Looking Forward to 2008: Tampa Bay Rays

Those of us who recall the dying days of the Soviet Union - perestroika, the shockingly successful Lithuanian independence movement, the ecstatic rupture of the Berlin Wall - know the surprising satisfaction of an Evil Empire’s fall. (Those too young to remember the Soviet chill and the pointless atomic bomb drills in junior high school can consider the sudden downfall of Emperor Palpatine and his Galactic Empire.) Certainly, in the immediately previous years few predict its demise. Reagan’s Berlin plea to “tear down this wall” was widely panned by liberal publications, especially in skittish Europe, and the destruction of the rebel base on the ice planet Hoth looked like a death knell for rebel resistance against the Galactic Empire. Baseball's New York empire poached Jason Giambi, Johnny Damon, Roger Clemens, Randy Johnson, and other superstars from rivals, which, a the time, seemed ominous signs of the Yankees’ limitless funds and continued dominance.

Today, the Yankees are wounded (Pettitte, Matsui) and staggering (Mussina, Giambi) and have the misfortune of playing in what is still baseball’s most difficult division. To be sure, the Yankees’ talent prompts some to claim that New York's offense is on par with baseball’s best – a reach that ignores the injuries and declines that will surely beset their older players. This aging core combines with the addition of an vengeful, personality-challenged manager, the arrival of a bombastic and arrogant owner, a dangerous reliance on three rookies to stabilize the pitching staff, and the ongoing tragedy of New York’s irrational dislike of the best player in baseball, a collective rejection that has this great talent often playing tight as Scrooge McDuck. Because of all this, the Yankees have the potential to provide awesome entertainment in the legacy of the America’s Most Horrific Car Crashes-style cable series.

The Red Sox, on the other hand, have established themselves as baseball’s elite without peer, both for current and future success. The Blue Jays have been snake bit in ways that always hamstring teams with limited depth. They seemed stronger this season, but continue their unlucky run with Scott Rolen out for a month. Both teams, and especially the Sox, are likely to frustrate the Yankees all season. This year's odd team out, the Orioles, are carrion.

And then we have the Devil Rays, whose raft of early-round draft picks over its first decade of play, plus their recent delightful run of successful signings and trades, have finally (finally!) turned the team into an intriguing, youthful mixture of power-speed athleticism. Whereas in the past, the team would have been satisfied to find a hard-throwing high-school teacher or two (or, worse, Shawn Camp and Ruddy Lugo) to fill off-season needs, this year’s team has fully transformed both its traumatizing bullpen and its horrific defense. Preseason computer simulations predict the Rays have improved their pitching/defense combination by a remarkable 200 runs – a 33-win improvement based on a 6-run/win formula. (Simplistic calculation, yes, but the broader point remains.)

To accomplish this, the team practically turned over its entire starting roster. At shortstop, the Rays brought in a defensive wizard, Jason Bartlett, who replaces the overmatched Brendan Harris, creating a swing of more than 30 defensive runs alone. Akinori Iwamura moves to 2B and replaces, primarily, the defensively challenged B.J. Upton, whose speed, athletic ability and powerful arm now makes him an exciting, but unproven, option for CF. Iwamura won six Japanese Gold Gloves and was adequate at 3B for the Rays, though he did make some outstanding defensive plays. He moves in preparation for Evan Longoria who, for all the hullabaloo over his being assigned to AAA for a few weeks, will soon be established at 3B for Tampa Bay for many years. Newcomer Cliff Floyd was a defensive asset for the Cubs last season, whereas the departed Delmon Young was a strong liability. Meanwhile, incumbent Carl Crawford is one of the league’s elite outfield defenders. With the exception of the weak-hitting Bartlett, the Rays' defensive transformation maintained their offensive potential.

Meanwhile, the pitching staff also improved dramatically. In addition to Bartlett the Delmon Young trade brought in Matt Garza, whose minor league numbers were nearly identical to the Yankees’ overhyped Phil Hughes. Garza allowed a fifth of a hit per inning more than Hughes over his minor league career, and their K/9 and BB/9 rates were mirror images. Garza backs up Scott Kazmir, the reigning AL strikeout leader who has so far defied scouts' predictions that he will break down, and James Shields, another budding ace. Shields’ breakout 2007 season was one of the Rays’ biggest surprises, marred only by the Rays’ desperate bullpen problems. In Shields’ 30 starts, the bullpen allowed 6 of Shields’ inherited runners to score (a low number only because Shields was almost always replaced to start an inning), but it allowed 57 of its own runners to score, a pattern that routinely turned 4-2 leads into 6-4 losses.

Shields’ Apr. 22 start against Cleveland was especially galling. Shields had raised eyebrows with his early-season effectiveness but on this day he was masterful. By the end of the eighth, he had given up two hits, one a Jhonny Peralta homerun, against 12 strikeouts. He left with a 4-2 lead. Ninth inning arrives. Shields is replaced by Brian “Flash Fire” Stokes. HBP. Out. Walk. Single. 3-Run Home Run. Indians win.

This happened constantly, and the constant bullpen meltdowns (you would have to go back to the ‘50s to find a worse collective bullpen performance) quickly drained the energy from the season. This obscured not only Shields’ emergence but also the arrival of the Rays’ young hitters. Crawford, whose OBP reached .350 for the first time, emerged into an elite leadoff hitter. B.J. Upton’s development was faster than Crawford’s, with Upton posting a 134 OPS (including a .386 OBP) as a 22-year-old, 17 points higher than Crawford’s career high. But the man with the magic bat last season, and one of the few Devil Rays to swing out of obscurity with such speed, was Carlos Pena. Pena's minor league numbers showed patience and a talent for extra base hits. In 2002, Billy Beane snatched him from Texas, then quickly flipped him with Jeremy Bonderman to Detroit in a three-way trade that foisted Jared Weaver on the Yankees. (Oakland got Ted Lilly.) For three-plus seasons in Detroit, Pena disappointed with low batting averages and unremarkable power. After bouncing around the AL East in 2006, the phenom-turned-journeyman failed to make the Devil Rays out of spring training last year, only to be called up before Opening Day due to injury. By May, Pena was hitting .213, then U-turned to rewrite the Rays’ record book with an out-of-nowhere career year that earned him MVP votes and the AL Comeback Player of the Year Award. The 2008 season will show whether Pena is more Luis Gonzales or Brady Anderson, but he'll always be the man who took Aubrey Huff's team home run record away.

The increased competitiveness of the Rays' Major League team is backed by a pipeline of outstanding talent on the way – especially a number of pitchers who are superior to the Yankees’ touted prospects, including the overhyped Joba Chamberlain, who is so good that he can’t be trusted to start a game at the moment. An honest comparison of righties Chamberlain, Phil Hughes, and Ian Kennedy to the Rays top three pitching prospects – David Price, Wade Davis, and Jake McGee – must include the fact that Price and Davis are unhittable power lefties, and also ignores that Jeff Niemann is closer to the Show. Three years from now could find the dominant Rays pitching staff the best in baseball. Today, however, the Rays' pitchers are already better than New York's. Using Baseball Prospectus's PECOTA projections, considered the most accurate available, the outstanding Replacement Level Yankees Weblog shows the Rays allowing six runs fewer than the Yankees this season. Likewise, David Pinto used PECOTA to show that the Rays' starters, overall, project to have a lower ERA than the Yankees starters. Although the 24-year-old Kazmir might be the most experienced of Rays' 5-man rotation (which will include, in addition to Shields and Garza, young Andy Sonnanstine and either Jason Hammel or the former Future Star Edwin Jackson), all five of the projected starters are expected to have more experience in the majors than the key trio of rookie Yankees mentioned above. In the bullpen, the Yankees have the peerless Mariano Rivera, but the Rays bullpen also has more this-year potential than the rest of the Yankees', with the Rays' no-name guys like Juan Salas and Trever Miller as good as or better than the Yankees' no-name guys like Jeff Karstens and Matt DeSalvo. This assumes, of course, that key bullpen players like 38-year-olds Troy Percival and Al Reyes can hold up. A major bullpen injury for the Rays brings the whole house down.

Although the Rays’ pitching already outstrips the Yankees, the hitting still lags when compared head-to-head, though not as much as many think. At catcher, New York has a possible Hall-of-Famer in Jorge Posada. Rays catcher Dioner Navarro had his first at bat in majors at age 20, an extraordinarily young age for the position. Now 24, he has the youth and talent to improve substantially on his 70 OPS+ from 2007. Even so, he’s a dice roll. Posada is far better today but the gap could close somewhat in 2008. At first base, a Pena encore of last season would vastly outperform the plummeting Jason Giambi and his platoon partner Wilson Betemit, a utilityman who hits like one. The Yankees have a huge advantage at shortstop and third base, both of which are manned by Hall of Famers still in their primes, Bartlett's defense and Longoria's promise notwithstanding. At second base, the Yankees' Robinson Cano has become a legitimately dangerous hitter, but the jury is still out on Iwamura. Iwamura battled freak injuries last season that limited him to fewer than 500 at bats. In a full season's play, the outstanding Iwamura should meet Cano's contributions, especially when defense is taken into account. In the outfield, Crawford is better than any Yankee outfielder, showing far more speed and defensive ability than Johnny Damon, more power and contact hitting ability than the present-day Bobby Abreu, and more all-around ability than Melky Cabrera. Only the declining and injury-prone Hideki Matsui has had marginally superior hitting numbers to Crawford's 2008, but Crawford blows past Matsui on the basepaths and sparks the team. In terms of pure hitting, Upton was better as a rookie than Crawford or any Yankee outfielder, and he will only get better. In the other outfield position, Cliff Floyd/Jonny Gomes/Eric Hinske all have the ability to put up nice numbers.

Although the superiority of the Yankees at short, third, and catcher is profound, the Rays have pulled even or ahead of New York at all other offensive positions and in the pitching staff as a whole. The gap between the two teams is not large. The Replacement Level Yankees Weblog's PECOTA-based project gave the Rays a 27% likelihood of a playoff spot, defining the term "puncher's chance." Everyone who has paid attention to the Rays' rise knows the outrageous flood of young talent still to come over the next few years, but with the recent five-year run of out-of-nowhere teams competing for the World Series, no one should discount the Rays' chances this season.