Like Lieutenant Charles Wilkes setting sail for the uncharted bottom of the world in 1838, I ventured here to see whether the Rays are for real. As it was for Antarctica, you could not be certain of what to make of this strange team, what with the cupcake schedule, the anomaly of guys who never hit home runs suddenly cranking them out at a record pace and some key injuries.
Wilkes and his expedition were gone for four years. Me? I needed only a weekend, and thank goodness without need for so much as an overcoat. Wilkes and I arrived at the same conclusion about our subjects: rock solid. Just as Wilkes determined that Antarctica was a land continent, I can tell you the Rays are for real. They are going to the playoffs.
And just as Wilkes returned with never-before-seen cartography, I return from St. Petersburg, Fla., with discovery of the Rays’ secret sauce: how the 21st-ranked offense in MLB last year suddenly is destroying teams this year. The key ingredient is a new, post-launch-angle buzzword in baseball: “strike probability.”
Under the guidance of hitting coach Chad Mottola, the Rays have moved behind the mechanical-based launch angle revolution to a more cerebral approach that relies on decision-making.
“It’s been so much ‘mechanics, mechanics, mechanics’ with all these gurus and all these people in the offseason and all these things,” Mottola says. “And we saw it work at the beginning. But we have so many free swingers it’s kind of an easy message. We’re not looking for passive guys, but we’re looking for better decisions.”
Don’t believe the nonsense that “you can’t win a division in April; you can only lose it.” The 1955 Dodgers (14–2), ’77 Dodgers (17–3), ’84 Tigers (18–2), 2001 Mariners (20–5) and ’16 Cubs (17–5) are just a few teams that built an early lead on their way to the World Series.
Chris O’Meara/AP
At 19–3, the Rays:
- Set an MLB record with a home run in each of the first 21 games.
- Set a franchise record with a 13–0 home record to start a season. (The 13 straight home wins is a franchise record at any point in a season.)
- Outscored opponents 149–61.
- Outhomered opponents 48–12. (Only the 2000 Cardinals hit more homers through 22 games.)
Let’s do the math. Tampa Bay is the ninth team to start 19–3 or better in MLB history. When prorated over a 162-game schedule, those teams finished with an average of 101 wins. Only good teams start this hot.
What about the 1987 Brewers, you say? They started 19–3 and by the end of May were 22–21. They missed the playoffs. But, back then, only division winners advanced to the playoffs. The ’87 Brewers won 91 games—posting the third-best record in baseball—only to go home. If the Rays “fall” to 91 wins, they’re in the playoffs. Last season, the first with six playoff teams in each league, 11 teams won 87 or more games. All went to the postseason. The Rays could go 68–72 the rest of the way and still win 87 games, the entry level last season for postseason play.
The Rays have sprinted to this start without their most talented pitcher, Tyler Glasnow, who is scheduled to throw two innings Monday as he works his way back from an oblique injury, and while losing Jeffrey Springs to elbow surgery. We knew the Rays could pitch. They have been a top-three pitching staff in the league for six straight years.
And if you grabbed Shane McClanahan in your fantasy league, congratulations. After breaking down in the second half of last season with a sore shoulder, he has cleaned up his diet, redoubled his training regimen and skipped the World Baseball Classic to become a seven-month workhorse. He is the hardest-throwing left-handed starter in baseball (97.2 mph) who also owns the most wicked changeup in the game. The poor White Sox swung and missed 32 times Saturday at McClanahan’s pitches, including 14 of the 16 times they attempted to hit his changeup.
But where did this offense come from? The team that ranked 13th out of 15 AL teams in slugging is slugging .535 and scoring 6.8 runs per game. The answer comes from a miserable ending to last season.
“We had a rude awakening last year,” manager Kevin Cash says. “It really started in September, and then it was really bad in the postseason.”
The Rays hit .231 in September with a major-league-low 21 home runs. Facing Cleveland in the AL wild-card series, they went home quickly after losing two games in which they scored one run in 24 innings and hit .115. Tampa Bay hitters chased pitches out of the strike zone 40% of the time in that series. The major league average is 31%. They hit .094 when they went outside the zone against Cleveland.
“We knew to stay off the fastball up from [Triston] McKenzie, but we kept chasing it,” Cash says. “We knew to stay off the [Shane] Bieber slider that’s down and away, but we kept chasing it. It had to change.”
Mottola, Cash and the Rays’ staff decided the point of emphasis in spring training should not be about launch angle or swing mechanics but about decision-making. I have written about how as pitching becomes more spin-based—and most nonfastballs are thrown out of the zone—“swing decisions” become the most important element in hitting. Mottola took “swing decisions” and turned it into “strike probability.”
“We’ve done a lot of things with strike probability called,” he says. “It’s not based off the zone. It’s based off what the umpire has actually called. So we’ve applied a number to it, such as a 65% strike, a 10% strike. There’s no strike or ball. So there’s actually ways to say you made the right decision, or a bad call. You can have feedback postgame much better now. It’s not really to review the whole at bat. It’s to review the 10 or 15 pitches that may have gone against you or gone for you.”
The staff in spring training established a new methodology and thought process.
“Obviously it’s a little overblown,” Mottola says, “but it’s what they’re hanging on to. They’re grasping it. There are conversations that they’re having on their own. So that’s been the fun part.”
The Rays did provide postgame pitch data last season, but as Mottola says, “We did, but we didn’t sell out to it the way we’re selling out to it as a staff, and it’s one of those things we just wanted to move on a little bit more. Not necessarily change everybody’s thoughts. We’re still going to have free swingers mixed in with guys who see the ball. We’re still going to have Randy [Arozarena] who’s going to be up there hacking, and we don’t want to change him at all.
“We want to have [Taylor] Walls, who can see the ball better, make better decisions. Whatever comes with the hits, great. But the league now, we’ve got a bunch of throwers. So, it’s one of those things, ‘Let’s take advantage of the throwers.’”
In sweeping the White Sox over the weekend, the contrast between Chicago and Tampa Bay was stark. The White Sox’ hitters chase more often than any team in baseball. Against the Rays, they went 1-for-40 chasing out of the zone.
On Saturday, Arozarena fell behind Dylan Cease, 0-and-2, in the first inning on two sliders. Cease threw two more sliders, each one darting just off the low, outside corner. Arozarena took both. It was then that Cease figured he could sneak a fastball by him. Arozarena ripped it for a two-run homer.
In the fifth, Arozarena stayed off a slider from Keynan Middleton off the plate before pulling the trigger on one in the zone for a two-run single. He won the game in the 10th with a compact, inside-out swing on a first-pitch fastball for a single.
The next day, per custom this year, Mottola posted the “strike probability” results from the game.
“They get it at the cage the next day, where it’s at their convenience when they’re coming and doing their work,” Mottola says. “We have a small conversation if necessary, or they just kind of observe it on their own at their own time. So nothing’s force fed.”
After batting practice, as the Rays gather for their advance report on the opposing starting pitcher that game, Mottola and the players will decide on the “Take of the Game” award from the previous game.
“We have a kind of reward in the advance meeting of each previous game of the best layoff pitch,” Mottola says. “So there’s layers to it that they’re taking over. In the spring we wanted to see where it went organically. They kind of rolled some eyes at us at first, but I expected that. Now they’ve bought in.
“And having a return group here helps, which is unusual. It makes it much easier where we can actually build off something we had last year. Usually, each year we formulated a message for the new guys. And that's based off not knowing their personalities. Now I kind of know their personalities. We can pick up where we left off.”
No one has made bigger strides than Yandy Díaz, the 31-year-old, Cuban-born first baseman. Díaz always has hit the ball hard but almost always on the ground and often to the opposite field. Díaz grew up regarding a .300 batting average as the mark of a great hitter and still thinks that way.
Mottola convinced him to try hitting the ball farther out front with a slightly taller posture in certain counts and situations. The change was made easier, Mottola says, because Díaz signed a three-year, $24 million contract in January, providing him security.
Alex Brandon/AP
The results are staggering. A career .411 slugger, Díaz is slugging .587 with six home runs. He hit nine all last season. His flyball percentage has jumped from 20% to 33%, his average exit velocity is a career-high 95.4 mph and his launch angle has increased from 7.7 degrees to 13.8.
“He still hates making a couple of swings that he makes where he’s trying to catch the ball out front where he makes a bad decision,” Mottola says. “I understand. But we’re trying to let him know that that’s O.K. if we’re getting the other side of this right. What is going to be your peak? We know what you can do. Let’s find out who you can be.
“So on those times where he does, I don’t want to say sell out, but you know, hit the ball out front a little bit ... it’s a different [swing] path. It’s definitely a different path. It’s happened in the last couple years industry-wide. Guys have a four four-seam bat path and guys have a slider bat path. He’s exploring that.
“It’s a different path. It’s a different posture. And he’s fighting it, believe it or not. But we’re trying to show him the overall benefit. Because he’s an old-school guy. And he doesn’t like where his average is at, but we are trying to find that balance and just, ‘Let’s explore. You have your money now.’ He’s a lot more comfortable in exploring, but it’s still one of those things we’re trying to find out that balance.”
The Rays are the biggest story in baseball. They are the hottest team out of the gate in 40 years. The surprise is they are beating people from the batter’s box. Who could have seen this coming? Not even Cash.
“I knew having a healthy Wander [Franco] and a healthy Brandon [Lowe] would make a difference,” Cash says of his middle infielders. “I expected a little more production out of [outfielder] Josh Lowe. He had a tough introduction last year, but he’s always hit.
“But for us to be playing at this pace? No. Not like this.”
Say what you want about the schedule. The Rays are 14–1 against losing teams. Next month they play 29 straight games against the Pirates, Orioles, Yankees, Mets, Brewers, Blue Jays, Dodgers and Cubs—all winning teams. But we are talking about the team with the toughest pitching staff in baseball to hit (.192), that is the best defensive team at turning batted balls into outs (73.8%), and now has an offense built on power and patience that is so deep the Rays’ OPS out of the 7-8-9 spots is not only the best in baseball (.804) but also better than the Yankees’ OPS out of the 3-4-5-6 spots.
It doesn’t take the daring of a 19th-century explorer to discover the obvious: The Rays are for real.
