Who will win the 2008 World Series?

[Bear]

Four teams left. Who will win?:confused:

[SF Kid]

Does anybody care?

I'll take t he RedSox.

[Bear]

Does anybody care?

I'll take t he RedSox.

To quote Old Sweater from the fall of 2007 "True Baseball Fans which rules out the SF Kid"

[McCovey]

I think the Rays are the best team right now. The Red Sox have some injury issues. And the NL is a minor league compared to the AL. So I pick the Rays.

[McCovey]

Brian Sabean, please pay attention. The Rays' GM is only 31 years old. He was hired when he was 28. Wow.


The Rays Had a Plan, and Stuck to It

By ALAN SCHWARZ
New York Times
October 8, 2008

It was late in the 2006 season, Joe Maddon’s first as manager of the (then) Devil Rays. The team was hours away from losing once again, just another drab loss among 100 others that year and, to most onlookers, among the 900 in the franchise’s dreadful nine seasons.

Sitting behind his desk next to the Tampa Bay clubhouse, Maddon was asked if his team — rebuilding, yet again — had an underdog mentality.
“I don’t feel that way,” Maddon said. “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.”

Just two years old, Maddon’s comment is a telling fossil record of from where this year’s shocking Rays evolved. He had not yet won the 97 games that took this year’s American League East flag or the three more over the Chicago White Sox that put them in the coming championship series, beginning Friday against the Boston Red Sox. The Devil Rays were on their way to 101 losses, which in Tampa Bay was as calendrical as Stonehenge.

And yet Maddon, a rookie manager with few credentials to that point, could clearly delineate the two eras of Tampa Bay baseball — the laughably haphazard one that preceded him and his management superiors, and the one in which the baseball world now lives.
Gone are the days when the team would drop $10 million on a high school phenom who simply flamed out in the minor leagues (Matt White).
Acquiring one-dimensional lugs like Greg Vaughn and Vinny Castilla — who both became Devil Rays on perhaps the franchise’s darkest day at the 1999 winter meetings — is a nightmare not soon relived.

Much will be made this week about how the Rays, who still have the A.L.’s lowest payroll at about $44 million, learned to walk upright over the past several years. Fine scouting has led to the development of several homegrown stars (third baseman Evan Longoria, center fielder B.J. Upton and ace James Shields), but most key youngsters have arrived in astute trades (starters Matt Garza and Scott Kazmir, relievers Grant Balfour and J.P. Howell, catcher Dioner Navarro and more). Second baseman Akinori Iwamura was imported from Japan, first baseman Carlos Peña from major league oblivion.

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. One of the reasons Maddon can shrug off underdog talk after 100 wins is that he did during 101 losses.

Maddon found those losses far more bearable than did his predecessor, Lou Piniella, who arrived in Tampa Bay in 2003 with an impatience with young players that led to his arm-flailing escape three seasons later.
Piniella wouldn’t know Lil Wayne from Jimmy Wayne, but Maddon liked new music, talked on the same level as his young players and treated his job as more cool camp counselor than battlefield boss.

“He wants you to understand that he’s not going to police you every day,” one of the 2008 team’s few veterans, the designated hitter Cliff Floyd, said in August. “It’s liberating, because you don’t have to wonder if you do something wrong you’ll have to sit or you’re going to hear it from him. That’s a big load off these young guys.”

Above Maddon, the Rays’ management team is just as distinctive.

The principal owner Stuart Sternberg isn’t the first Wall Street veteran to own a team — he assumed control in late 2005 — but he was the first to hire barely-shaving Wall Street hotshots to run it. The club president Matt Silverman (now all of 33) and the general manager Andrew Friedman (31) are still by far the youngest pair to run a team’s business and baseball departments in major league history.

The team’s temporary official logo early in 2006 was unapologetic: a yellow sign with the slogan, “Under Construction.”

“Their baseball biological clock has a lot of space at the end of it,” Maddon said early in his tenure with Silverman and Friedman. “It’s just not running down to the very end — there’s time. So I think from that perspective, when you talk about the future with these two guys, they know. There is such a thing.”

Maddon could see it. He could see the imminent maturation of Shields and Kazmir. He could see how the front office wanted to handle things with unwavering intelligence. And while he could see that 100-loss seasons were by no means over, he knew that the spoils of those — top-of-the-board draft picks like Longoria, left-hander David Price and this year’s No. 1, infielder Tim Beckham — would lead to Tampa Bay emerging from its cave as one of the scariest rosters in baseball.

“I’m not going to blow my stack — I know what’s going on,” he said behind his desk that seemingly dreary day in late 2006. “We need time to get better. And so, while everybody else may be losing their mind, it’s becoming upon us not to lose ours.”

[Bear]

As the Bear sees it the series will be between the Red Sox and the Dodgers. I think that will be a tight series, and I have no clue who will win that one.I do think that from this point forward this will be must see baseball.:beerbang:

[Bombers]

I gotta go with the youth and talent of the Rays...

Price will be a stud nect year!

[Bear]

As the Bear sees it the series will be between the Red Sox and the Dodgers. I think that will be a tight series, and I have no clue who will win that one.I do think that from this point forward this will be must see baseball.:beerbang:

Well let me be the first to say the Bear was all wrong about this years playoffs. At this point I hope the Rays win it all so with my luck it will be the Phillies in 4 in the WS.:pound:

[SF Kid]

So you're saying the Bear didn't know shit after all? :rotf:

I knew that all along.

[Bear]

So you're saying the Bear didn't know shit after all? :rotf:

I knew that all along.

No, that is not what I am saying. What I am saying is that I am big enough to admit it when I am wrong unlike a certain SF Kid!:p

[SF Kid]

Looks like we can stick a fork in Boston. 5-0 Tampa...

I don't get it. They go from the worst record in baseball to the WS in one year with some sort of miniscule payroll yet our Giants can't do jack shit in 50 years in San Francisco. Damn that sucks.

Well the Bear sucks too so I guess that explains it. :D

[McCovey]

Looks like we can stick a fork in Boston. 5-0 Tampa...

I don't get it. They go from the worst record in baseball to the WS in one year with some sort of miniscule payroll yet our Giants can't do jack shit in 50 years in San Francisco. Damn that sucks.

Well the Bear sucks too so I guess that explains it. :D
A few things about the Rays. In late 2005 they hired a 28 year old Andrew Friedman as their GM. His background is in busines and finance. It takes guts and outside-the-box thinking to hire a 28 year old to be the GM and President of Operations. The Giants owners have neither the guts nor outside-the-box thinking. Friedman hired Joe Maddon as the Rays manager. Also, Friedman made some shrewd trades that brought a lot of young talent to the Rays.

Read this article as it details the key moves made by the Rays.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/08/sports/baseball/08baseball.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Also, all those great trades would not have been made possible if the Rays didn't draft and development players other teams would want. And this is the key difference between the Rays and Giants. The Rays have drafted well over the past several years. The Giants have no clue what the draft is for. :rolleyes:

It's not too surprising the Rays are now a top team. Though it did happen quicker than what was anticipated.

[McCovey]

The Rays are taking it to the Red Sox. It's 6-1 Rays now. :o

[SF Kid]

No. Now it's 7-1.

Good post ^^^ there Mc. You hit the nail on the head.

[McCovey]

Rays are up 11-2 now. Wow.

[SF Kid]

I called it. Tampa all the way. :yes:

[McCovey]

To be fair, the Red Sox are not at full strength. David Ortiz and Josh Beckett are injured. However, injuries are part of baseball.