Rays Payroll Dropping, Repeats Sternberg

It's a chorus he first sang last December, but Rays' principal owner Stu Sternberg repeated Tuesday that the team's payroll will drop below $70 million next season, regardless of their playoff outcome this year. He also told the St. Petersburg Times that the team "won't come close to turning a profit this year," a statement that will face a little bit of extra scrutiny coming on the heels of a Times editorial urging the team to reveal its full financials in good faith in stadium discussions.

But while the comment boards rail Sternberg for adding more fuel to the fire in the stadium saga, Times columnist John Romano writes that Sternberg showed a bit of humility when asked about his decision to cut payroll next year:

"(Being less competitive and impressive hurts me) worse than it hurts anybody else," he said. "It's who we are; it's who we have to be. We took every shot we could at not having to have this happen. Along with the great fortune in 2008, along with what looks to be great fortune this year, we put everything in place to have it happen, to put us in a position so we'd be able to keep adding, keep signing, (doing) more long-term deals, stuff like that. It wasn't meant to be."

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