Rays-ing Suspicion

 

....this is such an odd team, man.

On paper, it should be simple. The Red Sox built their team up, the Blue Jays built their team up, the Rays did not and are still doing a low budget thing. The Sox and Jays should outweigh the Rays. And yet right now the Rays have gotten hot again, and not even the losses of Manuel Margot, Kevin Kiermaier, Brandon Lowe and Wander Franco, which is like more than half their star power, have stopped them from winning 8 out of their last 12 games. 

No wonder the Jays fired their manager. All this spending and they still can't get past Yandy Diaz, Ji-Man Choi and Jeffrey Springs? What is this?

Yet again, the ability for the Rays to be entirely stringent upon landing below their cap while also getting amazing seasons out of people we've never heard of is something to behold. Just looking at Isaac Paredes hitting 8 homers in June, and remembering that the Rays got him from Detroit for Austin Meadows, who's been injured for most of the year, you have to just turn around and go 'HOW DO THEY KNOW THESE THINGS?' It's getting pretty ridiculous. All these relievers like Jason Adam, Jeffrey Springs and Ryan Thompson, none of which came through the Rays farm system and were snagged in very under-the-radar ways, all just playing beautifully this year. 

I think the most Rays thing possible is that their biggest deadline acquisition might not be somebody like Willson Contreras or Josh Bell or Andrew Benintendi. It might just be Christian Bethancourt, who was working as a DH type in Oakland before the Rays got him. And they also got Yu Chang from Pittsburgh, and considering how difficult it was for him to hit with Cleveland or Pittsburgh, the fact that he's currently hitting .364 in 4 games is just ridiculous. I have no idea how the Rays can get so much production out of people that teams give up on. 

What is alarming is that some of the prospect pieces that the Rays have spent time in developing are beginning to let them down. Shane Baz is having some disappointing numbers in his first full season, Josh Lowe and Taylor Walls have struggled to hit at the MLB level, Vidal Brujan still isn't ready, and now Tommy Romero, a castaway from the Denard Span deal, who's been a stellar starting prospect for the past few years, has waffled his first few MLB appearances. 

So I suppose the Rays should be thankful that their ability to field under-the-radar players and make them great is still active, because their once-mighty farm system might be hitting a rare low point in terms of MLB production. It may not matter much right now because the team's still doing well enough in the standings, but it may matter in the long run.

Coming Tomorrow- A guy on the Marlins who steals a lot of bases. No, not Billy Hamilton.