Question about WAR and strand rates

I'm a Mariners fan, so I watched very few Rays games last year and am not as familiar as most here with their 2009 season.  Also, forgive me evoking what must have been a frustrating experience. 

I was trying to figure out why the Rays only won 84 games last year.  The Rays WAR values in 2009 according to Fangraphs show a 100 win team in terms of actual performance, and this high value is supported by 2008’s team WAR and the fact that they went to the World Series (and play in the AL East!).  The crazy emergence of Zobrist and the career years of Crawford and Bartlett would seem to counterbalance the collapses from Kazmir, Upton etc.  You’re obviously aware of their roster and player performances so I’ll just say that I recognize that the roster was not only as talented as '08, but played up to their talent last year.  Essentially the Rays neither lost talent, nor failed to live up to their true talent level.  So my question is this:

 Is the runs scored/runs allowed disparity simply because of a really unlucky strand/L.O.B. rate for both their hitters and pitchers?  I tried to research this myself, but it’s hard to decipher exactly what the numbers here tell us because good pitchers are supposed to strand a higher percentage of runners than bad ones, so I would have to know what rate their level of pitching talent should normally strand, which for individuals can be found with career averages but for a team is difficult.  I couldn’t find strand rate for hitters and the same problem would apply anyway.  Basically I’m asking whether bad luck with strand rates is the main reason why the Rays won so few games.