It was inevitable. The image of the defeated Tampa Bay Rays was going to appear sooner or later in the 2023 Major League Baseball campaign. The more they won, the closer they came to losing and ending their streak from another era. As paradoxical as it may seem, it is the reality of baseball, a sport in which the eternal undefeated is out of the question.
The Rays were, for two weeks, the absolute MLB show, perhaps a preview of what they can achieve this season. They won 1, 2, 3, 4… 13 games in a row! Until they lost on Friday the 14th with the Toronto Blue Jays, the executioners who have ended the streak.
However, Kevin Cash’s boys matched the best streak to start a contest in the modern era, held by Atlanta (1982) and Milwaukee (1987), not counting the St. Louis Maroons, who took 20 straight wins in the start of the 1884 season, 139 years ago.
But that was another ball. Since 1901, only 6 teams had achieved at least 10 successes in a row to start a campaign. And, if we analyze what has happened in this century, the 2003 Royals were the only ones that came close to ten wins in the first games of the course.
That’s why there’s such a stir with the Tampa network, which has simply managed to break the mold with baseball that never fails to impress. Despite being among the rosters with the least economic potential in MLB year after year, the Rays have found the formula to challenge the most powerful and compete at the highest level for long periods of time.
Since 2018, for example, only three teams (Dodgers, Astros and Yankees) have a better winning percentage than the Rays. The Angelenos have a record of 465 wins and 258 losses, for an average of .643, followed by Houston (446-276/.618) and the Bronx Bombers (435-287/.601), while Tampa exhibits a record of 425- 297 (.589).
We know we’ve got a long way to go… but it certainly doesn’t hurt to start out 13-0.#RaysUp pic.twitter.com/WZFY3V3bJA
— Tampa Bay Rays (@RaysBaseball) April 14, 2023
The movements of its general management, the solid work from their farms and the decisive commitment to the use of sabermetrics have been the keys to putting together an electric squad, which is based on a deep pitching with a lot of prominence of young openers and a bullpen of power, a zealous defense that moves to the beat of advanced metrics, and an offense that can kill you with a home run as well as with a squeeze play.
During their 13-game winning streak, the Rays led the Majors in runs scored (101), OPS (.941), extra-base hits (61) and run differential (+71). In that span, they were so dominant that their hitters hit 32 home runs and their pitchers allowed just 30 runs.
According to data by Sarah Langs, Tampa’s run differential is the third-widest for a team through the first 13 games of a season, second only to the St. Louis Maroons (+114) and New York Gothams (+73) in 1884 Although we may seem repetitive, this is another proof that the Rays have emulated records from other times, from another baseball, when the mound had not even moved at the current distance.
For Cuba and its millions of fans around the world, the streak of the Florida franchise touches us closely, because two players born on the island have been protagonists of it. Randy Arozarena led Tampa in RBIs (16) and hits (16), while Yandy Díaz posted his best home run record (4) in the first 13 games of a contest, in addition to maintaining his usual discipline at the plate and receiving more walks than strikeouts .
By the way, it is valid to clarify that the Rays’ streak is not the absolute record for consecutive victories in Major League history. That honor belongs to Cleveland, which linked a 22-win streak in 2017 to break the long-standing mark of 21 wins in a row set by the Chicago Cubs in 1935.
Quick of the week
- Just a week ago, Cuban-American Nolan Arenado reached 300 home runs in his major league career. The Cardinals third baseman hit a changeup from lefty Eric Lauer (Brewers) and sent the ball 393 feet to left field at American Family Field in Milwaukee. With Arenado, there are 154 men who have reached 300 homers in MLB, although only 60 of them (including Nolan) have done so before reaching 32 years of age. Arenado is the eighth active player to break the 300 home run barrier and also the eighth with that number of homers and at least 10 Gold Gloves. Of the 7 who had achieved this last combination, 6 are members of the Cooperstown Hall of Fame.
- Jorge Soler is already in the Top-10 of Cuban home run hitters in Major League history. On Wednesday, April 12, the slugger The Marlins devoured a 100-mile sinker from left-hander José Alvarado (Phillies) and sent it flying 416 feet through left field at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia. With this home run, “El Crudo” reached 138 full-round hits in his MLB career, equaling José Cardenal in tenth place on the Antillean list. Soler, the third active Cuban with the most home runs after José Abreu (243) and Yasmani Grandal (178), now aims to hunt down Yoenis Céspedes (165) in ninth place on the record.
- We must get used to it: every week we will have at least one outstanding note from Yordan Álvarez. The man from Las Tunas hit his fourth home run of the season this Friday and reached 17 RBIs, second among all MLB players. But the most important thing is that this hit allowed him to round off the 300 RBIs in his career, a figure that no Cuban had reached so quickly (380 games). In fact, in Major League history only 15 players —among them 7 Cooperstown immortals— managed to overcome that barrier in fewer challenges.
- Through his first 8 games of the season, Lourdes Jr. posted a .161/.182/.161 offensive line (average/on-base percentage/slugging percentage) with 9 strikeouts in 33 plate appearances. His initial steps with the Arizona jersey could not generate more uncertainty, but this week he reversed the situation with 7 rockets in 17 at-bats (.412), 2 doubles, 1 triple, 1 home run, 6 RBIs and a 1.268 OPS, among the 20 MLB’s best since last Saturday. In this span, he reached 500 career hits in MLB.
- Double, triple, homer, single… that was Venezuelan Luis Arraez’s offensive line against the Phillies on April 11, when he became the first player in Marlins history to hit for the cycle. “La Regadera”, as he is known, stole the show at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, where five players have achieved the cycle and only one (David Bell in 2005) belongs to the host cast. Arraez is the sixth Venezuelan to hit for the cycle in MLB. César Tovar (1972), Carlos Guillén (2006), Carlos González (2010), Pablo Sandoval (2011) and Eduardo Escobar (2019) had done it before.
- The right-hander Johan Oviedo chained 5 starts with no more than 3 runs allowed between September and October 2022, but his debut this year was not the best. On April 3, against Boston, the man from Havana accepted 3 home runs, 4 earned runs and gave away 4 tickets in 4.2 episodes, a terrible sign for the start of the season. However, in the 2 following appearances of him he has managed to correct the course to become one of the most reliable arms of the Pirates. Last Sunday he retired 6.2 scoreless innings against the White Sox, and this Friday he struck out 10 to the Cardinals, the top of his MLB career. Now Oviedo has two consecutive starts with 6+ innings of work and 1 or less earned innings allowed, something he had never achieved since his Major League debut in 2020.
- The start of the MLB season is leaving us with unique facts. We already talked about the Rays, but we can’t ignore rookie Jordan Walker, who on Wednesday equaled an untouchable record since 1912! The Cardinals’ youngster posted a 12-game hitting streak, the most for a player 20 or younger at the start of his Major League career. The patrolman tied the record of Eddie Murphy (Philadelphia Athletics), established between August 26 and September 5, 1912. Since that moment, more than a century ago, the person who came closest to the mark was the incomparable Ted Williams , author of a streak of 9 consecutive duels with unstoppables at the beginning of his career at the age of 20.
- Not everything can be good news. Cionel Pérez, one of the best Cuban relievers in the Major Leagues, was punished last Wednesday in Oakland. The Orioles left-hander allowed five hits and two runs in 1.1 innings of work against the Athletics. The last time a team had hit the man from Matanzas so much was on June 16, 2019, when he was still wearing the Astros jersey. On that occasion he allowed 7 runs and the same number of hits against Toronto. The most worrying thing with Cionel is that what happened this week is not an isolated incident. So far this season, the fire-extinguisher has hit .441 (15 hits in 34 at-bats) in 7 appearances, with a 5.14 ERA.
