St. Petersburg, FL (SportsNetwork.com) - Joe Maddon's tenure as manager of the Tampa Bay Rays came to a sudden end after nine seasons when he exercised an opt-out clause in his contract on Friday.
Maddon had managed the Rays since 2006, leading them to one World Series berth while presiding over the most successful period in the franchise's 17-year history.
His exit came despite what the team described as an active bid to keep him. It followed the departure of longtime executive Andrew Friedman, who was hired by the Los Angeles Dodgers last week.
Although Maddon signed a three-year extension in 2012 that wasn't set to expire until after next season, a clause in the deal allowed him to opt out under certain circumstances, including Friedman's departure, Rays president Matthew Silverman said.
Rays owner Stuart Sternberg said in a statement that the team tried "diligently and aggressively" to sign Maddon to a third contract extension, to no avail.
Sternberg said Maddon was leaving "to explore opportunities throughout Major League Baseball" -- a decision sure to spawn conjecture that he will look to manage another team.
Silverman said during a conference call with reporters that he had "a number of conversations over the past week" with Maddon -- the last one on Friday morning, after which the team learned from Maddon's agent that the manager was opting out.
"I'm surprised by it, and disappointed," Silverman said. "I believed that Joe wanted to be the manager of the Rays long-term. That was my intention and (Sternberg's) intention and we dove head-first into discussions about an extension, but it takes two parties to reach an agreement and we weren't able to reach that agreement and that's how we got to this stage."
Silverman said he was "very comfortable" with the financial offers they made to Maddon on another extension.
"They were very generous," he said. "He listened to those and chose to opt out."
Charismatic and quotable, the bespectacled Maddon managed winning teams in six of his nine seasons with Tampa Bay, bringing success to a baseball outpost that never saw more than 70 wins in the eight years before he arrived.
Maddon, 60, took over what were then the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in 2006 and lost 197 games in his first two seasons.
In his third season, the Rays beat the blue-blood Yankees and Red Sox to win the AL East for the first time and went on to face Philadelphia in the 2008 World Series, falling in five games.
In all, Maddon managed the Rays to a 754-705 record with two division titles and four postseason berths. The Rays were 77-85 this past season, their worst record in seven years, and finished fourth in the AL East.
Silverman said the team will look inside and outside the organization for a new manager, but didn't offer any specifics about what they were looking for, only saying they hoped their search could be as fruitful as it was when they landed Maddon.
"That's as far as we've gotten in our approach," he said.
Maddon's exit came 10 days after Friedman left his post as the Rays' executive vice president of baseball operations to become the Dodgers' president.
Friedman joined the Rays in 2004 as assistant of baseball development and was named executive vice president in October 2005.
Despite the loss of two key organizational pieces, Silverman remained upbeat, at least in his comments to the media.
"We have more than 300 people in our organization who are committed to making the Rays a great source of pride for Tampa Bay. We have hundreds of players who are part of our current and future successes. I'm very optimistic about our future," Silverman said.
"Our best days are ahead of us both on the field and off the field and I'm confident that we'll look back upon these weeks and recognize that our organization has grown stronger in the face of this adversity."