The Rays are 13-0 this season, as you’ve no doubt heard. No other team has more than nine wins on the young season, but the Rays blew past that number early this week.
With their 9-3 defeat of the Red Sox on Thursday afternoon, they have tied the MLB record for consecutive wins to start a season, and can move into uncharted territory with a win Friday in Toronto. They’re the talk of baseball right now.
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The Rays have shot up to the top of every power ranking written by every person or publication who does such things. Their odds in Vegas took massive jumps, in every way — odds to win the division, odds to make the playoffs and even odds to win the World Series.
But what does this mean, looking ahead?
As my colleague Jason Foster pointed out, a hot start doesn’t guarantee anything. In fact, it’s almost been a harbinger of doom, as odd as that sounds. The 1981 A’s, 1982 Braves and 1987 Brewers all started the season with at least 11 straight wins, only to suffer through similarly cold stretches during the season.
So let’s take a look at HOW the Rays have gotten to 13-0 and see whether we can glean from that a bit of info that might help when looking into an uncertain future.
Favorable schedule
This isn’t a knock on the Rays, it’s just the truth. None of the teams they’ve beaten in the first couple weeks of the season will play meaningful games in October. Or, honestly, September and maybe even August. Detroit’s rebuild has been stuck in the mud for a couple of years. The Nationals … it’s going to be a while. Same thing for the A’s. The Red Sox are, as one prominent Boston writer put it, a collection of spare parts.
But here’s the thing: Just because the Rays opened the season with 13 very winnable games doesn’t mean winning all 13 games was going to be easy. They are still playing major league teams, with major league players. Anything can happen on any given day. And the Rays won every single game. That, folks, matters.
Because here’s another truth: The best teams — defined as the ones with the best records, not some subjective power ranking — are the ones that beat the bad teams every chance they get. And in a division that figures to be as competitive as the AL East, how teams do vs. the sub-.500 squads could be just about as important as how they do vs. the teams they’re directly competing with.
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Look at the NL East last year. The Mets were 45-37 against teams that finished .500 or better, and the Braves were 40-37. But the Braves were 61-24 (.718 winning percentage) vs. teams that finished under .500 and the Mets were “just” 56-24 (.700). Still good, but not as good as Atlanta, and it cost them the division title.
And look at the NL Central. The Brewers were 35-36 vs. teams .500 or better. The Cardinals were just 34-38. But the Cardinals were 59-31 vs. teams under .500 (.656) and the Brewers were only 51-40 (.560). St. Louis won the Central by seven games despite being worse vs. the good teams.
So, yeah. Does Tampa Bay’s 13-0 start mean the Rays are the “best” team in baseball? Not in a speculative way. But it does mean that they’ve given themselves the best chance of getting into October by taking care of business vs. the teams they should beat.
The offense is raking
Again, the strength of the teams/pitching the Rays have faced might be at play, at least a little bit here.
But the worst thing you can say about the offense so far — if you’re looking to somehow find faults in a 13-0 start — is that they’re only mashing mediocre pitching. But, folks, they’re still mashing. And it’s not just one or two bats carrying the lineup.
After their game Thursday afternoon, the Rays led all MLB teams with 32 home runs. Brandon Lowe leads the Rays with five homers. Yandy Diaz and Wander Franco had four each. Randy Arozarena, Isaac Paredes, Harold Ramirez and Luke Raley have three each. Josh Lowe, Jose Siri and Manuel Margot have two each.
The team’s OPS+ is 167.
Let’s repeat that. The Rays, as a team, have an OPS+ of 167. In 2021, Vladimir Guerrero hit 48 home runs, to go with a .311/.401/.601 slash line and 6.7 bWAR. He finished second in the AL MVP voting behind Shohei Ohtani. His OPS+ that year? Yep, 167.
Look, the level of production will slow down. Of course it will. But having a lineup — and bench — full of guys hitting the ball hard is a good way to avoid lengthy droughts. And their combo of hitting the ball hard — their hard-hit percentage of 37.3 is third in MLB — and hitting fly balls — their rate of 47.0 percent is easily highest in the bigs — is why so many balls are flying over the wall.
Which, of course, is where you want the baseballs to fly if you’re at the plate.