I keep chuckling at the people who feel so compelled to tell us that Chaim Bloom wasn't all that great as a front-office baseball executive at Tampa Bay because the Rays never won a World Series .... Oh ... in this video, I try to explain why the Rays did such a sensational job of winning with an average annual budget that ranked 27th among 30 teams over a 13-year period. And the Rays were frequently 28th, 29th or 30th in the rankings. They were also near the bottom each year in home attendance.

What would you say if I reminded everyone that the Rays won as many pennants (2) as the Cardinals (2) during Bloom's primary seasons at Tampa Bay. What will you say when I tell you that the Rays -- with Bloom playing a critical role -- drafted and developed and built rosters that put the Rays in more World Series (2) than the financial-behemoth Yankees (1) from 2008 through 2020? What Bloom and his front-office associates did in Tampa was a baseball miracle -- a team shouldn't be this good when operating at a severe financial disadvantage in the MLB spending wars.

And I'll show you how the Cardinals have been the opposite of that -- winning only 25 more regular-season games than the Rays over 13 seasons despite out-spending Tampa Bay by more than $700 million in payroll.