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PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla. -- No more Joe Maddon and his 8-6-7-5-3-0-9 lineup cards. No more Andrew Friedman and that constantly-revving outside-the-box motor between his earlobes. No more David Price, Ben Zobrist, Wil Myers, Jeremy Hellickson, Jose Molina and all they represented for a franchise that left a mark on its sport that went far beyond the payroll dollars it spent. But this is where we announce that the nostalgic portion of this story ends here. So tell the violin section to head home, because it would be way too easy to define the Tampa Bay Rays by who isn't around anymore. We're not doing that. And the folks who remain, after one of the most tumultuous offseasons in the history of the Rays' franchise, are definitely not doing that. "Change is good," their president of baseball operations, Matt Silverman, found himself saying Saturday, on the first day of full-squad workouts in the post-You-Know-Who era. "And change can be positive." Oh, change can also be a problem for a lot of people, in sports and in life. But Silverman has long believed that change can be something else: An opportunity.  So from the day Maddon opted out of his contract and steered his famous RV toward Chicago last fall, just a couple of weeks after Friedman headed west to run the Dodgers, Silverman and the creative minds around him have embraced that mantra:
Grab onto this opportunity and turn it into something special. "The opportunity," he said Saturday, "is to take something that's working, and has worked well, and take it to the next level." What followed, over the last few months, has been incredible to behold. First came the hiring of a new manager, refreshing 37-year-old energizer Kevin Cash. Then came the trades, one after another, seven of them in all. Out the door went Hellickson, Myers, Zobrist, Yunel Escobar, Joel Peralta, Matt Joyce, Ryan Hanigan, Sean Rodriguez and four minor leaguers. In came catcher-DH John Jaso, outfielder Steven Souza, catcher Rene Rivera, reliever Kevin Jepsen and nine prospects, imported to deepen a system that will always be this team's lifeblood. And now that it's over, even Silverman looks back and has a hard time comprehending how much turnover he'd just presided over. Let's just say he never set out to audition to be the next host of "Let's Make A Deal." "Our expectation, at the beginning of the offseason, was that we'd make some minor tweaks to the roster," he said. "But as we got going, opportunities presented themselves that led to more significant changes than we'd expected." Yeah, apparently. So the Rays will head into this season with a new double-play combination (free-agent signee Asdrubal Cabrera and TBD), a new catching tandem (Rivera and TBD), a new left-fielder (Souza) and a new DH (Jaso). Pitcher Alex Cobb used the word "overhaul" to describe it Saturday. And it's hard to argue. But no change looms larger for this franchise than the changes at the top, where Friedman and Maddon had turned into baseball rock stars in their nine spectacular seasons together. At least the transition from Friedman to Silverman, who had spent the previous nine years as team president working alongside the same front office he inherits in his new job, was relatively seamless. But when Maddon abruptly left for the Cubs, after exercising an opt-out clause which almost no one in baseball knew he had, his exit rocked the franchise like a hurricane, at least initially.  "We wanted Joe Maddon as our manager," Silverman said. "And we tried to sign him to an extension. When he made his decision, it created an opportunity, but not one we were necessarily seeking. In any situation, it's what you make of it. And we took it as an opportunity to start fresh, with a new chapter of Rays baseball. We did an exhaustive search for a manager, and found someone we think is the perfect guy."
Kevin Cash won't be Joe Maddon. And won't try to be. And knows he should never try to be. He came marching into spring training with no team slogans, no medicine men and no clubhouse animal acts. And that won't change, no matter how long he manages. In the first team speech of Cash's managerial career Saturday, he told his team, simply: "Today is the first day to start creating the identity of our club." And out there in his clubhouse he found a group more than ready to help him do that. "We have an opportunity now to create our own identity," said Cobb, now emerging as the leader of this pitching staff in his fourth full season. "This team has just had this label for the past seven or eight years, of a specific way of doing things. And that's a great identity to have. But I think we have an opportunity to create a new identity for ourselves, and really embrace the underdog role that we have right now." As much as the players in this team's clubhouse loved Joe Maddon, they seem invigorated by the thought of trying to win with a slightly different style. Cobb laughingly described the new regime as "trying to bring back more normal baseball." And he said it in a way that clearly wasn't meant to be derogatory. "The old way was great," he said. "But we don't have that anymore. That's not an option for us, to have that anymore. It's gone. Those guys are gone. So we can either be lost, or we can create our own identity." And one thing that makes these guys different, as they search for that identity, is that they are making it together. Silverman consulted with a number of veteran players before hiring Cash as the manager. Cash said Saturday he'll meet with a core group of players to help devise a new set of team rules that everyone can live with. And it's safe to say that Leo Durocher and Gene Mauch never did it this way. So the former faces of the franchise may be gone, "but the core values and the culture remains," Silverman said Saturday. "And that culture is strong." Maybe the new Rays won't be as wild and wacky as the old Rays. They won't be dressing up in Woodstock outfits on the way to the airport. They won't find penguins waddling around their clubhouse. And their days of using four-man outfields and six-man infields are probably over, too. But in truth, as we've already seen this spring, the Tampa Bay Rays are going to be just fine, because as always, they get it. When other folks see their window slamming, they see opportunity knocking.
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