If death and taxes are certainties in life, Tampa Bay’s baseball team and futility were certainties in Major League Baseball.
Debuting in the big leagues in 1998 as the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, the team was perennially amongst MLB’s worst teams, averaging an atrocious 64.5 wins and 97.2 losses—with three 100-loss and two 99-loss seasons in that span—up until this year.
The team added manager Lou Piniella in 2003—who won a World Series with the Cincinnati Reds in 1990 and led the Seattle Mariners to a record tying 116 regular season wins—hoping that his success could rub off on the franchise.
Although Piniella led Tampa Bay to a then franchise-best 70 wins mark in year two of his tenure in Florida, the team never finished higher than fourth in the division during the “Lou” era. Piniella left in 2005.
The losing continued with Joe Maddon who saw the team lose 101 games in his first season (2006) and 96 more last season.
A New Face
The changes for Tampa Bay happened in 2008. The team tinkered with their name, ditching the “Devil” and keeping the “Rays.” Tampa Bay’s logo was no longer about something that lives in the dark seas but rather an uplifting shining symbol.
As principal owner, Stuart Sternberg said at the time, “We are now the ‘Rays’—a beacon that radiates throughout Tampa Bay and across the entire state of Florida.”
As of Tuesday, the Rays are not only ahead of the New York Yankees but also the Boston Red Sox, and every other team in the American League East, with a record of 79–51.
They currently are tied with the L.A. Angels for the best record in the AL and also as the second best team in baseball, behind only the Chicago Cubs.
The team isn’t doing it with its bats either. It is being done with pitching—after all, defense wins championships.
Last season, Tampa Bay had the worst earned run average in all of the majors. But this year they have the second best at 3.71 behind only the Toronto Blue Jays’ 3.63.
One of the lone bright spots for the Rays last season (no pun intended) was the play of starting pitcher Scott Kazmir, who led the AL in strikeouts.
Picking Up the Slack
Kazmir got off to a rough start, missing parts of spring training and the season with an elbow injury, but a number of pitchers picked up the slack;
