Tampa Bay Rays looking for redemption in 2021

The Tampa Bay Rays season ended on a sour note in 2020. They are looking for redemption this year and a return trip to the World Series.

Spring training is a time when a fan’s mood can swing back and forth between boundless hope and deep despair. The following is a debate between the optimistic me and the pessimistic me regarding the 2021 Tampa Bay Rays.

Opti-me: The  Rays are the reigning American League champions. They finished 2020 with four more wins than any other team and seven more than any team in their division. Can Rays fans finally get some respect?

Apparently not. Las Vegas makes the Rays out to be only the fifth favorite this season behind the Yankees, White Sox, Twins and Blue Jays. But as baseball’s ultimate no-respect team, the Rays are used to being overlooked.

So here’s fair warning: Watch out world, Randy Arozarena is on his way and once again the Rays are coming with him.

Pessi-me: What the Rays did in 2020 was exceptional. But the problem for low-budget teams is always doing it year after year. The Rays figure to spend about $63 million this season. That may not be dead last, but it will certainly be bottom five.

And lack of money means lack of flexibility when things get tough. Which, over 162 games, they do. The Rays were fortunate in 2021; they got two-thirds of their starts out of their four top guys. They can’t count on being as healthy in 2021.

Tampa Bay Rays management also has this funny conception that there is an inverse relationship between pitcher use and pitcher value. So last season Kevin Cash only let his starter pitch into the seventh inning six times. That puts a major strain on your bullpen, and it also causes morale issues. Don’t believe me, just ask Blake Snell. You’ll find him in San Diego.

Opti-me: As Kevin Cash has said, the Rays have a pen full of hard-throwing arms. So bullpen use is not an issue. If I had Nick Anderson, Pete Fairbanks, Ryan Thompson and Diego Castillo, I’d work them at rented-mule paces, too.

For the record, the collective ERA of the top five guys out of the Tampa pen last season was 2.56. And that was at the equivalent of 275 innings if you stretched it across a normal 162-game season. You’ll be hard-pressed to get that out of any starter in the AL.

Four of those five – Nick Anderson, Pete Fairbanks, Ryan Thompson and Diego Castillo – are back and healthy. Blake Snell was a quality pitcher for Tampa Bay, but even he has to fit into the team concept. It’s what took the Rays to the World Series into the first place.

Pessi-me: Let’s double back to the Arozarena question. The Rays had an average offense in 2021: sixth in runs per game, 11th in average. They did virtually nothing to improve it over the off-season unless you count shipping Hunter Renfroe away as an improvement.

So the entire notion of upgrading the offense is riding on Arozarena’s back. I get the excitement over the .358 post-season average, the 10 homers, the 1.29 OPS.

But that’s all built on one hot month. He basically played one regular season month, and in that month he looked at least somewhat more ordinary. Plus pitchers will get a chance to adjust to him in 2021 in a way they did not get in 2020.

The baseball record book is full of kids who had one hot rookie month, then came back and bombed one season later. How sure are you that Arozarena is the real deal?

Opti-me: No need to worry about Arozarena. This kid hit .292 at Triple A, .305 at Double A, and showed power at every level. That includes the majors; remember, he hit seven home runs in that month with the Rays.

As for not changing the rest of the offense, why mess with success? The lineup one through nine is filled with guys between 24 and 30 – their prime years – who know how to win. Check out the team’s Pythagoreans. The numbers say they should have won 36 games last season. They actually won 40.

Again, stretch it out over a full season and that’s an 11-game difference between the win-loss expectation and reality. You know what that is? That’s a team that knows how to maximize run production. And it isn’t a one-time thing: the Rays have beat the numbers in each of the last three seasons. This is a smart team.

And on the chance that the team does need a mid-season pickup, GM Eric Neander can draw from the strongest farm system in baseball. That’s not me saying so; that’s MLB, which a few days ago released its assessment of all 3 systems. The Rays were No. 1, baby.

Pessi-me: The lineup may be smart, but that doesn’t mean it can hit. And eventually the breaks even out. The Rays had six regulars who hit .230 or worse last year. Your DH, Yoshi Tsutsugo, batted .197 with no power, so this season you dumped him for Austin Meadows, who hit .205 with no power. Why? Because that was your best option.

Your center fielder, Kevin Kiermaier, hasn’t topped .230 since 2017. Your entire offense is basically Yandy Diaz plus whatever Arozarena can actually produce.

You’ve lost Snell and Charlie Morton, both key guys from your 2020 rotation. You’re replacing them with Chris Archer, Rich Hill and Michael Wacha, essentially the has-beens Hall of Fame.

Meanwhile, the Yankees have all the talent a couple hundred million can buy, the Blue Jays are on the rise and nobody can take the Red Sox for granted two seasons in a row. Enjoy that AL Pennant; you earned it. But don’t count on a repeat.

I’m not saying there won’t be another pennant flying over the Tampa Bay area this fall…but the Jays, playing up in Dunedin, have a better chance of winning it.

Opti-me: Archer’s coming out of a toxic environment in Pittsburgh and returning to a healthy one. Rich Hill, 29-16 since 2017, is under-appreciated everywhere he goes.

Arozarena will win AL Rookie of the Year, and  maybe MVP as well. Glasnow is a Cy Young candidate. Combine them with the experience this team has up and down the roster plus the depth of bullpen arms and the Tampa Bay Rays are destined for a return trip to the World Series.

The Dodgers will not be happy about that.