April 12, 2023

By Mark Whicker

Canadian Baseball Network

The questions used to be a tribute to the Tampa Bay Rays.

How are they doing this? How are the paupers competing with and, in fact, beating the princes? How do they turn water into wine, or Boone’s Farm into Dom Perignon?

Now those questions are getting tiresome and maybe a little bit insulting. The Rays have been a viable major league team since 2008, when they went to their first World Series. How do you think they’re doing this? They’re good, that’s how.

This year they’re very good, at least so far. At this writing, they have won their first 11 games. No one has done that since the 1987 Brewers (who didn’t win their division) and the 1982 Braves (who did). Both those teams began 13-0. You can legitimately say the Rays are 2-0 against major league competition, since they began by romping through the flower beds that constitute the Tigers, Nationals and Athletics, but it isn’t their fault that they can maximize resources in a way those also-rans can’t.

The Rays begin this season 28th among 30 teams in payroll. In every season but one since 2008, they’ve been 25th or lower.

Besides, you can’t win unless you beat your little brothers, and Tampa Bay has been merciless. They won 10 of those games by four-run margins or more, and had a run differential of plus-63. Their ERA was 1.73, their team WHIP was a ridiculous 0.930, and they had hit 29 home runs, or 11 more than the Orioles, who ranked second in the AL. Their batting average was .283 and their OPS was .945.

Of course it’s early. If this were the Masters tournament we’d be on the fifth hole on Thursday. But this should be the fifth consecutive winning season, and playoff season, for Tampa Bay. They never had won more than 70 games through 2007, and since 2008 they have only once failed to win 80. That’s eight playoff appearances in that span.

There is no secret here. Just quality scouting and development, with an emphasis on young, power arms, and a staunch refusal to get attached to any of their heroes, lest they start qualifying for big money.

The 2020 Rays were in the World Series, you’ll recall, and Blake Snell was threatening to pitch them into Game 7 when manager Kevin Cash went to the mound. Across the diamond, the Dodgers’ Mookie Betts smiled at manager Dave Roberts. They knew Cash had liberated them, and they went ahead and won Game 6 and the championship.

There was only one 30-year-old in the Rays’ everyday lineup. That was the popular centre fielder Kevin Kiermaier, who is now scaling walls and hitting homers in Toronto. Only Yandy Diaz, Randy Arozarena, Brandon Lowe and Manuel Margot are still around. Other young players like Nathaniel Lowe, Austin Meadows and Willy Adames have been sent elsewhere.

Most of the pitching staff has turned over, too. Snell is in San Diego. Tyler Glasnow is coming back from injury. Relievers Nick Thompson and Pete Fairbanks remain, and Jalen Beeks, who has 12 appearances in the COVID-shortened season, is in the rotation. But only six current Rays have contracts beyond 2024, and the only truly long-term commitment has gone to shortstop Wander Franco, who signed an 11-year, $182 million deal through 2032. That’s a lot, but it looks frugal and shrewd next to the money pots that were given to Trea Turner, Xander Bogaerts and Carlos Correa in the offseason. The Philadelphia Phillies will pay Turner over $27 million when he is 40. Franco gets to the end of his deal before his 32nd birthday.

So far, Franco has four home runs and is hitting .311 with a 1.021 OPS in 12 games.

Isaac Paredes is hitting .314 for the Rays. Last year he hit .205 but homered 20 times. They thought enough of him to send Meadows to Detroit in exchange. Paredes is 24.

Then there’s Harold Ramirez, a 28-year-old Colombian who is on his sixth major league team. He was signed by Pittsburgh, slipped through the hands of the Blue Jays and the Tigers, and came to Tampa Bay from Cleveland in exchange for Alberto Quiroz. Ramirez hit .300 last year and has an OPS of .974 this year. So what if he looks like a hydrant, at 5-foot-10 and 232 pounds? The Rays see players and ask why not, a lot more often than why.

A couple of years ago Tampa Bay sent Adames to Milwaukee, a move that energized the Brewers. With Franco coming, it made sense for Tampa Bay, especially when they got Drew Rasmussen, an Oregon Stater who went 11-7 last season and has given up three hits in 13 innings this year.

Jeffrey Springs was a 30th round draft pick by Texas in 2015, from Appalachian State. The Rangers eventually sent him to Boston. The Red Sox packed him off to Tampa in a trade involving four minor leaguers. Do you think the Sox could use Springs now? The lefty is 16-6 in his Tampa Bay career and has allowed three hits and four walks in 13 scoreless innings this year. The Rays signed him up for $31 million, a four-year deal that expires at the end of 2026.

Reliever Jason Adam was drafted by Kansas City 13 years ago. Tampa Bay is his seventh team, and yet he pitched his way into Team USA in the World Baseball Classic.

There are some teams that aren’t fully aware of what lies within their own farm systems. The Rays know exactly what they have, but the key is that they know what you have, too. Guard it with your life.

So the baseball world knows the Rays, all too well. When will Tampa Bay make their acquaintance?

Only twice in the existence of this franchise, which began in 1998, have the Rays ranked in the top 10 in AL attendance. This year they’re averaging 17,306 so far, which would be their best number since 2014, but it’s skewed by the Opening Day crowd. The Rays traditionally have good TV ratings, but the people have a list of stay-at-home excuses that’s longer than a CVS receipt.

The most common is the park’s location in downtown St. Petersburg, across a causeway from Tampa and points East. In January, plans were announced for a new facility, but it will be in St. Petersburg too. The target date is 2028, just after the current lease in Tropicana Field expires.

There are several places that would embrace the breath out of a franchise like the Rays. One is Las Vegas, which is flirting seriously with the Athletics. Nashville, Portland and Montreal are in the same category. Baseball would much rather solve the stadium problems of the Rays and A’s and then put two new expansion franchises in the available cities, because of the massive cash that comes from expansion fees. But the Rays’ players deserve to have people in their seats who aren’t merely coming to support the visiting Yankees and Red Sox.

The Rays play the Boston Red Sox Wednesday, have Thursday off and could arrive at the Rogers Centre with a 12-0 record.

The Rays aren’t the only interesting April development, however.

– Pittsburgh’s Bryan Reynolds has driven in 14 runs in 11 games and is hitting .356. He is a career .283 hitter who would round out a lot of contending rosters, but he’s still in Pittsburgh, after he asked for a trade. The Bucs offered him $80 million over six years, and he countered with $134 million over eight. Anyone who makes such a commitment to hopelessness deserves to be heard, but right now Reynolds is in limbo and seems to thrive there. The Bucs obviously are hoping they can squeeze a team at the trade deadline, in hopes of getting more quality players they will eventually lose. Their surprising start was blunted by Oneil Cruz’s broken ankle, sidelining the exciting shortstop for four months or so.

– The Angels are getting predictable thrills from Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout, but it’s unclear whether they can get enough from the other 23 players to contend. Anthony Rendon is in the fourth year of a seven-year, $245 million pact. He has 396 at-bats since the 2021 season began, total. Rendon did put together a consecutive-game streak of two, on April 8 and 9, but it ended on the 10th. Cal Ripken can relax for now.

– The bottomless St. Louis farm system might have topped itself by producing Jordan Walker, a first-round pick in 2020 from Decatur, Ga., who is hitting .326 in his debut season. Beyond that, Walker has hit safely in each of his first 12 games. No 20-year-old has begun a career like that since (hats off, eyes closed) Ted Williams in 1939. Williams led the AL with 145 runs that season and hit .327. Nobody’s asking Walker to do that, but he has a clear idea up there. Ten of his 14 hits are singles, but he has two doubles and the other two are home runs, and at 6-foot-6 and 250 he can expect to light up Statcast for years. Now, can Walker and the Cardinals’ other homegrown kids join Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado in overcoming their own pitching staff?