@EasyAce
See?
I'm having trouble here because IMO, it's not the stadium.
@DCPatriot With the Marlins it wasn't the stadium, though Joe Robbie Stadium wasn't exactly ideal for baseball. With the Rays, it's been the stadium from the word go.
You indicated earlier..both owners immediately dismantled championship teams, and "Fool me once....".
Evidently, it's a philosophy from the top. Use Money Ball analytics put together a group of kids that like one another.
Using analytics is one thing (the Huizenga Marlins didn't; neither, really, did the Loria Fish), but unless you have the talent all the analytics in the world won't help. Those who consider Casey Stengel an inadvertent forebear of analytics will cite often, as I do, his saying,
Baseball is percentage plus execution. (Think, too,
of Branch Rickey: it only begins with,
Luck is the residue of design.)
Look at the Astros. They're six fathoms deep in analytics, and their players are one and all on board with it, even Justin Verlander who embraced it the moment he became an Astro.
And it wouldn't mean a thing if they didn't or couldn't
execute.
Percentage
plus execution is the Astros, to name one. Percentage
minus execution is bountiful, alas.
But SCREW paying any one position player 'Top-Ten' $$$ when with hard work and a little luck...see Juan Soto.
Soto is an outsize talent whom the Nats were sharp enough to draft. And he's going to get his money soon enough: he becomes arbitration eligible in 2022 and a free agent for the first time in 2025. Unless something unforeseen happens, he won't stay cheap very long.
There's the other drawback: not all teams draft
smart, whether rich or poor teams. The Nats drafted smart with Soto. And you don't even need the number one pick to draft smart. Reference, among others:
Mike Piazza---drafted in the 62nd round; Hall of Famer.
Albert Pujols---402nd pick overall; future Hall of Famer. (Even his injury-compromised Angels tenure won't keep him out of Cooperstown.)
Ryne Sandberg---20th round, 511th pick overall; Hall of Famer.
Keith Hernandez---785th overall; round 42nd round; arguable greatest defensive first baseman ever. (Only first baseman to win more than nine Gold Gloves, too.) Might have been a Hall of Famer if injuries didn't start grinding him down in 1986-87.
John Smoltz---22nd round; 574th overall; Hall of Famer.
Mike Trout---25th pick overall (people still wonder how he lasted
that long in his draft); Hall of Famer in the making. (If his career somehow ended after next year, he'd go into Cooperstown in a walk five years later.)