While the rest of the MLB community is focused on Shohei Ohtani, Elly De La Cruz, and other major headlines currently ongoing throughout the league, no one is talking about the downfall that the Tampa Bay Rays have been going through.
39 games into the regular season, the Rays were dominating anyone who would try and step in their way, cruising to a 30-9 record. But, since their historically hot start, they have gone 31-33 ever since, fallen out of first place in the AL East, and do not hold the best record in baseball anymore.
Don't get me wrong, the Rays don't need a massive change and are not stuck in a big hole, they are still 19 games above .500 and own the top wild card spot in the AL. It's just surprising to see a team that many thought would break all kinds of records this season to fall off this bad and no one seems to be acknowledging it.
Statistically speaking, the Rays have been one of the best teams on paper all season no matter their recent struggles. They lead baseball in combined ERA, they are in the top 10 in combined batting average, and have committed not many errors defensively. Those three stats will tell you that the Rays are an all around sharp team.
To put it in simple terms, the pace that the Rays were on earlier in the season was going to be difficult to keep up and they have shown that through the past couple months. Teams around the Rays are also not waiting for them to pick it up again and they are capitalizing off of the Rays' woes.
The main team that has capitalized from the Rays' troubles has been the Baltimore Orioles. Just a little while ago, the Orioles seemed to be cemented into second place in the AL East until they started to really come around as a team and just recently took three out of four games from the Rays in Tampa. As a result of this series, the Rays are now 2.5 games out of first in the division.
Sometimes in baseball it can take one major slump to take your team out of contention, but luckily for the Rays, they started so hot that they can afford to have a slump like this and still be well in it. The talent that the Rays have built up to this point throughout the years with the money constraints that they have has been very impressive. They have the bats, the arms, and the defense that is more than capable of making a run in October, but they have to get back to playing better baseball.
They don't have to revert back to the form they were in through the first 40 games of the season, it just needs to be back playing around .500 baseball. The Rays play like a team that is matured and experienced although they are one of the youngest teams in baseball. Sometimes this can happens to these types of teams, so it isn't a surprise with the Rays this time around.
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