ST. PETERSBURG -- Less than 90 seconds into a 40-minute press conference looking back on the Rays’ season and forward to the offseason, ahead president of baseball operations Erik Neander succinctly and accurately summarized the past eight months as an “interesting, highly successful but highly disappointing season.”

Tampa Bay’s success came in the regular season. The Rays overcame injuries and a number of other issues to win 99 games, second-most in franchise history and second-most in the American League behind the AL East-winning Orioles, while boasting the club’s highest-scoring offense ever.

The disappointment came quickly after that. The Rays didn’t put up much of a fight as they were swept out of the AL Wild Card Series in two games by the Rangers, their third straight early postseason exit.

“It’s a lot of positives,” manager Kevin Cash said, “lumped in with one big negative at the end.”

So Neander sat behind a table inside the club-level Tropicana Room on Monday, flanked by Cash and Rays general manager Peter Bendix, sorting through their success and disappointment -- and what they can do to avoid the latter next year.

The Rays expected to still be playing at this point, so it’s too early for them to have charted a course for the coming offseason. That will take place in the coming weeks and months.

“Where we stand right now, going in, if we want to run this group back, we'll have the ability to do that,” Neander said. “But a lot of it will depend on what [the] other 29 teams are looking to do in addition to what we think is best for us. So, very TBD.”

Here are three more takeaways from the Rays’ season-ending press conference on Monday.

1. They’re frustrated by the way it ended, too
The Rays played two of their worst games of the year in a row last week. They just so happened to be their most important games and, as a result, their last games.

Since reaching the World Series in 2020, the Rays have lost their last three postseason series. Between Game 2 of the 2021 AL Division Series and Game 2 against the Rangers, they have dropped seven consecutive playoff games. Neander said this was “probably the most disappointing exit we’ve had,” a combination of their lofty expectations and how poorly they played.

“There's no reason to think the expectations as we move forward won't be higher than they've been,” Neander said. “We're going to figure out a way not just to get in, but again, our goal is to win that last game, to win a World Series.”

But what’s it going to take to make another deep postseason run? That answer was harder to come by.

“I don't know that there's one formula that succeeds in the postseason. I think you can even look across this year's postseason, all the Wild Card teams that got swept were all very different,” Bendix said. “It's two games, right? They're two really important games. They're the most important games of the year. It's still two games.

“And I think that we'll always continue to evaluate. What can we do better? What can we do different? Our goal is to win the World Series. So those questions are going to exist every year that we don't win the World Series.”

2. Kevin Cash isn’t going anywhere
Hall of Fame baseball writer Peter Gammons sparked some rumors regarding Cash and the Cleveland managerial job recently vacated by Terry Francona, Cash’s mentor and friend who stepped down at the end of the season.

But Cash dismissed that speculation and seemed surprised it was even a topic of conversation.

“I’m very happy here,” said Cash, who is the longest-tenured manager in the Majors with his current team following Francona’s departure. “I’m under contract here and looking forward to next year, for sure.”

Cash is signed through the end of next season with a club option for 2025. The Rays could soon consider another extension for Cash, a Tampa native who has gone 739-617 (.545) with five postseason appearances, an AL championship, two division titles and two AL Manager of the Year Awards during his nine years with Tampa Bay.

Neander praised Cash for guiding the Rays through all of their injuries and adversity, calling this year “the best job that he’s ever done here.”

3. The Wander Franco situation remains uncertain
While under investigation by Major League Baseball and authorities in the Dominican Republic, Franco has been on administrative leave since mid-August. There is no set timeline for the investigation to conclude, leaving the All-Star shortstop’s future unclear.

The Rays can’t say much of anything while an investigation is ongoing, but that uncertainty puts the front office in an awkward position as they begin shaping their roster for next season.

“We’re always preparing for multiple different things,” Bendix said. “That’s going to be true in that situation. That’s going to be true in any situation. That’s how we prepare for anything unexpected -- how we prepare for injuries, how we prepare for unexpected positive or negative performances -- is just to have a lot of different options.”