McRae, 57, was relieved of his managerial duties following a dismal 55-106 campaign, the worst in the five-year history of the franchise, but not fired.
Instead, he agreed to become assistant to the general manager through 2004.
"I'm not making him a scapegoat," Devil Rays general manager Chuck LaMar said. "I think he could've won more games with better talent."
Hal McRae is no longer manager, but rather assistant to the GM.(AP Photo)
McRae is the third MLB manager jettisoned in two days, joining Bruce Kimm of the Chicago Cubs and Luis Pujols of the Detroit Tigers.
The Tigers and Devil Rays shared the worst record in MLB this year.
"On most nights, when he took the field, he was outmanned," said LaMar, who reportedly trimmed Tampa Bay's player payroll to $34 million US in 2002.
"I'll go on record as saying this organization has never made excuses about payroll, about ownership moves or any of these types of things, especially Chuck LaMar. I'm responsible for the personnel on the field and the personnel right now isn't good enough to win as many games as everybody in this organization would like.
"It's getting better, we're going to get the job done. But no excuses have ever been made by me or anybody else."
Tampa Bay has lost at least 90 games in every season of its existence, including 100-plus in each of the last two.
"We just don't have a very good team and there's nothing he can do about it," Devil Rays outfielder Ben Grieve said. " You could put any manager in the major leagues on our team and we would have lost 100 games."
McRae first served as Devil Rays bench coach before replacing the fired Larry Rothschild on April 18, 2001.
He skippered Tampa Bay to a 58-90 record over the remainder of the 2001 season.
As a manager, McRae is 399-473 over six seasons with the Kansas City Royals and Devil Rays.
With files from CP Online
