2012 Preview: Tampa Bay Rays
The Tampa Bay Rays franchise has been so successful the last four seasons that they caused the industry of Major League Baseball to change its business model. You call it a Second Wild Card; I call it the Rays’ Effect.
The Tampa Bay Rays franchise has been so successful the last four seasons that they caused the industry of Major League Baseball to change its business model. You call it a Second Wild Card; I call it the Rays’ Effect.
Two previews ago, I stated that the Boston Red Sox, due to a shortfall of actual wins compared to its performance-based, expected wins, were baseball’s unluckiest team in 2011. Toronto represents, in the American League, their counterweight on the other end of the luck spectrum. The Blue Jays had the most actual wins in excess of their expected wins, with the difference totaling 5.1 wins.
A reader asks, “I’ve heard people say Derek Jeter is a terrible fielding shortstop even though he’s won a Gold Glove. Why do they say that?”
The Red Sox were, and I say this with a great degree of certainty, the unluckiest team in all of Major League Baseball last year. Not because Boston lost its last game of the season – and its grip on what was previously an all-but-certain post-season bid – with a one-run lead, two outs, no one on base and their standout closer on the mound. Not because they went 3-9 in their last dozen games giving Tampa Bay just enough of a crack to slip through as the Rays went 8-4 over the same stretch. Based on the starting pitchers Boston relied on in September of last year, and the injuries that were talking its toll on the starting nine, the results may not have even been that improbable, let alone unlucky. No, the Red Sox were unlucky that they were even in a position to get bumped from the playoffs.
Before I opened the spreadsheets and ran a single projection for 2012, I suspected that the Kansas City Royals were going to be an undervalued gem in the AL Central, and perhaps my out-of-consensus, or sleeper, playoff pick. I considered a branded marketing campaign, something along the lines of the Serta Perfect Sleeper™-Team-of-the-Year.