BOSTON -- It was a little before 11 in the morning at Fenway Park on Saturday, a couple of hours before the Rays would split a doubleheader with the Red Sox, on their way to eventually taking three out of four in their weekend set to get even with the Yankees atop the American League East at 40-24. They have started this season the way they finished 2018. After losing to the Orioles last Aug. 8, in front of fewer than 10,000 fans at Tropicana Field, the Rays owned a 57-57 mark. Kevin Cash’s Rays proceeded to post a record of 33-15 to close out last season. A few minutes later on this day, on the other side of Fenway, Alex Cora would say, “If the season had lasted two more weeks, [the Rays] would have been a Wild Card.”
This all means that the Rays continue to be a great act that nobody is watching, at least at home. They continue to be, because of their low payroll -- last in the big leagues, the $62 million they are spending on baseball players this season is about $160 million less than the team against whom they played two at Fenway on this day -- as amazing a story as there is in their sport. They were out ahead last season on the concept of "The Opener." They keep finding players who help them go toe-to-toe with the big boys. And now, as they keep imagining their own possibilities, they create the rather amazing possibility of the Yankees and Red Sox ending up in the AL Wild Card game this season.
So I stood in front of the Rays’ dugout with Matt Quatraro, Cash’s bench coach on Saturday morning. The weather was merely perfect for baseball, as it would be for the next 10 hours at old Fenway. From down the dugout somebody yelled out, “If you can’t play today, you can’t play.”
I asked Quatraro why people continue to be surprised about the way the Rays play baseball.
“You’ve got ask them,” he said.
Then he grinned, “It’s good to surprise people, even if it’s getting harder.”
The Rays surprise you in all ways, as they continue to stay with the Yankees in the East and put daylight between themselves and the Red Sox. The team that became famous for openers last season got a brilliant performance from Yonny Chirinos on Friday, as he nearly closed down Game 1 of the series by himself. Chirinos pitched eight innings, allowed the Red Sox just two hits and, in the last moment of the game when the Red Sox had a bases-loaded chance against him, he didn’t just punch out Andrew Benintendi and Rafael Devers, but seemed to knock them out with pitches at the knees that made both look helpless.
“Really good pitches to really good hitters,” Cash said, with typical understatement.
Then, in the first game of Saturday’s doubleheader, Ryan Yarbrough followed up on Chirinos' performance by pitching into the eighth and allowing just four hits and a couple of runs. Boston's David Price ended the long baseball day with an ace-level performance of his own. It is a tribute to these players, whether you know them or not, as well as general manager Erik Neander, and Cash -- who has done brilliant work with his team over the last couple of seasons. We made a lot last season of how little the A’s, who would earn an AL Wild Card berth, spent on players. The Rays are spending even less this season. And, by the way, they’ve won the way they have so far with Blake Snell, last year’s AL Cy Young Award winner, owning just a 4-5 record after beating the Red Sox on Sunday, after going 21-5 last season.
I asked Cash what happened last season when his team took off and generated the kind of positive momentum -- and positive play -- on which you simply can’t put a pricetag, high or low.
Cash talked about pitching and pitching depth, then about how some kids came along, got a chance and made the most of that chance. He also spoke about how his players began to get the sense, as the season went along, that they belonged playing with the big boys.
“We just started to find ways to win,” Cash said. “We started to go into places like Yankee Stadium and even gain confidence there.”
When the Rays make moves, they so often seem to make smart ones -- without anybody in the organization having the margins of error enjoyed by the Red Sox and Yankees, who can bury their mistakes underneath money. They brought in Austin Meadows last season in the Chris Archer trade, who became one of those kids who seized opportunities about whom Cash spoke on Saturday. Now, Meadows has hit like one of the AL's stars. This year, they brought in Avisail Garcia, who was an All-Star with the White Sox just two years ago, and he has 11 home runs. Second baseman Brandon Lowe, their own third-round Draft pick in 2015, hit two homers against the Red Sox on Sunday and now has 13 for the year. They also signed Charlie Morton as a free agent, and he is 7-0.
They brought in a professional bat like Ji-Man Choi, who started 2018 with the Brewers. Kevin Kiermaier, who first showed up with the Rays in September 2013, is a guy who has always been able to catch it in center field. Kiermaier is starting to hit again, and enjoyed a four-RBI game against Boston on Friday night.
“When [Kiermaier] is hitting, we have a different look to our club,” Cash said.
His club is 73-39 over its last 112 games. There is still a long way for the Rays to go, on short money. They’re still something to see, even without a lot of people watching at The Trop. They outscored the Red Sox 21-9 this weekend. You know who they’re no longer surprising? Themselves.