If you’re going to get into the Tampa Bay Rays you have to accept some things.
You buy in to manager Joe Maddon, who, depending on the day, will convince you he is both a genius and a madman, as he tests the limits of career reclamation projects, marginal late-game substitutions, excessive pitching changes and abnormal lineup construction. You fully understand that this team will never, ever, under any circumstances, spend more than $60 or $70 million on players, meaning a cavalcade of early-20-somethings and replacement-level scrubs will take the field every night. You tolerate parrots, penguins, snakes, magicians, mariachi bands, road trips undergone entirely in costume, and all other forms of bizarre distraction occurring regularly in the clubhouse. You live with the fact that, on the field and off, things are going to get weird.
If you can get through all that — and we haven’t even mentioned the stadium — there’s one more provision you’re going to have to accept: things probably aren’t going to work out. Look, for the most part, life’s going to be good. You’ve got four consecutive 90-plus win seasons; playoff berths in four of the past six years; and last year’s Cy Young winner. But in the end, like Tuesday night when the Rays dropped out of the 2013 post-season with a loss to the Red Sox, things just aren’t going to work out. You see, they can’t.
This is a team that started Sam Fuld 48 times this season. Kelly Johnson 94 times. Matt Joyce 109 times. None hit above .235 or got on base at better than a .328 clip. They combined for exactly as many extra-base hits as the 75 Mike Trout put up. Combined, the trio was worth just 1.9 wins above replacement. And there are others. Like Sean Rodriguez, who got into 96 games and struck out in more than a quarter of his plate appearances. Or the catching duo of Jose Molina and Jose Lobaton, who split the backstop duties almost precisely down the middle while combining for a truly mediocre triple-slash line of .241/.305/.349.
Outside of a weapons-grade starting rotation, this just isn’t a good team. The Rays have to be smarter, sleeker and shrewder in the way they acquire talent and develop it. And for the most part they are. A rotation featuring David Price, Matt Moore, Alex Cobb and Chris Archer — four of the most talented young pitchers in the game — does not happen by accident. Teams would kill for this.
And yet, they still have to get lucky. The Rays must roll the dice on players who fall out of favour with other clubs or post mediocre, value-plummeting numbers in their late 20s or early 30s. Players like James Loney, who had an OPS of .630 the season before he landed in Tampa. Or Yunel Escobar, who was coming off an unsightly .253/.300/.344 season when he arrived and whose nitwit antics had worn out his welcome with two major league clubs. Or Fernando Rodney, the mercurial closer who walked more batters than he struck out in 2011 and had five consecutive seasons with an ERA above 4.00.
All the Rays got from Loney was .299/.348/.430 this season. And from Escobar, an OPS that rose to .698 — hardly anything to write home about but acceptable for an excellent defensive shortstop, especially when considering he avoided all manner of public indiscretion. And from Rodney — the greatest risk/reward of them all — the Rays got a hurricane of a 2012 season: 48 saves in 50 opportunities, a 0.60 ERA, 76 strikeouts and 15 walks in 74.2 innings, followed up by a decent 2013. This is what the Rays do. They make bread out of spent grains.
But it can only work for so long. Take Rodney, who was always still the berserk closer constantly at odds with the guidance of his pitches. And if you didn’t know, in your heart of hearts, that ultimately the great Fernando Rodney Project would combust in Maddon’s face, that eventually fate would revert, the fastball would be wild and the changeup ineffective, then you were kidding yourself.
It happened Monday night in Game 3 of the ALDS against Boston, when Rodney compromised the Rays one-run lead in the top of the ninth, allowing a leadoff walk to score. And it happened again Tuesday, also in the ninth, when Rodney walked two and plunked another, forcing Maddon to lift him from the game.
That relief appearance was so indicative of everything that is Rays baseball, it’s insane. Rodney was Maddon’s seventh pitcher of the night; he eventually used an astonishing nine. He never wanted to use that many, but when starter Jeremy Hellickson began to crumble in the second, Maddon let loose on the control panel, ordering anyone in his bullpen with a pulse to warm up.
He madly smashed the buttons on his lineup dashboard as well, at one point pinch-hitting for a pinch hitter because the Red Sox had momentarily gained the matchup edge with a new reliever. Who could blame him for trying; the roster contortions had worked Monday night, when Maddon sacrificed the designated hitter spot in his lineup to make a defensive replacement that, against all reason, worked when Lobaton hit a walk-off homer to erase Rodney’s implosion and give him a much undeserved victory.
It stands to reason that Maddon doesn’t particularly crave managing every game like he’s The Red Baron maneuvering over the Western Front, but some days he just has to. The man has no other choice. Monday and Tuesday night were the quintessence of that. And it almost worked.
When Maddon gave Hellickson the hook in the second inning Tuesday, the bases were loaded with none out. Implausibly, the man he called on to salvage the situation — Jamey Wright, a 38-year-old journeyman making $900,000 whose primary pitch is a mid- to high-80s cutter — needed just six pitches to clean things up with a strikeout and a double play.
It was just the kind of ridiculous fortune, from an unlikely source, that always seems to be working in Maddon and the Rays’ favour, and just the kind of moment that must make it a hell of a ride to follow the team. But when you go 3-for-21 with runners in scoring position during the ALDS, the luck has to run out. When you’ve played four elimination games in nine days and won all of them, the luck has to run out. When Loney is hitting third, Johnson is your DH and a 33-year-old bench player on his third team this season, David DeJesus, is leading off, the luck has to run out.
That’s what happened. And that’s what will likely keep happening for the Rays, who, despite making the post-season three times since, have not won a series since 2008. At this time of year, the competition is too good. Only the best remain and no matter how madly you mash the buttons or wildly you wind the joystick, there are some handicaps you can’t overcome. Mere chance simply isn’t enough.