Ownership group partner comes to defense of Rays' Stuart Sternberg

A longtime partner in the Rays ownership group has come to Stuart Sternberg’s defense, saying that the embattled principal owner is being unfairly criticized, and that he remains interested in retaining ownership of the team and getting a new stadium built in St. Petersburg.

Randy Frankel said he felt the need to speak out — unprompted — given the public discourse about his 30-plus-year friend and colleague, who led the group that took over the team in October 2005.

“The more and more I’m reading about Stu and the momentum, the groundswell, of how much dislike there is for him, how he should sell the team and move on, that he’s a terrible owner, that (A’s owner John) Fisher is even better than him, I just can’t sit on my hands anymore. I just really can’t. I have to just say something,” Frankel said.

“I’ve known Stu 30-plus years, and this is not the Stu that I know.”

Frankel praised Sternberg’s personality traits (family man, tireless worker), the culture he created within the Rays organization (evidenced by the number of long-term employees) and remarkable onfield success under his innovations and stewardship (with nine trips to the playoffs in his 19 seasons).

“Stu couldn’t be a more straightforward guy that just always wants to do the right thing,” Frankel said. “That’s who he is. That’s his business.”

It is Sternberg’s recent business dealings that sparked the outcry of criticism and calls from some fans and area leaders for him to sell, most notably when he announced, via social media, on March 13 that the team was not going ahead with the previously signed and celebrated deal to build a new stadium adjacent to Tropicana Field.

St. Petersburg and Pinellas County leaders felt he had bailed on them, with Mayor Kenneth Welch saying “that bridge has been burned.”

Frankel said that was not the case, that the impact of hurricanes Helene and Milton changed the financial structure of the deal and that Sternberg “really, really is the biggest advocate” for St. Petersburg.

“He took the pie in the face from pretty much everybody,” Frankel said. “If the hurricanes don’t happen, it’s extremely likely there’s a construction site going on in the parking lot across the street (from Tropicana Field) right now, and the stadium would have been going up. Love it, like it or whatever, that would have been what happened.

“He had no intention of not building that stadium, but when you have two major hurricanes that hit, there’s many different things that happen.”

Without citing numbers, Frankel said there were considerable cost increases. But he also said team is not giving up on the project and that Sternberg would “be a good listener” if the county and city were willing to re-engage on the stadium issue.

“It’s coming back to the table and saying this is not me not wanting to do something, this is me wanting to do something. But we did have two major hurricanes. Insurance is through the roof. Building codes are stricter. Things are way more expensive. Let’s see if it really makes sense for all of us to sit down and figure this out,” Frankel said. “So that’s where he’s at.”

Frankel, part of an ownership group that usually leaves all public comments to Sternberg, said he is most baffled by the calls for a sale.

“I don’t think he really wants to sell the team, I think he would like to have some type of closure (on the stadium situation),” Frankel said. “I think he’d like to try to see what could come about in a really good way, in the St Pete-Tampa Bay area. I think he would like to do that.”

Similar to what team president Matt Silverman recently told WDAE radio, Frankel said the team “is not actively for sale.”

But he also didn’t rule out the possibility if “a real buyer” surfaces.

“If somebody else comes along who’s in a better position to make (a stadium) happen, and Stu feels that it’s the right person, the right price and the timing is right, he may come to us and say, ‘I’d like to sell the team.’ He’s our managing partner, and we would go along.”

Frankel said he goes back to the 2005 event when he and four other original investors flanked Sternberg when he was introduced as the new principal owner of a team that had won only as many as 70 games once in eight seasons under original owner Vince Naimoli.

“If I was to say to everybody in that room and every Rays fan that over the next 20 years, this team will still be playing in St Pete, it will go to the postseason nine times and go to two World Series, every single person would have held their hand up and said, ‘Oh, my God, where do we sign up for that?’ … And it actually happened.”

Frankel said Sternberg deserves much of the credit, noting not just the results but how they got there under his stewardship, with an organizational methodology, culture and philosophy that has been praised, copied and pilfered (with many top executives and coaches hired away by other teams) as prime evidence of his success.

“The culture that he’s built has been just unbelievable,” Frankel said. “When you look at the way he has figured out how to win baseball games, the amount of blood and sweat that guy has left on the field just figuring things out, it’s Moneyball 2.0 that nobody really understands. For this team since we’ve owned it to go to the postseason nine times and the World Series twice, is just absolutely crazy. It really, really is. …

“I’d put him up there as one of the best owners ever in any sport out there. If we win a World Series, he should be in the Hall of Fame.”

• • •

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