The Red-Hot Rays Must Be Taken Seriously as AL Favorites over Yankees, Astros

On-base percentage and launch angle were game-changers, alright, but the Tampa Bay Rays have discovered the most powerful Moneyball-esque market inefficiency that Major League Baseball has yet seen.

Just don't lose games.

Following their 7-2 win over the Boston Red Sox on Tuesday, the Rays are now 11-0 to start the 2023 season. They're only the fourth team since 1901 to win 11 in straight out of the gate, while their plus-63 run differential is the best ever for a modern team through 11 games.

The Rays went to the World Series in 2020 and followed with 100 wins in 2021, so perhaps it's not surprising that the '23 iteration has so quickly catapulted itself to the top of the American League power structure. But if the question is how much staying power do the Rays have, the answer depends on where you look.

The Houston Astros (+390) and New York Yankees (+400) still top the Rays (+500) in the odds to win the American League pennant at DraftKings, so the betting market clearly isn't convinced. Yet the picture is different at FanGraphs, where the Rays now have an AL-high 21.6 percent chance of representing the Junior Circuit in the Fall Classic.

As for how things look from this perspective, there's one good reason to side with the former but two good reasons to side with the latter.

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The Obvious Reason Not to Take the Rays Seriously

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Strength of schedule. The answer is strength of schedule. That simple.

In addition to the Red Sox, the Rays have played the Detroit Tigers, Washington Nationals and Oakland Athletics. These clubs combined to lose 389 games in 2022 and FanGraphs' preseason projections called for them to lose 360 total games in 2023.

That's an average of 90 losses between the four of them, easily the highest for any group of opponents a team has faced this year:

Graph via Google Sheets

It ought to go without saying that the Rays won't have it this easy forever, but, well, the Rays won't have it this easy forever. Their remaining strength of schedule is second only to the Red Sox.

It must also be said, however, that the Rays could merely play .500 ball the rest of the way and still finish with the same 86-76 record that they did in 2022, which was good enough for a playoff spot.

And knowing how this team goes about its business, .500 ball the rest of the way might be the worst-case scenario.

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The Rays' Run Prevention Must Be Taken Seriously

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This, too, is simple. Keeping runs off the board is just what the Rays do. Among AL teams over the last six seasons, they've ranked second, second, third, second, third and now first in runs allowed per game.

The jump to No. 1 this year was perhaps inevitable, given the staggering depth of this pitching staff. Shane McClahanan, Jeffrey Springs and Drew Rasmussen boast a combined 2.45 ERA over the last calendar year, while Zach Eflin was one of the better signings of the winter. The bullpen really doesn't have a weak link, and is especially strong where Pete "Rarebanks" Fairbanks and his 25 consecutive scoreless appearances are concerned.

Granted, the quality of the Rays' competition has made things easier for these guys. And yet, it shouldn't completely overrule what the team's hurlers are doing well as a collective.

Take, for instance, how Rays pitching have permitted an AL-low 81 hard-hit balls so far. It's easy to link that to how they also lead all of MLB in throwing 45.4 percent of their pitches in the "shadow" of the strike zone, which is best understood as the edges of it.

That's where batters average only 86.3 mph on their batted balls, compared to 93 mph in the "heart" of the zone. And that's just when they make contact, as they're about twice as likely to swing and miss in the shadow (27.6 percent) as they are in the heart (14.7 percent).

That Rays hurlers have induced so much soft contact is surely a factor in the team's defense having been the most efficient in MLB. It also helps, though, that the team is doing something akin to gaming the system in the field.

Fully shifted infields may be banned in 2023, but "strategic" alignments—think ones in which one or more fielders are conspicuously shaded in one direction or another—are still technically legal. The Rays seem to know that, as they've thus far used such alignments a league-high 62.5 percent of the time.

Courtesy of these plays by Wander Franco, Brandon Lowe and Taylor Walls, there's visual evidence that this approach is working. There's also compelling statistical evidence, in that the Rays are allowing the AL's lowest average on ground balls and line drives.

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The Rays' Run Production Must Be Taken Seriously

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Harder to believe is the notion that the Rays offense is, well, this good.

This is the same team that ranked 11th in runs and home runs and 12th in OPS among AL clubs last year, so surely it has no business leading in all three departments this year, much less with the most homers of any team through 11 games since the 2000 St. Louis Cardinals.

But if there are just two reasons the '23 Rays offense is deserving of more faith, look no further than their primary middle infielders.

Lowe was a huge part of the Rays' push to 100 wins in 2021, playing in 149 games and slamming 39 home runs. Franco arrived later but found his footing to hit .323 over his last 50 games. Then both ran afoul of the injury bug last season, which especially hurt the Rays in the latter half of the year.

Apropos of that, let's stack up how much the Rays have gotten from Lowe and Franco through 11 games this year compared to the entire second half of last season:

• 2nd Half, 2022: 4 HR, 110 wRC+, 1.1 fWAR
• First 11 G, 2023: 8 HR, 211 wRC+, 1.5 fWAR

Hey, look at that. It's almost as if the Rays' two most important hitters are healthy and hitting again. Factoring in that Yandy Díaz (193 wRC+) and Randy Arozarena (172 wRC+) are also off to warm starts, the guys who need to be carrying the offense are doing exactly that.

That these guys have gotten as much help as they have—the Rays are the only team with as many as 10 players with multiple home runs—is another thing that's probably related to the quality of the competition. But there's also precisely zero difference between the Rays' expected and actual slugging percentages, so clearly they're doing something right.

There are some quality of life improvements that stand out, such as how the Rays have dramatically improved both their strikeout and walk rates from 2022 to 2023 and that they're likewise hitting many more fly balls.

And then there's the more specific thing: the Rays have gone from being bad at hitting fastballs to the best at hitting fastballs.

Call it a case of controlled aggression. Rays hitters are hacking at fastballs less often than they did in 2022, but making more contact and indeed better contact when they do. At 21.9 percent, the rate at which they're hitting fastballs with the ideal combination of launch angle and exit velocity (i.e., "barreling") is the highest yet recorded for a team in the Statcast era.

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The Rays Have Already Upended the AL Playoff Race

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OK, so, the history of 11-0 starters is weirdly not a great omen for the Rays. Of the three modern clubs that did it before them, only the 1981 A's so much as won a playoff series.

What does bode well for the Rays, however, is that they've already taken advantage of what could be the most difficult time of the year for their primary competitors for the AL pennant.

In Houston, the Astros are 5-7 in part because the offense hasn't done enough to paper over Jose Altuve's absence with a fractured thumb and in part because Luis García seems to miss his old delivery. His velocity is down and he's put up a 7.00 ERA in his two outings, both of which resulted in Ls for Houston.

In New York, the Yankees are faring better at 7-4 but would almost certainly be doing even better if they had Carlos Rodón (elbow strain) and Luis Severino (lat strain) where they instead have Domingo Germán and Clarke Schmidt. The latter two have a 7.53 ERA between them and have started all four of the club's losses.

At the least, the Rays have gained the inside track to one of the two first-round byes in the AL playoffs. At 49.6 percent, their odds of earning one dwarfs those of Houston (29.9 percent) and New York (26.1 percent).

In other words, the Astros and Yankees have a difficult game of catch-up ahead of them.

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Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant.