The Clutch Rays

by
May 6, 2010

The Rays stand at 20-7, and are owners of baseball’s best record. They lead the American League in run differential, but that’s only natural, considering they are first in runs scored and first in fewest runs allowed. While they might sustain the latter, with an excellent pitching staff and a terrific defense, their offensive performance is a bit more of a house of cards.

Despite leading MLB in run scoring to date, the Rays offense hasn’t actually been all that great. They rank 10th in the league with a .337 wOBA, which is above average but not dramatically so. By comparison, the Yankees have a .365 wOBA, but have scored nine fewer runs. What gives?

Timely hitting. With the bases empty, the Rays are batting .227/.308/.373, and their .681 OPS in that situation ranks 19th in the league. With men on base, however, the Rays are at .306/.381/.490, second best in baseball. With runners in scoring position, they are hitting .319/.403/.524, again, second best in baseball.

The league average OPS goes up fifty points when a runner reaches base. The Rays OPS has gone up 190 points in those situations, and even further still when runners get to second or third. As such, they have a team Weighted Runs Created of 133 runs, or 27 runs fewer than they’ve actually scored.

This won’t last, of course. No team can hit this well with men on base over a full season. If the Rays want to keep playing baseball at their current level, they’re going to have to begin to start some rallies, rather than relying on getting so much production from the ones they’re creating now.

You Aren't a FanGraphs Member
It looks like you aren't yet a FanGraphs Member (or aren't logged in). We aren't mad, just disappointed.
We get it. You want to read this article. But before we let you get back to it, we'd like to point out a few of the good reasons why you should become a Member.
1. Ad Free viewing! We won't bug you with this ad, or any other.
2. Unlimited articles! Non-Members only get to read 10 free articles a month. Members never get cut off.
3. Dark mode and Classic mode!
4. Custom player page dashboards! Choose the player cards you want, in the order you want them.
5. One-click data exports! Export our projections and leaderboards for your personal projects.
6. Remove the photos on the home page! (Honestly, this doesn't sound so great to us, but some people wanted it, and we like to give our Members what they want.)
7. Even more Steamer projections! We have handedness, percentile, and context neutral projections available for Members only.
8. Get FanGraphs Walk-Off, a customized year end review! Find out exactly how you used FanGraphs this year, and how that compares to other Members. Don't be a victim of FOMO.
9. A weekly mailbag column, exclusively for Members.
10. Help support FanGraphs and our entire staff! Our Members provide us with critical resources to improve the site and deliver new features!
We hope you'll consider a Membership today, for yourself or as a gift! And we realize this has been an awfully long sales pitch, so we've also removed all the other ads in this article. We didn't want to overdo it.




 

Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.

19 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Lailaihei
15 years ago

That wOBA seems low for their lineup, do you expect their wOBA to increase or is .337 their true talent offensive ability?

0