The Tampa Bay Rays Will Never Win the World Series
The anniversary of the fatal Game 6 decision to pull Blake Snell in the 2020 World Series encapsulates the fallacy of statistic-driven baseball
The Tampa Bay Rays are an amazing success story. Their ability to make the playoffs (5 playoff appearances in the past 5 seasons) on a extremely small payroll is an amazing story about advanced baseball statistics, player evaluation and valuation, and the declining marginal utility of the next $150 million in payroll. Over that 5 year period, the Rays have spent a total of $282.5 million in payroll1 - an average of $56.5 million per season. For comparison, the New York Mets (by far leading the league) spent $334 million in 2023 alone, while winning 25 less games and finishing 4th in the NL East, out of the playoffs. You may think this is an outlier, but the league average payroll this year was still an eye-popping $150 million, 232% higher than the Rays payroll. And this is consistent over the period - out of 30 Major League teams, the Rays payroll has never ranked higher than 24th over these same 5 years, and averages 27th in the league. How does this happen?
First and foremost, the Rays, in a small market with poor attendance, have always had to try to win with a small payroll. This has forced the team to attempt to change the game and the unwritten rules of baseball. They try to devise new ways to nick wins from teams with higher payrolls, and thus presumably higher talent. The best players in the league make over $40 million per year, which is approximately 71% of the Rays entire payroll budget - for 40 rostered players. So the best and highest paid players are never available to them.
This entire situation has forced the Rays to innovate and disrupt conventional thinking to find different ways to win baseball games. Their owner, Stuart Sternberg is a former Goldman Sachs executive who made billions buying and selling investment vehicles. He has hired other Wall Street quant-types to take a fresh look at data, valuations of players and where arbitrage may be in the player market. They’ve killed many sacred cows and traditions in the search for new answers to the most important questions: how do we stop the other team from scoring runs, and how do we manufacture the most runs possible. Here are a few examples:
The Rays used statistics and data analysis to revolutionize the infield shift and positioning of players to be where the ball is mostly likely to go. The shift was not a new concept, but the Rays applied it to most batters in ways it had never been tried before. They began this in 2008 and it became the major league standard in the 2010s. It affected the number of hits achieved and runs scored by opponents so effectively that MLB banned the practice this past season in their quest to make baseball more entertaining. Fans love hits and runs, apparently.
5 of the top 10 highest paid players are starting pitchers. As these players are out of reach, the Rays have revolutionized the traditional pitching rotation by adding relief pitchers as starters, now called “openers.” This began in 2018 when the Rays did not have 5 recognizable starters on the roster and the opener was born They made a practice of it that many teams copied and has become another standard they’ve invented.
Likewise, the Rays have had to make due with other, marginal starting pitchers. One of the keys to this success has been limiting their starter’s exposure to hitters - the Rays regularly pull starters after they’ve gone two times through the opposing team’s order. This leads to lower pitch counts and better results -especially with pitchers who are not dominant in the league.
“The numbers speak for themselves. As the lineup turns over, a typical starting pitcher’s OPS-against climbs from .705 to .731 to .771.” Source
Relief pitchers are much cheaper from a salary perspective than starters. and when you get less innings from starting pitching than other teams, it means you need more innings from relievers to finish games. To accomplish this, the Rays have made managing a major league 40-man roster an art form, bringing pitching arms back and forth between the minors and majors to eat up innings and get outs. Though I can’t find the stat, I would bet the Rays make more roster moves than any other team and MLB is likewise cracking down on this practice to encourage more runs.
In terms of Wall Street trading, the Rays have made big trades to sell players at the peak of their value (especially in the case of pitchers and also when the salary rules will lead the player’s contract to be unaffordable for the Rays). The Rays have a long history of trading their top players for prospects and getting rich on the deals, including the Rays trading away Delmon Young, Matt Garza, Aubrey Huff, Chris Archer, Jesse Chavez, Victor Zambrano, Evan Longoria, James Shields, Will Myers, Ji-Man Choi and others; they’ve gotten back a plethora of players who have been major pieces they used to win pennants.
The Rays also take chances on injured or struggling former stars to see if they can get value out of them. These include hits like Carlos Pena, Cliff Floyd, Eric Hanske, Troy Percival, Fernando Rodney, Grant Balfour, Joel Peralta, Charlie Morton, and Nathan Eovaldi; and some duds like Johnny Damon and Manny Ramirez. Their current roster is made up of players who struggled elsewhere, including Christian Bethancourt, Yandy Diaz, Isaac Paredes, Randy Arozarena, Jose Siri, Manuel Margot, Harold Ramirez, Drew Rasmussen, and Jeffrey Springs.
The Rays instituted a major effort to sign Latin American players early to secure their rights and leverage the friendly rookie contracts to maximize results. MLB.com reports they are the “one of the most active and respected teams on the international market.” This led the Rays to field the first ever all Latino team this year.
Finally, the Rays are pitcher whisperers. Tom Verducci says this particular skill is “the envy of the rest of the MLB.” Using statistics and analysis, they have rehabilitated the career of countless journeymen relievers, in some cases turning them into starters and in others, teaching them new pitches or pitch selection and sequencing to improve results dramatically.
So, these are some of the ways that the Rays win in the regular season despite all of the odds against them. How does that translate into postseason victories over the past 5 seasons? Not very well.
Despite their success, the Rays have not made it past the division series in 4 of the past 5 years. Indeed, their playoff record over these 5 years is 15-19 - a 25% decline in their winning percentage compared to the regular season. Why does this happen?
The truth of the matter is that the steps they’ve taken to improve their results pays dividends over a long, 162 game season. Advantages in statistics and data play out over a larger sample size, and the too-long major league season levels out statistical anomalies and allows the Rays to win games against more talented teams.
The playoffs are, however, an entirely different game. First, the teams in the playoffs are obviously the cream of the crop. It is a tougher competition. These playoff teams have (with the exception of the Rays) some of the best players in the game able to take over a short series, especially with starting pitching. Three great starting pitchers can win a series almost on their own, and the Rays, despite their best efforts, usually do not have the caliber of pitchers available to do this.
Second, the short nature of the playoff competition (anywhere from 1 to 7 game series), muddles the statistical nature of the Rays strategy. Statistics do not apply to individual events, so even if the Rays could win a series against a more talented team over a 20-25 game span, they can lose three in a row very easily and be out. Their results show this is so.
Third, and again because of the small sample size, playoff baseball games are often won with emotion - playing the hot hand and counting on great players to step up and win in the moment. Baseball results (especially hitting) are streaky in nature and confound statistics in small sample sizes. More talented players are much more likely to dominate a playoff game for these reasons.
Nothing demonstrates the shortcomings of the Rays way better than Game 6 of the 2020 World Series (I was there!) in which manager Kevin Cash made a statistical decision to pull Blake Snell from the game. Snell had pitched five and a third innings of lights out baseball, striking out 9 with 73 pitches and only 1 hit for the talented Dodgers. Snell gave up his second hit of the night and was suddenly pulled from the game. I am sure the statistics (the Rays way, if you will) told Cash that he had better matchups in the bullpen, but this was a fatal decision. Snell had the hot hand and could have gone 3 more innings. Instead, in came Nick Anderson who threw a wild pitch and then gave up a homer to Mookie Betts. Game Over, 2-1. Series Over, 4-2. Today is the third anniversary of this debacle, that demonstrates more clearly than anything else that the statistical approach to baseball can win over a long season, but falls short in the most important moments.
Until such time as the Rays are able to retain or sign top talent, or devise a strategy heretofore unseen to win their way in the most important moments in playoff baseball, it is highly unlikely they will ever win a World Series.
Team payroll stats for the past 5 years sourced from http://www.stevetheump.com/index.htm