Rays Making History With Unbeaten Start and Huge Run Differential

The first ten days of the season don’t always tell us much about which teams will make the postseason and which teams will play golf in October. Plenty of teams race out to division leads in April only to fall back in May or June. Others start out slow and build momentum as the season progresses.

We don’t know what will happen with the Tampa Bay Rays, who have started the season 9-0. In fact, they are still four more wins from tying the MLB record for most consecutive wins to start a season. The 1982 Atlanta Braves and the 1987 Milwaukee Brewers each started the season 13-0.

That Braves team then played essentially .500 ball the rest of the season, and although they won the National League West with a record of 89-73, they lost in the NL Championship Series to the St. Louis Cardinals three games to none. The Brewers ended the season 91-71 but that was only good enough for third place in the American League East, behind the Tigers (98-64) and the Blue Jays (96-66). They missed the postseason.

But here’s the thing. The Rays have absolutely crushed their opponents in their first nine games. Tampa Bay’s hit 24 home runs (the most in the majors), scored 75 runs (the most in the majors) and only allowed 18 (the least in the majors). That’s a +57 run differential for those still doing the math. Neither the 1982 Braves nor the 1987 Brewers came close to that level of dominance in their 13-0 starts.

It’s fair to point out that the Rays’ incredible start came in back-to-back-to-back series against the Tigers, the Nationals, and the Athletics—three teams ESPN projected to finish among the bottom five teams in the league this season. But that’s just what really good teams do. They beat up on the bad teams instead of playing down to their level.

In fact, there might even be some statistic that tells us that repeatedly racking up easy, blowout wins puts less strain on the bullpen and that has benefits later in the season. I don’t know and since I’m on a long flight home from Boston, I’m not going to spend time looking it up.

(Photo from MLB.com)

What I really like about the Rays' right now is that their dominance on both sides of the ball shows how prepared they were to start the season and how focused they are on playing hard in every game, regardless of the who their opponent is.

I also like that their offense is incredibly balanced. It’s not just one or two guys carrying the team in the early going. No Rays player has hit more than four home runs (Wander Franco has four) and 11 players have hit at least one. Every Rays hitter with 15 or more plate appearances has a wOBA over .300 and 6 of those 12 players have a wOBA over .400. (wOBA stands for weighted on-base average, which combines all the different ways of reaching base into one metric and then weights them according to their run value. You can read more detail about wOBA here).

Four of the Rays’ five starters are strike-throwing machines with strikeout rates above 25 percent. Six relievers have strikeout rates above 15 percent. On the entire pitching staff, only relievers Jason Adam and Ryan Thompson have struggled with walking too many batters. The rest have a walk rate at or below 10 percent. Starter Drew Rasmussen and reliever Pete Fairbanks haven’t issued any walks at all.

Will the Rays keep this up? Well, they’re certainly not going to win every game this season. They may not even match the 13-0 records of the 1982 Braves or the 1987 Brewers. But they’ve started the season about as well as a team can. And I can’t wait to see what they do next.