ST. PETERSBURG -- Erik Neander still feels the Rays are better off going forward with the trades they made at the July deadline in terms of managing their 2025 payroll and talent to stock the roster in future seasons.
But after watching his team stay in the playoff race until the final week, and the Royals and Tigers earn American League wild-card spots with a reasonably attainable 86 wins, Neander acknowledged Friday that he, too, has wondered what might have happened had the Rays not made the deals.
That group includes veteran first baseman Yandy Diaz, who said during the final series in Boston he thought if the team had stayed relatively intact it would have made the playoffs for a sixth straight year rather than be watching from home after an 80-82 finish.
"We recognize some of the moves made at this deadline were more future-oriented than present, and that was going to make it a little bit more difficult," Neander said. "At the time we made them, the AL was trending towards win totals that were much stronger than where they ended up, and the National League went the other way."
When the Rays started their deadline weekend sale in trading Randy Arozarena and Zach Eflin on July 26, they were 52-51 and four games out of a playoff spot. They soon after traded Isaac Paredes, Jason Adam, Amed Rosario and Shawn Armstrong.
"You can play some 'what-if' games," Neander said. "I think the reality is, we all watched this team for a while and it just really struggled to get its footing.
"Had we doubled down and ran it out to see what would have happened, we would have been under some greater financial pressure this offseason, and the returns and what we could have done with our roster to better position us for the future would have likely been much weaker."
In shaving about $45 million in 2025 salary with the July deals, the Rays will enter 2025 with about an $80 million payroll and some flexibility to make additions. They also boosted their farm system to a No. 1 ranking by adding more than a dozen players, 10 of whom are ranked among their top 30 prospects by mlb.com.
But since what the Rays didn't do is win a World Series, everything they did (as with any other year that ends that way) is fair to be questioned.
"We had to make the decision that was best for us at the time and feel good about it," Neander said. "But, yeah, would love to go back and walk through a few different doors and see how that would have played out by comparison. Because, ultimately, we didn't win a championship."
Here are three other talking points from Neander's season wrap-up media session:
On retaining hitting coach Chad Mottola, and the rest of manager Kevin Cash's staff, after the worst offensive season in franchise history:
Citing principal owner Stuart Sternberg's philosophy of valuing continuity as long as there isn't complacency, Neander said he puts more stock in the work Mottola has done since being promoted in September 2016 than in what happened this season.
"If you have the right people going through the frustrating experiences that we went through this year, you can make a lot of it. You can find a lot of ways to get better. If you're tested that way, things don't go the way you want, you can rally around that. You can get incentivized to check and investigate some things you might not otherwise have done," Neander said.
"We have the right people. I believe that. Chad Mottola didn't coach the hitters any differently this year than he did last year (when they had a record good season) or the year before or the year before. It's gone (up and down). He's not kind of deciding to coach this way one year and this way the next year, though if he is I look forward to next year and getting back on the other side.
"We have great people, and there's only so much, I think, you can control," Neander continued. "As long as we're learning, we're growing, we're challenging each other and doing that productively, then we want to keep going about it with the group we have to ultimately find a way to that championship."
On solving the nearly annual quest for a catcher:
After Rene Pinto, Ben Rortvedt, Alex Jackson, Rob Brantly and Logan Driscoll combined for the second-worst offensive numbers of any catching group (.194 average, .593 OPS), Neander said "we've got to find a way" to improve production, and doing so will "be a priority" this winter. With plans to retain the lefty-swinging Rortvedt, that means looking for a right-handed hitter.
But with a limited number of impact catchers in the game and few available, they hope their longer-term solution is already in-house in Dom Keegan, who likely will open 2025 at Triple-A Durham and could be an option later in the season.
Keegan, 24, is a 2022 fourth-round pick from Vanderbilt who hit .285 with nine homers and an .806 OPS on their prospect laden Double-A team.
"Someone we're pretty excited about," Neander said, noting Keegan "hits the ball as hard as anyone in our organization ... does a lot of things really well and has the intangibles for the position."
He's also someone they think can be the answer for a while.
"Historically, or at least within the last decade, you look around the league at the catchers that really take hold of that position, they kind of come out of nowhere, right? They're not usually that famous," Neander said.
"You look back, and they share a lot of attributes of someone like Dom and what he has, doing a lot of things well, and all of a sudden you wake up and, boom, they're in the big leagues and they're contributing. I think he really has a chance to be that type of contributor. But don't want to put too much on him too soon at the same time."
On reasons to think they don't need to do much this offseason to get back to the playoffs:
In addition to adding a catcher, Neander said the Rays will look for other ways to boost their anemic offense and, specifically, improve their hitting with runners in scoring position. But he also said they have most of what they need -- "the bones of a very, very competitive team" -- to return to contention.
"The pitching is intact, we're bringing everyone back healthy, (two-time All-Star Shane) McClanahan back healthy," Neander said. "(Junior) Caminero, getting his feet wet, and candidly doing a lot better than most rookies in their first 100-120 at-bats that we saw this year. (Jonathan) Aranda taking a step forward. Josh Lowe is better than what he showed.
"Chris Morel was a 30-homers-per-162-games hitter until he got to us (in a July trade from the Cubs), and he wasn't. He's 25 years old; I think the desire to do a really good job might have caught up with him and made things difficult ... We're going to need to find a way to score more runs, and that'll be a lot of our focus this offseason, but I don't think we're terribly far off by any means."
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