 games, not losing more than they one, was a distant star for this franchise. In the end, these 2009 Rays ended up winning 84 times. But last season changed all the rules. Last season changed everything.

It changed things so much that there's no real way to look at the season just concluded as anything but an utter failure for the defending American League champions.

"Obviously, the season has been disappointing," Rays manager Joe Maddon said after a game last week.

I'm not sure Maddon or any of the lads will turn on the TV and watch even a second of the postseason.

This was that kind of disappointment.

For starters, there was that awful start, that losing April. For closers, there was that monumental collapse in early September, 11 straight losses. The Red Sox stayed the Red Sox, the Yankees went back to being the Yankees - and the Rays were left behind, like in all those seasons before 2008. Not quite as far behind, but does it matter at this point?

The rules have changed.

The expectations have changed.

"That's great. I think it's awesome," Maddon said. "I want the level of expectation to be raised annually."

There seemed to be a hundred things that came together to make the Rays the AL champions out of nowhere in 2008.

There were just as many reasons why that all went away in 2009.

Don't keep talking about how magical seasons come around only so often.

That's letting these guys off the hook.

They just didn't get it done.

The starting pitching simply wasn't good enough for most of the season, and it put a strain on a bullpen that wasn't good enough to begin with, and Maddon's occasional overreliance on pitch counts didn't necessarily help.

It'll be a long time before I use the word "ace" in a sentence with James Shields or Matt Garza in it.

Scott Kazmir and Andy Sonnanstine did next to nothing.

David Price, it turned out, wasn't what we expected.

Jeff Neimann was better. Heck, Wade Davis was better.

The only starter to truly improve over his 2008 Rays season was ... Edwin Jackson, who pitched for Detroit in 2009. The men who were going to take Jackson's place - Sonnanstine on the mound and Matt Joyce in the field - played cards in Durham.

The Rays bet they could get a closer between Troy Percival and Jason Isringhausen. They bet wrong. They can't come to 2010 without a legitimate closer. The committee didn't work. J.P. Howell and Dan Wheeler, they're fine, but they need help.

The Rays' lineup contained four automatic outs for a good part of the season - B.J. Upton, Dioner Navarro, right field (Gabe Kapler, Gabe Gross) and the one, the only Pat Burrell.

You can't have Burrell back, even if it means eating most of his fat contract.

The Rays need another catcher.

They need either a second baseman (they won't keep Aki Iwamora and his price tag) or a right fielder, depending on where they plant Ben Zobrist.

They need a closer, a catcher, a second baseman or right fielder, and no Burrell.

And they need more glue, or at least different glue.

The chemistry changed in 2009. How could it not? You can never precisely recreate it from season to season, but there was something missing with these Rays, as embodied by Burrell, who brought little to the clubhouse as well as the plate.

There was no Cliff Floyd, no Eric Hinske. They got some big hits in 2008, and their influence and professionalism permeated the place.

There was no Percival in 2009, at least for very long. The man had 30 saves last year and for half a season steadied a staff and a team.

There was Trever Miller out in the pen in 2008. He meant something, too.

All of this matters with a manager like Maddon, who doesn't hit his players over the heads with rules. He depends on a veteran presence to help enforce his brand of professionalism, and I think that was missing. Last season, when Upton loafed, and Maddon benched him, there was Floyd, in Upton's face, backing up the manager.

The Rays should have grown young leaders by now.

I didn't see it in 2009.

They need new glue.

Most of all, they simply need a new season, a season where they don't have 2008 directly in their rear view.

"I do believe there was some hangover," Maddon said last week.

Understand, the manager and his players took it head-on during training camp, admitting what was expected and what they faced. They openly talked about staying humble, staying focused.

"I thought we admitted to all this stuff," Maddon said. "We didn't shy away from it. We put it out there. I wanted them to be aware of it. I didn't want it to be the elephant in the room."

But you can talk and talk all you want, but there's no real way to prepare.

You still have to go out and walk the walk.

And these Rays couldn't do it, not in the end.

It happens to the best of them.

Like the 2003 Bucs, for instance.

It's human nature.

And the Rays were terribly human in 2009.

I think that the same thing that made this team so wonderful and successful in 2008 made them unsuccessful in 2009.

In 2008, the Rays didn't blink down the stretch against the Red Sox. Maybe they were too young to understand the pressure of it all.

But in 2009, maybe they were too young to realize that you just can't push a button in May, in June, whenever, and start to be good again.

They weren't quite hungry enough.

Failing that, they weren't good enough.

The baseball playoffs are about to start.

The Rays have scattered.

They were out of the picture long before the season ended, weeks and weeks of agonizing games, meaningless baseball. It went on and on.

They'll be back - but just how far back?

The rules have changed.

The Rays should know it.

They should be famished by 2010, they should be hungry.

At least they had better be.