Sunday, May 5, 2024

New Record Holder In Tampa Bay

For the last twenty six season, the Tampa Bay Rays have been exciting baseball fans on the west coast of Florida. For the last ten of those years, Kevin Cash has been the man leading the charge. He took over the job here in Tampa on December 5th, 2014, replacing Joe Maddon. On Saturday night in a 3-1 win over the New York Mets, Cash passed Maddon to become the winningest manager in Rays history.

Cash was hired as the 5th manager in Rays history in 2014 and now sit atop the list with 756 wins (he added another win to that total with a walk off win earlier today over the Mets). Cash and Maddon are the only men to manage over 1,000 games for the Rays.

The managers that this team has had are Larry Rothschild (499 games 209 wins), Hal McRae (309 games and 113 wins), Lou Piniella (489 games and 200 wins), Joe Maddon 1,459 games and 754 wins) and Cash 1,357 games and 756 and counting wins).

The first three managers did what they could with what they had. It got baseball into the bay area, it just wasn't very good baseball. Maddon came in and left behind a very good team and got the Rays on the map in a sense. Kevin Cash then took that and raised that bar even higher. No it hasn't translated into a World Championship just yet, but its gotten them to a new level of consistency with this club.

Kevin Cash has been able to take what he can get out of the talent that he has and is able to find wins. It hasn't been able to translate to wins come October, except for the 2020 World Series run. He always finds a way to get done what he has to do.

During his first four years as Rays skipper, Cash missed the playoffs each time, with records of 80-82, 68-94, 82-80, 90-72. Then the better years, and playoff appearances started to roll in. The next years saw wins totals on 96, 40 (covid shortened year), 100, 86, and 99. The only downside is the last two years have been playoff appearances, but no wins in October. That's bound to change at some point.

Cash had done some pretty great things for baseball in the Tampa Bay area, and more is on the way.

No comments:

Post a Comment