Tampa Bay aims to improve amazing turnaround of 2008

PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla. — Every downtrodden team in baseball harbors secret — or not-so-secret — hopes of being the Tampa Bay Rays of 2009.

The Mariners, for instance, would love to replicate the Rays' stunning feat of transforming from a 96-loss, last-place team in 2007 to a 97-win, first-place team in 2008.

Tampa Bay's effervescent manager, Joe Maddon, has a candidate to be this year's Rays. Sorry, but it's not his longtime buddy Don Wakamatsu's 101-loss Seattle ballclub.

"I'd like it to be the Rays again," Maddon said.

That may sound greedy. After all, Tampa Bay not only won the rugged American League East by two games over Boston and eight over the Yankees, but it dispatched the White Sox and Red Sox in the postseason to become one of the more improbable World Series teams in recent memory.

And therein lies the rub. As many wonderful and unexpected things that happened to the Rays in '09, their final memory was bitter: a five-game loss to the Phillies in the World Series.

"There's three games we didn't win at the end of the year," Maddon said Saturday at the Rays' new spring complex here, the refurbished former home of the Texas Rangers

"I often talked to our guys about what we have to do in order to play the last game of the year," he added. "But what I failed to do, and what I'll do this year, is say we have to do all these different things to play the last game of the year ... and win it."

Last year, Maddon came up with a spring-training slogan to galvanize the team: 9 = 8. It meant that nine players playing hard for nine innings equated to being one of eight teams in the playoffs.

Maddon also told his players that they could win nine more games than the previous year via improved offense, nine via improved defense, and nine via improved pitching.

Actually, he sold them short. The Rays won 31 more games, not 27.

Last week, Maddon unveiled this year's rallying cry. Keeping the same numerical theme, the new slogan is: 09 > 08. That is, 2009 is greater than 2008, translated to mean that this season will end better than last season. The obvious implication: with a World Series title this time.

And the Rays are buying into it, just as they did last year.

"Last year in camp, we casually spoke about imperatives, and tried to brand ourselves with rhetoric. We're doing the same thing this year, but we have the precedent of it working last year," said Fernando Perez, the Rays' Columbia-educated outfielder.

"When we were talking about ideas, throwing the 9 equals 8 out there, these mental pointers, it seemed maybe a little abstract. Now it's really taken hold."

The obvious difference, as outfielder B.J. Upton pointed out, "This year, we have a target on our back. I think you embrace it. We've been at the bottom shooting for the top for so long, and now we're at the top with people gunning for us. That's exactly what we wanted."

Yet the Rays are still managing, somehow, to cast themselves in the underdog role, a conceit that is aided by the undeniable fact that most outside attention remains on the division's glory duo, the Yankees and Red Sox.

"Most people are picking us to finish third, and that fuels those guys," said Andrew Friedman, the Rays' head of baseball operations. "It just continues that 'us against the world mentality' we had last year."

Rays pitcher Scott Kazmir was one of the earliest to buy into Maddon's group-speak last year. On the first day of camp, he told reporters that the team's goal was to be playing in October.

Even though most analysts thought the Rays were a team on the rise, it still seemed a preposterous notion to consider making the entire jump from last into the postseason. Especially having to leapfrog the Yankees or Red Sox — let alone both of them.

"Everything just came together instantly," Kazmir said. "We knew a month into the season we had something, and we were going to take advantage of it."

The result was an exhilarating run that turned previously dormant Tampa Bay into a baseball hotbed. Kazmir noted that he now sees Rays memorabilia everywhere he turns around town. In past years?

"Oh, before they wouldn't even know who we were," he said. "They'd say, 'Rays? What is that, a soccer team?' Now we're getting a little bit of notoriety."

With an eye on getting the ultimate recognition.

The Rays have added one big bat in Pat Burrell, and supporting players like outfielders Matt Joyce and Gabe Kapler, and relievers Joe Nelson, Brian Shouse and, signed Saturday, Jason Isringhausen.

Last year's breakout star, third baseman Evan Longoria, will be around from Day 1 this time, while lefty David Price, a potential ace, will be in the rotation at some point, though perhaps not at the beginning of the season.

This is a team that firmly believes in itself, with or without Maddon's slogans.

"Instead of focusing on the fact we were there, we're focusing on how we got there," said first baseman Carlos Pena. "And how to make sure we maintain that. Reinforce that process.

"Call us crazy, but we were pretty confident last year. That's why I think it's incredibly important to first see it in your mind's eye, and believe it. People say, 'Well, I have to see it to believe it.' For us, we have to believe it to see it."

Larry Stone: 206-464-3146 or lstone@seattletimes.com