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AL East Report: It’s Tampa Bay’s Time To Take Control

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The American League East has essentially hit the re-set button, with all five teams packed within three games of each other heading into Tuesday night’s games. You can make an argument that this favors the underdog teams—Baltimore, and to a lesser extent Toronto, as an underdog always benefits from shortening the game, or in this case the season by a couple months. You can argue that it works to Boston’s favor, who navigated an early season filled with wounds, both medial and self-inflicted. I don’t see how it works in New York’s favor, although they could certainly still win the division. The team I think really has to be pleased right now is the Tampa Bay Rays, who hold the narrow AL East lead and are well-poised to add to that as summer wears on and we start seeing some separation.

While Tampa Bay’s injuries aren’t as voluminous as Boston’s, there’s been no higher impact loss that the Rays losing Evan Longoria a month in and not getting him back until about two weeks from now. Before Yankee fans hit the roof and wonder about Mariano, I’m just talking about injured players who are going to return this year and therefore impact the race. Longoria’s talent alone speaks for itself, but further consider that Tampa Bay’s one weakness is consistent power hitting, so you not only remove a team’s best player when he goes to the disabled list, but the one whose absence is least able to be covered for.

Furthermore, Longoria’s not the only injury. Desmond Jennings, the promising left fielder who played so well after his callup midway through 2011 has also been out. Jennings is expected to return tonight when the team visits the Bronx. The young hitter hadn’t exploded out of the gate or anything, but with a .333 OBP was already respectable and one good hot streak away from being outstanding. Jennings is the table-setter Joe Maddon desperately needs for his offense.

Tampa Bay is therefore a team that lost its best table-setter and one of its only power hitters, who also happens to be one of the game’s best all-around talents and they’re still nominally in first place in a division on re-set.  And it’s not because other everyday players stood up and filled the void—Carlos Pena has been awful, batting .201 and his eight home runs being about his only good at-bats of the year. Luke Scott has been a similar disappointment. Give credit to Matt Joyce, with his .400/.535 OBP/Slugging line for being the only bright spot the offense has had.

Where Maddon deserves tremendous credit is in the bullpen. The starting pitching has been solid, but everyone expected that. The pen was a weak area and Fernando Rodney has stabilized the back end by closing 17/18 save opportunities with a 1.03 ERA. That’s Cy Young-caliber stuff if he keeps this pace up. Where the manager comes in is that while the rest of the pen is above average individually, they have collective results that are dominant. The Rays rank third in the American League in save percentage, a stat that includes late inning spots when the setup team is still working to pave the way to Rodney. It tells us that Maddon is doing a yeoman’s job getting the right pitchers into the right spots and making the most of what he has. But at this point in his career, and that of this organization since 2008, why should we be surprised anymore? Tampa Bay has a tough schedule this week, with road games against the Yankees and Marlins, but between now and the end of July I’m looking for them to put some distance between themselves and the rest of the AL East.

And speaking of the rest of the AL East, here’s a brief check-in on the four other contenders…

Baltimore (30-24): We knew this time was coming for the Orioles. They’re in a funk, having lost four straight series, going 3-9 in the process. Every team has to come through this, but with Baltimore’s track record they’ve got everyone’s eyes upon them, looking to see if Buck Showalter’s team can take a punch. The biggest weakness the Birds have is the inability to get runners on base consistently. Other than Adam Jones, who’s having a monster year, only Nick Markakis is a really consistent OBP man, and he’s now on the DL to the end of June. That’s a lot of pressure on the pitching and the ability of Jones and J.J. Hardy to carry the offense with home runs.

NY Yankees (29-24): The Pinstripes are on a nice run right now, having won series against Kansas City, Oakland and Detroit sandwiched around losing two of three to the red-hot Los Angeles Angels. The wins aren’t against Murderer’s Row, but there is a consistency there that Joe Girardi has to like. What Girardi can’t like is how dependent his pitching is on Andy Pettite right now. The veteran lefty is doing well, with 3.49 ERA in four starts, but how long can he go. I think Pettite’s the baseball equivalent of New Jersey Devils’ goalie Martin Brodeur. He’s an old warrior and he’s going to absolutely have some great moments. But there’s also going to be those share of times when age just simply becomes apparent.

Toronto (28-26): While the Jays swept Baltimore early last week, the other results suggest that’s more about the Oriole slump than anything Toronto is doing, as they’ve lost series to Tampa, Texas and Boston and now start a three-game set against a hot Chicago White Sox team over on the South Side. The bullpen is a massive problem—no team has a worse percentage in closing saves than the Blue Jays. Manager John Farrell is a good mind whose background is as a pitching coach. I think he’ll get something figured out, but this is a division with little room for error.

Boston (28-26): Speaking of figuring out the bullpen, the Red Sox are a team that has and they’ve figured a lot else out since the season hit its nadir in the first part of May when the record was 12-19. But if the Yankees should be concerned that Pettite’s role is too important, so too do the Sox need to be worried about the fact that right now their ace is Felix Doubront. At 6-2 and a 3.75 ERA in 11 starts, he leads the rotation in wins and ERA. If Pettite’s like Brodeur, I’ll analogize Doubront to Braden Holtby, the Washington Capitals’ goalie who had a magic run in the first round of the playoffs, but started to crack a little bit one round later. The Jon Lester-Josh Beckett-Clay Bucholz trio has to step it up and at least Bucholz and Beckett have shown signs of doing that.

MLB March Report: Tampa Bay Rays

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The Tampa Bay Rays captured the imagination of America’s baseball fans again last year when they came off a 2010 offseason that saw their best players depart to monied climates in Fenway Park (Carl Crawford), Yankee Stadium (Rafael Soriano) and Wrigley Field (Matt Garza). All they did was hang on the periphery of the race all year and then in an unforgettable September chased down the very Red Sox team that stole Crawford and won the wild-card berth in the greatest regular season comeback in baseball history. As a Boston fan, as sick as the whole experience made me, there was nothing to do but salute a team that has every card in the deck stacked against it, but still manages to keep dealing aces (literally, as we’ll see when we talk about their pitching). TheSportsNotebook previews the 2012 Tampa Bay Rays, with an eye, as usual, towards the ability to get on base, hit for power, starting pitching and relief pitching.

ABILITY TO GET ON BASE: Joe Maddon loves to run, so this part of the game is vital. I’m going to open the discussion with one of his team’s big underachievers, and that’s B.J. Upton. The centerfielder has put up subpar OBP numbers for three consecutive years. Yes, his speed is great, but its use is too often limited to sprinting back to the dugout after a failed at-bat. Desmond Jennings came up in the middle of the offseason and showed exceptional plate discipline for a 25-year-old. He’ll start the season in centerfield while Upton recovers from a back injury suffered in spring training, and will then move over to left field. Ben Zobrist puts up on-base percentages in the high .300s, and the power hitters that we’ll get to in a moment do a good job of taking their walks and keeping offensive flow going even when the ball isn’t flying out of the park.

POWER:  It starts with Evan Longoria, but we have to point out a disturbing trend in his numbers. Over the last four years his slugging percentages have been .531, .526, .507 and .495 in that order. We can cut him slack from last year for being hurt early on and then it can be difficult to get the power stroke back in a hurry. And those slugging numbers are still undeniably good. But for a 26-year-old to be losing numbers rather than gaining them should provide a legitimate undercurrent of concern. At least there’s plenty of help in this area, with Carlos Pena being good for 30 home runs a year at first base—and even though Pena’s batting averages are hideous, he consistently draws 85-100 walks a year to cover that up. Zobrist has averaged nearly 20 HRs a season for the past three years, and that’s at a second base spot where you don’t expect to get a power surge. Matt Joyce has shown both home run power and the ability to take it to the alleys in his year and a half as a starter. And if you’re not careful of Jennings, he’ll take you deep, hitting ten bombs in his partial season of 2011. A big lift would come if newly signed DH Luke Scott can regain the power stroke he had in Baltimore from 2008-10 before a shoulder problem ruined his season a year ago.

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STARTING PITCHING:  A staff that already has David Price and James Shields, to go with emerging Jeremy Hellickson has the most highly touted starting pitching prospect breaking into the bigs this year, in lefthander Matt Moore. For a guy who’s only thrown nine innings in the majors, the hype is intense, but Tampa Bay’s track record in bringing pitchers like this up and turning them into top starters quickly deserves the benefit of the doubt. Price has settled into his role as the #1 starter. Even if last year was a bit of a downer with a 3.49 ERA, he still takes his turn consistently and the ERA probably comes down closer to the 2.72 level of 2010. Shields had the worst season of his career in ’10, but turned it around with the best season of his life in 2011, winning 16 games and posting a sub-3.00 ERA for the first time in the majors. Hellickson went to the post 29 times in his first big league year, with a 13-10 record and 2.95 ERA being the result. If Moore comes through, that’s four starters Maddon can comfortably hand the ball to in a big game. Jeff Niemann is penciled in as the fifth starter and Wade Davis is also likely to see his share of starts. Both are classic #5 starters—they’re ERAs are in the mid-4s, but they won’t embarrass you or blow out the bullpen.

RELIEF PITCHING:  There are real problems here. Kyle Farnsworth did a surprisingly decent job in the closer’s role last year, but still blew six of his 31 save chances. Even with a 2.18 ERA, that’s a high percentage of saves to be coughing up. Joel Peralta has pitched well the last two seasons, but those are the only two good years the 36-year-old has had in the majors. Fernando Rodney joins the list of 35 and over pitchers with a mediocre track record. Ideally Maddon would get J.P. Howell back and pitching well. He missed 2010 with shoulder surgery and struggled in his comeback year. Tampa Bay’s got some serious work to do, both in terms of in-game mixing and matching to try and survive, and looking to bring in some outside help, especially if the summer wears on and the team has a chance to win the AL East and avoid the new one-game wild-card playoff situation.

LAS VEGAS OVER/UNDER WIN TOTAL: 87.5—I think this total is about right. I know a lot of observers see Tampa as an easy 90-95 win team and a great bet on the Over, but I have a hard time looking past the bullpen problems. In a softer division, the starting pitching and power would push them to 90, but when you play 54 games against the Yankees, Red Sox and what I think’s going to be a pretty good Blue Jay team, there’s not room for too many weaknesses. To me, this number is the flip of the coin, but since the rest of the mainstream baseball world is jumping on the Tampa bandwagon, I’m going counterintuitive and taking the Under. Tampa’s always better off when they can play the “nobody believes in us” card and right now the world believes in them.