On Tuesday night, the Tampa Bay Rays beat the Pittsburgh Pirates 4-2 thanks to eight scoreless innings from Alex Cobb and a 10th-inning rally keyed by two recent additions.
The win continued a strong month for the Rays, improving them to 41-38 on the season, three games back of the first-place Red Sox in the AL East. If it weren’t far too early to peek at the wild-card standings, we’d note that Tampa virtually tied with Minnesota for the final American League playoff spot. For a team widely pegged as one of the AL’s worst entering the season, Tampa is in solid position.
But that might be underselling the Rays. Based on their run differential, they should be a game better than they are. And based on Fangraphs’ BaseRuns formula—which estimates how many runs a team should score and allow based on its underlying statistics—they should be 44-35, seventh best in baseball and fourth best in the American League. The Rays aren’t lucky to be 41-38, they’re actually unlucky to be 41-38.
For years, the Rays have been built around their young pitching rotation, but in 2017 it’s been the offense that has carried them. Despite playing home games in a pitcher-friendly park, the Rays rank eighth in baseball in runs scored per game, behind offensive powerhouses like the Astros, Yankees, Dodgers and Diamondbacks. Three Rays players rank in the top 15 in the AL in wRC+, and none is a household name: Logan Morrison with his unexpectedly excellent.251/.358/.569 slash line; Steven Souza Jr., who’s right behind at .264/.370/.483; and surprise MVP candidate Corey Dickerson, who ranks third in the AL in batting average and slugging, fourth in OPS and 10th in home runs.
All three of Tampa’s out-of-nowhere heroes took circuitous routes to potential All-Stardom. Souza arrived in December 2014 in a trade that sent Wil Myers to the Padres and Trea Turner and Joe Ross to the Nationals. A deal that once looked like an embarrassing misstep is now paying substantial dividends (even if the Rays would certainly still prefer Turner). Dickerson showed up just over a year later, acquired from the Rockies in exchange for Jake McGee and German Marquez. The trade earned applause at the time, but after Dickerson’s disappointing 2016, many people wrote off the outfielder’s early-career success as a Coors Field mirage. As for Morrison, the Rays signed him for pennies last offseason. After a career spent as one-dimensional slugger who wasn’t even all that good at slugging, he’s currently being paid $2.5 million to be one of the best hitters in the game.
Maybe Tampa should expect some regression from Dickerson, Morrison and Souza, but other parts of the team’s roster could make up for it. Evan Longoria has stayed healthy but hasn’t really hit yet. Defensive whiz Kevin Kiermaier has spent time on the disabled list. And a promising starting rotation hasn’t quite lived up to its potential, due to injuries, bad luck and plain poor performance. If Chris Archer’s ERA (3.88) begins to resemble his FIP (2.88), while Cobb and Jake Odorizzi pitch as they’re capable, the rotation could be the elite unit many people expected it to be.
And given the Rays’ position in the standings, they’re more likely to add pieces than to give them up. In fact, in the last week they’ve added two players who could fortify their weaknesses. On Saturday, they watched catcher Wilson Ramos, fully recovered from ACL surgery, make his season debut. Then on Tuesday they snagged Adeiny Hechavarria from the Marlins, giving them another option at shortstop if late-blooming Tim Beckham slips from his solid first-half play.
Neither Ramos nor Hechavarria will turn Tampa into a juggernaut, but both (and especially Ramos, who broke out with a huge offensive season last year) should help at the margins. Already, the Rays’ two extra-inning runs Tuesday came via a fielder’s choice off the bat off Ramos (aided by an error) and via a sacrifice fly from Hechavarria. Tampa could still use a mid-rotation starting pitcher and a reliever to bolster an iffy bullpen, but this roster has fewer holes than it did a week ago—and could have even fewer by July 31.
If you were predicting the American League playoff field right now, you’d consider the Red Sox and Astros to be locks, the Indians to be a pretty sure thing, the Yankees to be in good shape and then… why not the Rays?
Great read!