"Gee it looks a lot like your posts, HAHAHA OH WOW"

Ok first post accuracy out of the way, a guy I went to high school with, who has parlayed being a journalism nerd in high school to a radio job and someone with substantial political standings, who lives in Florida and is a Mets fan (but has been for a long time, since before the Rays existed) stated this on his facebook:

I realize this will be met with boos and hisses by most of you, so just hear me out. I DO NOT WANT TO SEE TAMPA BAY WIN THIS WORLD SERIES. Period.

Let’s get past the obvious: the “feel good” story, the young kids upstaging the crusty veterans, the whole “worst-to-first” melodrama, the dropping of the word “Devil” in the year they suddenly play well. It all might make for a nice Disney movie. I just don’t want to see it play out on baseball’s biggest stage. Not when there are multiple other franchises out there committed to winning that deserved it more.

The Tampa Bay Devil Rays (I will always call them the Devil Rays just because I don’t like the coincidence of what is happening this year) were born 10 years ago and for the last 9 of those, have redefined the word “suck”. While their in-state rivals the Marlins bought and sold their way to two World Series titles in that time, while the Arizona Diamondbacks (who were born the same year as Tampa Bay) won a World Series a mere four years after joining the Major leagues, the Rays toiled away in the basement of the American League East, showing no desire to make changes via free agency. Even today their 2008 payroll is the second-lowest in all of baseball (since 2002, Tampa Bay has either been last or second-to-last every year in annual payroll).

Not that money should be all that matters. Certainly a case can be made that teams like the Yankees, Red Sox, and yes, even my beloved Mets, are doing baseball no justice by spending 100-200 million per year on a team. At the same time, I have little use for teams that purposely lose year after year, stockpile top draft picks, never look to improve their team via free agency and then magically: the young players start performing and they make it to the World Series!

The fact is this team should have been contracted and forced out of baseball years ago. The commissioner was openly talking of doing just that before the players union went ape and the league relented. The Rays had abysmal attendance, a stadium that looks like an underground nuclear facility and were content to sit back and do nothing about the bad product they were putting on the field. While middle-market teams like Cleveland, Houston, Colorado, even bad teams like Seattle and Texas try (yet usually fail) to put a competitive team on the field each year, the Devil Rays could not have cared less.

In the current collective bargaining agreement, big market teams like the aforementioned Mets, Yankees, and Red Sox are subsidizing small market teams like the Rays, Royals and Twins. Yet still, even despite it, the Rays have shown no willingness to take the bail out money they receive from Baseball’s titans and invest it into their payroll. See the 2005 season as Exhibit A in this case: the Devil Rays received over $30 million in revenue sharing money from the big guys that year, yet their 2005 payroll was only $29 million, which means the ownership didn’t spend a single dime of its OWN money on its OWN the entire season. The luxury tax and revenue sharing rules in baseball are socialistic to say the least. Barack Obama must love this collective bargaining agreement, by the way. I however, do not.

The Mets won’t be playing in the World Series this year. Neither will the Yankees, Tigers or Red Sox. The top four payrolls in baseball. And while they shouldn’t get a free pass into the playoffs and World Series simply because of money, it’s ashame to see the exact opposite happen: watching a team that entered the year with no reason to believe it would finish with more than its typical 65 wins (and the payroll/competitive spirit consistent with a 65 win season) take center stage in October.

Sure it may come off considerably jealous for me to write this, and to that I can offer only little resistance. I am jealous. Jealous because my team tries to win every year, not just when all the draft picks finally make it to the big leagues. Yet here we sit watching the Devil Rays make World Series preparations at Tropicana Field while my stadium is having the seats ripped from it so it can be bulldozed to make way for a new stadium.

Tampa Bay for 9 years has been the epitome of anti-competitive and now those years of malaise are being rewarded with a shot at baseball supremacy (and likely a victory, I should add). And it’s just wrong. Taking the Mets out of it, simply as a fan of The Game, this is why I cannot root for Tampa Bay in this World Series.

Now I’ll duck as you throw beer bottles at me…

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This man has a college education and is well versed on a lot of things BUT DAMN YOUSE DUMB. I may not have all the sabermetrics and statistical chops as RJ and the Lord Protectors of this site, but Christ even I was able to dice his argument apart. WE DIDNT SPEND THE MONEY BECAUSE PRACTICALLY ALL OUR TALENT WAS DEVELOPED FROM OUR FARM SYSTEM!!! We got some sweet ass trading done and having the number one pick so many times helped, but shit man this guy needs to get his glasses checked once he's done giving himself a colorectal exam.