Tampa’s Role Players

Tampa Bay is one game away from clinching the American League East – a win or a Red Sox loss will give them their first division title in franchise history, completing the best story of the year as the little guy slays a couple of baseball giants. Andrew Friedman and his staff deserve a ton of credit for building a division winner on a shoestring payroll.

However, some members of the mainstream media have continually attempted to demean the team building accomplishments of the Rays, claiming that the foundation of their success has been built by years of losing yielding a bevy of first round picks. As the theory goes, it’s those guys acquired as a reward of ineptitude that has allowed Tampa to thrive. To discredit the job Friedman and company have done, they instead point to the contributions of B.J. Upton, Carl Crawford, Scott Kazmir, Evan Longoria, and the gang acquired for Delmon Young this winter. And certainly, those guys are integral parts of the team.

However, I wonder if those same writers have noticed that the Rays have been without Crawford for the last two months and without Upton for a good chunk of September? In fact, if you look at some of the line-ups the Rays have been running out this month, it’s regularly included guys like Fernando Perez, Ben Zobrist, Dan Johnson, Eric Hinske, and Gabe Gross. With a patchwork line-up of role players, the Rays went 7-4 in games against Boston, New York, and Minnesota. Facing the toughest part of their schedule, without the two toolsy outfielders that have become the defacto face of the Rays rebuilding process, Tampa won 64 percent of their games to essentially put away the division title.

In fact, here is the WPA/LI for the Rays hitters in September:

Name WPA/LI
Carlos Pena 0.61
Evan Longoria 0.31
Gabe Gross 0.19
Willy Aybar 0.18
Ben Zobrist 0.11
Fernando Perez 0.11
Dioner Navarro 0.10
Cliff Floyd 0.10
Jason Bartlett 0.08
Justin Ruggiano 0.05
Dan Johnson 0.02
Akinori Iwamura -0.10
M. Hernandez -0.12
B.J. Upton -0.12
Eric Hinske -0.40
Rocco Baldelli -0.46

Crawford hasn’t played, Upton and Baldelli have been two of the least effective hitters, and the Rays have been able to play better than .500 ball against a ridiculously tough schedule: 6 against NY, 6 against Boston, 4 against Minnesota, 4 against Baltimore, and 3 against Toronto.

At some point, people have to recognize the contributions Tampa is getting from it’s role players this year. The Rays had Upton, Crawford, Pena, Kazmir, and Shields last year too, and they only won 66 games.

The young stars are certainly valuable commodities, but this team is going to win the AL East because of how good their role players have been. And for that, we have to acknowledge that no one in baseball has done a better job of team building in the last year than the folks down in Tampa.

Congratulations to Andrew Friedman and crew – you guys have earned this.