The intrepid Tampa Bay Rays are rolling toward another American League East title.
They cooled off this month, but they remain the envy of Cardinals fans who have watched their own team battle the gravitational pull of .500.
And the Cardinals can learn plenty from the Fighting Arozarenas.
The Rays don’t have a traditional bench. Manager Kevin Cash rotates players in and out of the lineup and substitutes freely to gain optimal matchups.
He used 138 different lineups in the first 141 games. He has given 12 different Rays hitters 240 or more plate appearances — and late addition Nelson Cruz will top 200 by season’s end.
Tampa Bay also wins with bullpen depth, The Rays have had 13 relievers earn a save and 24 pitchers reach double figures in appearances.
“I think there’s buy-in when you’re winning,” starting pitcher Chris Archer told the Tampa Bay Times. “If it’s a winning culture, winning atmosphere, and you see the formula and the formula works, there’s going to be buy-in.
“If it wasn’t working, there might be a little more pushback. But how they coach guys, how they maneuver the roster, how they use the bullpen, how they give guys days off when they need them? It works. So … you look like an idiot complaining, you know? So if it didn’t work, then that’s a different story. But it works.”
The Rays churn their roster. Players come and go in trades. Players come and go from the minors.
Cash stands ready to turn any game into a “bullpen start” and burn a half-dozen or more relievers through nine innings. This can take a toll; at last check there were 10 Rays pitchers on the 10-day or 60-day injured list.
This is pretty extreme stuff, the ultimate example of managing with your computer instead of your gut. But the matchup game puts players in a position to succeed and makes them more productive.
The Rays don’t have a star system. They play in poorly located dump and they are doomed to poor attendance. That frees the franchise to run with ruthless efficiency.
The Cardinals can’t operate that way. They market their top players, selling millions of tickets and giving commemorative bobblehead dolls to every man, woman and child in the bistate region.
But they can draw lessons from the Rays’ success.
With the designated hitter in play, there is no need for pinch-hitters in the traditional National League sense. Non-starters can be deployed at various points as opportunities arise.
“One of biggest things is we understand that it’s not a day off,” slugger Brandon Lowe told the Times. “Being on this team and not starting in a game, you always know that your name is one base hit away from getting called. There’s never a time where you’re not starting and you think that, ‘I’m not going to be in the game today.’”
In this scenario every position player should be starter-caliber. With the universal DH likely coming next season, the Cardinals should build a roster with interchangeable hitters.
This would keep players fresh, cut the length of hitting slumps and create some better inning-to-inning matchups.
The San Francisco Giants are a good role model for this. They could finish with 15 different hitters with 200-plus plate appearances this season.
Meanwhile the Cardinals have used just 10 hitters regularly this season. They’ve had their eight regular position players plus Edmundo Sosa earning time at shortstop (hitting .310 as a starter) and Matt Carpenter failing badly as both a starter (.186) or as a substitute (.133).
They never found a consistent fourth outfielder this season. The current candidate, Lars Nootbaar, has just two starts since Aug. 26 — and he extended his hitless streak to 15 at-bats Monday.
Fill-in catcher Andrew Knizner and spare guy Jose Rondon have been offensive non-factors this season. The same goes for the assortment of scrubs who passed through the clubhouse this season.
What should next year look like? Obviously Nolan Arenado and Paul Goldschmidt should play most of the time.
But the Cardinals will need better offensive production behind Yadier Molina for his farewell tour. They should run a four-man outfield rotation by having a good left-handed hitter blend with the incumbents.
If Nolan Gorman is ready, he could be the lefty hitter needed to spell Tommy Edman at second base, make a few starts at third base and take plenty of DH at-bats. That could free Edman to take some starts elsewhere.
Could Albert Pujols be the right-handed DH? Maybe, but a multi-positional player who can hit (unlike Carpenter) could make more sense for the Cardinals to build collective offense.
Team strength could allow the team to give Sosa his shot at shortstop rather than spending big on that position.
As for the pitching, the goals should be clear: Build a strong six-man rotation backed by a half-dozen high-leverage relievers.
That’s how the Milwaukee Brewers have run away with the National League Central.
The Cardinals don’t have to become trendsetters again to push back into the 90- to 100-victory range. They just need to follow the lead of smart baseball operations.
