It's cold in the deep, deep south

Adolf Hitler and Ted Bundy are looking for winter coats and ice skates! Hell has officially frozen over!

As improbable… As unbelievable… As preposterous as it sounds, the Tampa Bay Rays (yes THOSE Rays!) are going to the World Series!

In a sign of what they’ve become to the Tampa Bay Area, during the Bucs Sunday night game in Raymond James Stadium against Seattle a Warrick Dunn 1-yard run was greeted by the fans in the stadium with wild cheers.

Was it because Dunn scored a TD or gained a first down? Nope! It was because fans had been made aware (via the scoreboard, their blackberries, Rays’ radio broadcasts and their in-stands neighbors) that the Rays had just tied the game on Carlos Pena’s first-to-home dash in the fifth inning. Chants of “Let’s Go Rays” could be heard on the Buc’s radio broadcast!

For the first ten years of their existence the Rays were an exercise in futility. They finished in last place nine (!) times in those ten years – including 2006 and 2007 – and never finished higher than fourth.

Their team record for wins coming into this season was 70 – SEVENTY(!) – in 2004.

Lofty goals for this season among long-time fans included finishing at or above .500 and finishing third in the AL East.

Now they’ve gone from worst to first – Wild Card qualifier, AL East Champs, ALDS winners and now American League Champions!



And how sweet was it that Rocco Baldelli – after all that he’s been through physically and emotionally the last few years – was the guy who delivered the game winning RBI??


The last team to go from worst record in MLB to the World Series? The 1991 Atlanta Braves. Sure, those Braves lost the Series – possibly the best World Series in history – to the (also worst-to-first) Minnesota Twins. However, that year jump-started a run of 14 straight playoff appearances for the Braves.

Can the Rays follow that Braves example? In today’s AL East, it will be very difficult. The Yankees and Red Sox spend money like the federal government and the Blue Jays are not far behind.

Still, there are similarities to those early-90’s Atlanta teams that are unmistakable. It starts with pitching.

Atlanta had Glavine, Smoltz and Avery who were home-grown. Tampa Bay has Shields, Sonnanstine and Price.

Atlanta traded for Maddux – Tampa Bay traded for Kazmir and Garza.
Neither team has a bullpen that they can count on in the playoffs, especially at the closer spot. Atlanta struggled through guys like Alejandro Pena, Mark Wohlers and John Rocker. The Rays have had Troy Percival (past his prime) and Dan Wheeler.

On the bench, the Braves had (have) Bobby Cox who had been in the game for decades and had finally found the right place for his managerial style. The Rays have Joe Maddon who spent decades with the Angels organization before finally getting his shot to manage – he hasn’t disappointed.

There are a lot of similarities.

The Rays accomplished this championship with the second-lowest payroll in MLB - $44 million.

The good news for Rays’ fans is that many of the young stars on this team are locked up for a few years already. Here’s a great article from MLB.com’s Jim Molony regarding how the team was built. http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20081006&content_id=3600016&vkey=news_tb&fext=.jsp&c_id=tb&partnerId=rss_tb

Rays players and the year their contract ends (includes club option years)

2009	2010	2011	2012	2014	2016
Bradford	Pena	Wheeler	Kazmir	Shields	Longoria
Floyd	Crawford	Baldelli	Price
Miller	Iwamura
Niemann

There are some players – such as Garza, Navarro, Upton, Jackson, Howell, Aybar, Sonnanstine, and Riggans – whose contracts are up after this year. They won’t be able to sign them all, but those first three are critical to maintaining this team.

Navi handles this staff very well and has finally started to produce offensively like the Yankees (who drafted him) and the Dodgers (who groomed him) thought he would. He’s critical to keep.

Upton is one of the brightest young stars in the game, and has hit seven home runs this post-season after struggling through injury all season. He’s still learning to play center field after being drafted as a shortstop, yet when you watch him glide around the outfield you see multiple Gold Gloves in his future. He’s critical to keep.

Garza is only the ALCS MVP. He’s been great ever since he had that dust-up with Navi in Texas mid-summer.



Before the all-star game, Garza was 7-5 with a 3.96 ERA. After the mid-summer classic, he went 4-4 but his ERA was only 3.39 in the second half.

Most importantly last night – in the biggest game of his young career – Garza stepped up and knocked it out of the park! Pitching into the 8th and allowing only

He’s critical to maintain the rotation with Shields, Kazmir and Price.
So the payroll will rise, but that’s to be expected. How much it rises is the key, but I’d expect closer to $64M than $44M next season.

Speaking of David Price, all the rookie did was step into the biggest game in team history in the biggest situation of the post-season thus far and deliver the biggest win in team history.



He enters with the bases loaded and two outs in the eighth and strikes out the Sox hottest clutch hitter, J.D. Drew. Then when it made the most sense to pull the rookie after that emotional out, Maddon sends him out there and he walks the first guy to bring the tying run to the plate with nobody out. What does the rookie do? He strikes out the next two guys – including Boston captain Jason Varitek – and gets the game-ender on a ground ball to 2B.

"I knew that David had a lot of emotional bullets left," Maddon said. "[I] talked to him before the game, and he's not impacted by the situation. So there's Drew [at the plate] -- the right guy, I thought, was David Price."

Price has top-of-the-rotation stuff, and may supplant Shields in that spot as early as next Spring.

The future is certainly bright in St. Petersburg; however it’s the present that we’re concerned with right now. It’s poetic, don’t you think Tampa Bay fans, that the Rays will have to beat a Philadelphia team to win the title?
The Bucs had to go through the Eagles and they did so by closing down Veteran’s Stadium in the NFC title game.

The Lightning had to go through the Flyers in the second round of the NHL playoffs on their way to the Stanley Cup in 2005.

Now the Rays have to take out the Phillies to win the World Series.

Here’s to hoping that the pattern continues! Go Rays!