MILWAUKEE – The Washington Nationals are sealing their paychecks now, but Blake Butera couldn’t help but laugh at the end of the ALCS.
For a decade, Butera was a Tampa Bay Ray. He was drafted by the organization in 2015, the 35th-rounder, the 1,048th pick. When it became clear in spring training of 2017 that the 5-9 foot, 175-pound infielder was not going to play big league ball, the Rays asked Butera to coach. He was released and hired on the same day in the same meeting.
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Still in his prime, Butera climbed the organizational ladder, first as a small-company skipper in towns like Fishkill, New York, and Charlestown, South Carolina, then as a roving field coordinator, moving from affiliate to affiliate. At the end of 2023, Tampa Bay promoted Butera to senior director of player development, a role in which he impacted all corners of the organization.
He believed in the Rays in large part because the Rays believed in him.
Last winter, the Nationals came calling. Butera also believed and wanted to make him, at 33 years old, the youngest big-league manager in more than half a century.
Last week, from his bed in North Carolina, Buttera was keeping the freedom to which he has dedicated most of his professional life at the threshold of the mountain.
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While Tropicana Field erupted in cheers after the Rays’ victory in ALCS Game 6, Butera sat in relative silence as her nearly 1-year-old daughter, Blair, was held nearby. Congratulatory books to some old colleagues and friends forever, while feeling an odd combination of joy, pride, FOMO and author envy.
“It’s really hard to explain the feeling. I want these guys to win,” he told Yahoo! This week he is playing on the phone. “I have relationships with the coaches, in the front office, with the players who are there. [with the Nats]. Do you know? That’s the competitive side.”
Butera isn’t the only former radio employee who runs this story with a mixture of satisfaction and playful greed. Mainly because not only the former radio operator is now working elsewhere. Not even close.
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For the past two decades, the Rays have cut corners and existed beyond baseball. In the mid-2000s under then-GM Andrew Friedman, Tampa became one of the first organizations to fully embrace the advanced analytics that have since revolutionized the game. As part of that, Friedman popularized the use of maximum defensive shifts, a trend that became so effective that MLB eventually instituted a rule limiting the practice of the shift. Under current President of baseball operations Eric Neander in the late 2010s, the Rays became the first team to usually send out a reliever in the first inning before turning the ball over to a more traditional starter. Now, on any given night in the MLB, the “opener” is in style somewhere.
Most importantly, they’ve all been talented at winning — more wins since 2008 than any other club in baseball except the Dodgers and Yankees, in fact.
And the matter, as is often the case, was brought to a boil.
The head of five current baseball operations executives once worked for Tampa: Los Angeles’ Andrew Friedman, St. Louis’ Chaim Bloom, Miami’s Peter Bendix, head honcho Taylor Smith and Matt Arnold Milwaukee just hired their head, who will try to shake up the old club this week. Three general managers — Washington’s Ani Kilambi, Los Angeles’ Brandon Gomes and Miami’s Gabe Kapler — worked for either the Rays (or in Kapler’s case, both). Five of the current managers — Butera, Minnesota Kings Derek Shelton, Baltimore’s Craig Albernaz, Stephen Vogt and Kansas City’s Matt Quatraro Cleveland — have finished coaching or playing in Tampa’s minor-league system or with the big league club.
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This list does not even include characters such as former Astros GM James Click, former Twins captain Rocco Baldelli or World Series winning managers Davey Martinez (Nationals) and Joe Maddon (Cubs).
Many of those who follow the Tampa Bay area run with a little extra passion.
“I know how much importance and how much time and effort they’ve put into their culture. I’m very, very proud to be a small part of helping to develop and maintain that culture,” Bendix, the Marlins’ president of baseball operations after November 2023, said over the phone. “And it’s rewarding to see when things lead to positive outcomes, even though I’m no longer rooting for those positive outcomes.
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“I want the Marlins to win,” Bendix, a Rays employee from 2009 to 2023, continued. “I don’t want to win the radios or win the breweries. But I want good things for my friends. It’s happy and makes me happy to see what happened.”
National GM Ani Kilambi, who joined the radio intern in 2015 while still a student at the University of California, expressed a similar opinion.
“I have personal connections to radio people,” said the 32-year-old. “But when he said that, rooting for the Nats, baby.”
Kilambi left Tampa after 2021 and spent four seasons with the Phillies before accepting the Washington GM job last winter.
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“Every time I watch football, watching these games, I’m like, ‘God damn it, somebody’s gonna win, and I’m not happy about that,'” he said. “If the Rays win, I’ll be happy for them on a personal level. [But] I would be very sorry for what I experienced with them. It’s very hard to dissociate the personal part from my own reasons like, “Hey, I haven’t been to the top of the mountain.”
Vogt, whose Rangers were eliminated in the ALCS by the Rays, made his big league debut in Tampa back in 2012. While his motivation was much clearer and his focus was on winning the entire series with Cleveland, Vogt was still unbelievably tight-lipped about just how important his time with the Rays was.
“This is where he grew up in the game,” he said before the ALCS. “And what I’m sitting here is a lot of people who worked here or still work here who poured into me, who saw value in me and who I was and helped me become the person and player that I am. It’s going to be really fun to see a lot of those people next week. It’s really special to come back here.”
It is a special speech that many former radio users use to describe their years at the club. They talk about their Tampa days with a litt alfalcon, the way one talks about the company of college friends or senior army buddies.
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“I think we were lucky to have an honest understanding,” Bendix said. “And the longer I worked there, the more I grew to understand that it was so.”
Said Kilambi: “It was a really awesome environment to work in while challenging the status quo. We realized that it was beneficial to us against the world. … And we were lucky to have many people who believed in it.”
Craig Albernaz, now the manager of the Orioles, referred to the unique culture of collaboration and genuine interpersonal connection in Tampa. From his tenure as a minor-league coach with the Rays, Albernaz recalled a time when then-GM Andrew Friedman was casually eating dinner in the Triple-A clubhouse while chopping it up with the players.
“Thinking from there, it’s pretty comfortable for the top guy to sit there and be one of those guys and have those conversations without ever losing who it is, who’s in charge,” Albertnaz said. “Then he passed the baton to Eric Neander, who just took everything to the next level.”
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Neander, who has been running for Tampa Bay baseball since 2017, is at the center of the story. Each and every former employee who spoke to Yahoo Sports, when asked who they were thinking when catcher Liam Hicks made the final catch from the ALCS, named Neander. His people skills, his vision and his will have helped push the envelope, supporting Tampa’s tremendous success program, one initiated by Friedman. And Neander’s sustained presence, according to manager Kevin Cash, helped foster ideological continuity and cultural coherence in the front office and out of the dugout.
“People used to have money above their house at the time of spring training, picking, and everyone was called,” Albernaz recalled. “Every other team will go, and he’s made everyone very welcome — even us in the minor league.”
“Just think about it,” Twins manager Derek Shelton, the Rays’ hitting coach from 2010 to 2016 and a longtime Tampa resident, said. “The longest tenured manager, coach, and hitting coach in baseball. It’s not easy to do that.”
To be clear, none of these characters are beaming at anything else at Tropicana Field next week to waving blankets or hoarse voices cheering. They don’t paint their faces or take off the sun rays. The rights now lie elsewhere. Such is business, such is life.
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But if the Brewers overcome the Rays to win the first World Series in franchise history, many around the industry will undoubtedly feel a glow of pride.
“I felt good sitting watching the game, you know,” said Butera, who said he donated most, but not all, of his radio gear.
The Nats captain has reason to be proud. His fingers are all over this American League champion. Junior Caminero played in Low-A in 2022. He played first base for Jonathan Aranda, then 20-year-old Butera at Hudson Valley in 2018. Late-inning reliever Ian Seymour and shortstop Taylor Wall remain close with Butera. Those relationships don’t just disappear because a person changes associations.
“I see Taylor [Walls] He runs after they win, and you know, he’s all fired up,” Butera said. “It makes you feel good. Like that’s what we do right?