The Tampa Bay Rays announced Wednesday that they have agreed to contract extensions with both manager Kevin Cash and president of baseball operations Erik Neander, keeping the longest-running front office and field duo together for the foreseeable future.
The best is yet to come. pic.twitter.com/rziCaSRjTU
— Tampa Bay Rays (@RaysBaseball) February 8, 2024
“I believe there are none better in baseball,” Rays principal owner Stuart Sternberg said in a statement. “What we’ve all accomplished together has been remarkable, and the best is yet to come.”
The team did not release details on either deal, but Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times reports that the extensions would keep both Cash and Neander under contract with the club through the end of the Rays use agreement of Tropicana Field and into the start of play in a new stadium at the site.
Cash, who turned 46 in December, is already the longest tenured manager with his team in all of Major League Baseball as he enters his tenth season with the club. Taking over for Joe Maddon, who left to become manager of the Chicago Cubs after the 2014 season, he has gone 739-617 over nine years with the team for a .545 winning percentage. He is 15 wins behind Maddon for the most by a manager in franchise history, and has led the team to the postseason in each of its last five seasons, including a run to the 2020 World Series and a pair of American League East division titles. He won back-to-back American League Manager of the Year titles in 2020 and 2021, and was a finalist for the prize in 2018, 2019, and 2023.
Neander has gone from an intern in 2007 all the way to heading the baseball operations department, taking over as president of baseball operations in 2021. He became vice president of baseball operations in 2014 when Andrew Friedman left for the Los Angeles Dodgers and added the general manager title in 2016.
Steve Carney is the founder and publisher of St. Pete Nine. One of the people most associated with baseball coverage in Tampa Bay, he spent 13 seasons covering the Rays for flagship radio station WDAE, first as producer of Rays Radio broadcasts, then as beat reporter beginning in 2011. He likes new analytics and aged bourbon, and is the owner of one of the ugliest knuckleballs ever witnessed by baseball scouts.
