ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — So Tampa Bay’s offense is not crushing the ball at the same ridiculous pace it was in April.
That’s okay, the falloff was inevitable. Through the first month, the Rays were scoring 6.7 runs per game which put them on a pace not seen across a full season since Joe DiMaggio’s rookie year with the Yankees in 1936.
The Rangers are now scoring more runs per game than Tampa Bay, and the Dodgers are hitting home runs at a faster pace. The Rays have been around 4.9 runs a game for the past six weeks and, again, that’s fine. With a rotation that is among the best in baseball, the Rays do not need to pummel opponents every time they take the field.
What’s really important is that Tampa Bay’s offense no longer disappears for long stretches. Do you recall how excruciating it was to watch the Rays in the wild-card series against Cleveland last October? Tampa Bay scored one run across 24 innings, and that was a solo homer.
That version of offense no longer exists. Or, at least, it rarely shows up.
Yes, the Rays are hitting a lot more home runs, but they are also more consistent, diverse and patient. They walk more, strike out less and steal lots of bases. They are, and this is kind of a shocker, one of the best situational hitting teams in baseball.
The Rays went to Boston a week ago and hit zero balls out of Fenway Park and still won three out of four.
“It was good to see guys making adjustments and finding a way to create runs through speed, which they’ve done all year, but also having quality at-bats with a guy standing on third,” said hitting coach Chad Mottola. “All those things add up to help your hitting line.
“But, really, it’s just been playing the game the right way more than a focus on situational hitting.”
That means, coming into spring, Mottola wasn’t as concerned with specific game situations as much as an overall strategy to hitting. He wanted hitters to recognize pitches and trends during an at-bat or a game. He wanted hitters to chase less and hunt certain pitches more.
The result has been career-high numbers for Randy Arozarena, Harold Ramirez, Josh Lowe, Yandy Diaz, Luke Raley, Wander Franco and Isaac Paredes. But it’s also shown up in little ways when it comes to hitting the opposite way to move a runner up, or drive someone in from third.
Hardly anyone hits well with two strikes, but the Rays were abysmal in that circumstance last year. The team OPS with two strikes was .476, which was 23rd in MLB. This year, they’re third in the league with a .565 OPS with two strikes.
And the numbers are like that across the board. The Rays are first in productive outs. They’re second in getting a runner home from third with less than two outs. They’re second in batting average with runners in scoring position.
“When a guy doesn’t drive in a runner from third, I don’t need to tell him, ‘Hey, you needed to get that run home.’ Nobody feels worse than the hitter in that situation,” Mottola said. “The only thing we’ll review is, ‘What did you do with the pitch selection? Did you attack early, did you wait for a pitch in the zone?’
“It’s an insult to their baseball IQ to tell them they should have gotten that runner home from third. I heard things like that my whole life. I have nightmares about it to this day. I’m not saying situational hitting isn’t important, but we want to go a little deeper. If you have the right approach for every at-bat, you’re covered.”
While the lineup was once populated with big swingers such as Austin Meadows and Mike Zunino, the Rays are better now at avoiding strikeouts. From Diaz to Franco to Paredes to Ramirez, the Rays have hitters who consistently put the ball in play. That can make a difference late in games when a run needs to be manufactured.
In 2021, the Rays scored three runs or less in 48.7 percent of their games. This season, they’ve cut that percentage nearly in half to 27.5.
“It’s been a combination of the philosophies that (Mottola) is instilling and his messaging to the players, along with the maturation of some of our players,” said general manager Peter Bendix. “We have young players who, collectively, didn’t have a ton of time in the Major Leagues underneath them. They’re very talented and they were learning on the fly. They learned a lot last year by failing.
“Now, we’re seeing the benefits of what they learned last year.”
