I was reminded of this article by Joe Sheehan (subscription required) last week that I never really said anything about. It was made in the wake of the move to bring up Reggie Taylor instead of Jonny Gomes and has Joe basically giving up on the Rays and saying they are hopeless with the current front office.
As he mentioned, the current front office should have been kicked out the door years ago. Another stupid move doesn't really make things any worse, we all pretty much knew already that the Rays aren't going to contend with Chuck Lamar calling the shots.
Of course, it didn't take long for Rays fans to figure out that this was a precursor to Gomes coming up after interleague ended, an advantage to being fans of the team instead of national writers. The situation wasn't as bad as Sheehan made it out to be but like I said it's not like stupidity was anything new from this front office.
I guess my main point is that while Sheehan wrote a good article and had valid points, not only was he merely preaching to the choir but he was using one decision as an excuse to get riled up about incompetent management. If he really thought that the progress the Rays had made lately was a reason to be somewhat optimistic with Chuck Lamar still around he was kidding himself. The hope for the organization's development has always been dependent on the installation of a competent general manager, even if Reggie Taylor was actually brought up in place of Jonny Gomes that wouldn't have made things look worse than they already did with this current set of decision makers.