Lessons Learned: Rays Can Look Back On 08 For Pennant Race Experience

As we move into Major League Baseball’s stretch run, the Tampa Bay Rays will have the added benefit of competing previously for the AL East championship as experience in their attempt to return to the post-season in 2009.

No one foresaw the meteoric rise of Tampa Bay’s baseball club in 2008. Before the season, many fans were hopeful that the Rays could have a .500 or better season for the first time in franchise history.

It was a young, talented club with just enough veteran leadership that may help them shed their loser legacy. A team with potential, which as football coach Bill Parcells said, meant they “hadn’t done it yet.”

When the season began in ‘08, it wasn’t with a roar. Tampa Bay began 8-11 and in the all too familiar position of dead last in the American League East. Then, as if a switch suddenly was flipped, Tampa Bay started winning…and winning…and winning some more.

Tampa Bay would be tested several times throughout the season, including a cold September night in Boston with the team clinging to a half game lead over the Red Sox and trailing in the top of the ninth. A minor league call up named Dan Johnson kept Tampa Bay in first place with a home run.

In 162 games, there are many ups and downs. Tampa Bay Manager Joe Maddon is fond of saying that one is never more important than the other 162. Yet there are turning points in a season—forks in the road if you will. That chilly night in Boston was one for the Rays.

The lessons would continue in the post-season, overcoming one of the greatest collapses in playoff history to win Game 7 and advance to the World Series.

So how does this apply to now?  

Today’s Rays can take some understanding from that AL Championship team in knowing that one game, one swing can turn the tide in a pennant race. Every out counts. The 2009 squad knows that when the heat is on and all of the eyes of the world are focused on you expecting your failure—they have the wherewithal to rise to the challenge.

Whether Tampa Bay can foil the Red Sox again is a chapter yet to be written. There are other players in the dance this time around as the Rangers and Mariners look to ruin both Tampa Bay and Boston’s party. Tampa Bay played the frontrunner before, now they must be the team that chases.

It’s another step in the maturation of a franchise that just two short years ago most believed the playoffs were a fantasy for the most myopic, kool-aid drinking Rays fans. The 2008 experience will help them handle the pressure, but it’s up to them to win enough games to qualify.

The average number of wins to claim the AL Wildcard has been 95.

To get there, the Rays must go 34-16 the rest of the way. It will be interesting to see if they can do it.