Tropicana Field
It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. ~A. Bartlett Giamatti, “The Green Fields of the Mind,” Yale Alumni Magazine, November 1977
One hundred and seventy days since the Rays last played. I remember the end of our season, how we battled back from two games down in the ALDS versus the Rangers to force a Game 5. I went to the game with my best friend, Naomi because we both love Cliff Lee and I really wanted to see the Rays get the opportunity to play the Yankees in the ALCS. It was not our day. Cliff Lee proved to be the monster that he is and destroyed us. We knew this and we chanted “We Love You Carl” and “Carl Crawford” over and over again to show our appreciation because we all knew he was not going to be back. I remember being by the players parking lot and thanking the players, how Longoria waves at me, and how John Jaso thanked me for coming out, and seeing BJ Upton play with Ben Zobrists kid. It was a bitter sweet night.
With that end, people don’t expect us to go back to the post season after we lost 11 players either via free agency or trades. The Tampa Bay Rays are projected, depending on whose projection you rely on, to finish in third place in the AL East Division with the Red Sox winning it all, and the Yankees taking the Wild Card spot. The projections calls for the Rays to win 86 games, with a 16% chance of winning the division, 13% of winning the wild card and a 29% chance of making the post season.
Projections from the always amazing Rays Index
I like to think of the projections this way: Even if these projections were 100% accurate, there is enough randomness in 162 games that there is decent spread of 12 games around the “true” record. There is a 66% probability the Rays will finish within 6 games of true record. I.e., the standard deviation of 162 games for teams playing near .500 is about 6 games. This means a record between 80 to 92 wins. So the way I read these projections is not the average record (86 wins), but rather what is the probability of the team making the playoffs – essentially passing either the Yankees or Red Sox. 30% is a reasonable number and says we should all be encouraged, but not assured of a post season for the Rays.
That 30% chance is all that I need to believe that the Rays are fielding a team that is good enough to compete with the Red Sox and Yankees. That 30% chance is all the hope that I am going to need this season to continue to go to a Rays game once a week, and to hunt for that supposedly all argyle Rays baseball cap. That 30% chance makes this opening day that much sweeter for me. Everyone and their mother is counting us out, not even considering us in the conversation. That’s fine, that happened last year too and we ended up winning the AL East. Every season, that is Joe Maddon’s goal: win the AL East. Its going to be tough, an uphill battle, but you never give up just because the competition is tough. Maddon and the Rays thrive on still being seen as a third place team in the AL East, in being the underdog because that just makes the eventual success that much sweeter when you prove the so called experts wrong.
So go head, America. Crown the Red Sox the winners of the World Series before the first pitch of the season. Go ahead and just fawn all over them and their amazing lineup and bolstered up bullpen. Inflate their egos. Put them up on a pedestal. There are 162 games. One hundred and sixty two different opportunities for the Rays to prove you all wrong, and trust me, they are going to work tirelessly to prove everyone wrong. As Joe Maddon says, this is a new season for the Rays to find another way to get to the post season. We still have a very competitive team. We have our questionable spots with our bullpen and if the Manny/Damon experiment will work out, and if BJ Upton can finally be the player that we know that he can be. We’re not the only ones either: can Beckett and Lackey get back in form for the Red Sox? What about the Yankees and their starting rotation? Both teams bolstered their bullpens and have solid line-ups, but they have questions with their rotations. That might be the key to getting the Rays back into the post season.
Rays Ace, David Price
Anyways, predictions!
American League
AL East: Red Sox/Yankees/Rays*≠
AL Central: Twins
AL West: Angels
AL WC: Red Sox/Yankees/Rays**≠
The Twins are a damn good team. If I didn’t live here in the Tampa Bay area and already followed the Rays then I would be a Twins fan. What’s not to love about the Twins? They are a fantastic organization, with well liked players, a severely underrated Skipper in Ron Gardenhire.
*Okay, so here is my thing. The Wild Card is going to come out of the AL East and either team is going to win the AL East or the WC hence why I put all three teams down for those spots. Yeah, yeah. I could go ahead and put the Red Sox or Yankees as the winners of the AL East, but I won’t because I am stubborn and seriously, fuck those teams and I won’t give them the satisfaction.
**If the AL East teams beat each other up enough, I can see situations where a team like the White Sox or the Tigers getting the Wild Card. I’ve seen the Twins getting the WC, but I still see them winning the AL Central.
≠Now that I got that ire out of my system, let me just say this. Given that everyone and their mother has crowned the Red Sox the winners of the AL East and the World Series, the Division title and the WS title are theirs to lose. I do think that the Rays are going to battle it out with the Yankees for the Wild Card and that they are going to win the Wild Card, depending if a team out of the AL Central doesn’t have a better record than them. So yeah, if I think rationally that is how its going to be: Red Sox win the AL East and the Rays win the WC.
National League
NL East: Braves
NL Central: Cardinals
NL West: Giants
NL WC: Brewers
I really like the Brewcrew this year. Once Greinke and Marcum are fully healthy, the Brewers are going to be scary. Let’s also not forget that they are a team that can hit the long ball too!
I am not going to make predictions on who is going to win the World Series and each individual matchup because I am too lazy, plus I would feel sick saying that the Red Sox are going to win it.
Anyways, I can’t wait for baseball to start again. It is a half hour until David Price throws the first pitch at Tropicana Field. The AL East 2010 banner is going to be raised, people are going to be booing Rick Scott, and we will see how our lineup and rotation are going to do. Its going to be an exciting season and I can’t wait. Also, this means more DJ Kitty!
DJ Kitty looks suspiciously like Mr. Peppers.
The Rays Baseball is Back! by Hits Snooze Twice, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Related posts:
