What The Rays Must Do To Compete In The AL East

The Rays are coming off a three game sweep of the Kansas City Royals, but they shouldn't be happy with their performance. In each of the games, they had to come from behind and beat the bullpen of the Royals.

It is impressive, but not a trend that the team should want to follow. The AL East bullpens are going to be a lot harder to get to than that of the Royals. The same logic applies to the AL East starting rotations.

Here are my three suggestions for the Rays to continue to compete:

1. Stand pat or lay low at the trade deadline.

The Rays don't need to make any significant changes. Their starting rotation has been pretty good and their bullpen has been great thanks to JP Howell. Their offense is still one of the best in the majors.

You don't need to fix what's not broken. Pat Burrell and Dioner Navarro have been busts, but the rest of the team has usually come through on their blunders. The team is full of All-Stars in Carlos Pena, Carl Crawford, Evan Longoria, Ben Zobrist, and Jason Bartlett.

If the Rays are going to make a move, it should be a relatively small one. Maybe another bat to put on the bench, I'm sorry but Joe Dillon and Michel Hernandez is not a deep bench, or a middle reliever to solidify the bullpen. The Rays can dangle their Gabe veterans and might be able to get something nice in return.

2. Change the batting order.

Let's be honest, people, B.J. Upton has not lived up to the pre-season hype. A .244 batting average and .329 on-base percentage are not good for a lead-off hitter. He has utilized his speed great, but is sometimes sloppy on the base paths. Here are the orders they should be going with:

Lineup #1	Lineup #2
1. Jason Bartlett	1. Carl Crawford
2. Carl Crawford	2. Jason Bartlett
3. Evan Longoria	3. Evan Longoria
4. Carlos Pena	4. Carlos Pena
5. Ben Zobrist	5. Ben Zobrist
6. Pat Burrell	6. B.J. Upton
7. Gabe Gross	7. Pat Burrell
8. Dioner Navarro	8. Gabe Gross
9. B.J. Upton	9. Dioner Navarro

Both Carl Crawford and Jason Bartlett have the speed and are more patient than B.J. Upton. In fact, Upton already has 102 strikeouts. That's about equivalent to Bartlett's (45) and Crawford's (62) added together.

3. Continue to dominate the AL East.

The Rays have a 6-4 record against the Red Sox and a 4-4 record against the Yankees. They have to obviously beat these teams to stay in the race. According to Buster Olney, the Red Sox and Yankees have the second and fourth easiest roads to the playoffs, respectively. The only way the Rays are going to be able to make noise is to make a dent in those records.

The Rays have eighteen games remaining against these teams, including their last series of the season being against the Yankees. The Rays have a tough series against the White Sox coming up, who they're 1-3 against this year. They also have to match up against the AL West contenders, and they haven't done well against them either. This is a different Rays team than earlier in the year, but the same could be said about all the teams they're facing. Let's see if they'll be successful.