We should be concerned about the Rays offense.

by kurby on May 6, 2010 12:04 PM EDT

Everything is rosie in Ray-ville because the Rays are scoring runs. In fact, they are scoring Runs as one of the best offensive teams in the league. However, I am concerned that this trend will end soon, and our offensive numbers will come crashing down. At that point we will start hearing how every bodies batting average outside Crawford and Longoria is terrible. Why do we have to wait until runs come down to notice that our player by player offensive production is simply not that good.

First lets look at our team wOBA.

Team	wOBA
Yankees	0.37
Brewers	0.36
Diamondbacks	0.36
Red Sox	0.36
Twins	0.35
Tigers	0.35
Cubs	0.35
Dodgers	0.34
Phillies	0.34
Rays	0.34
Giants	0.34
Blue Jays	0.34
Rockies	0.33
Royals	0.33
Cardinals	0.33
Nationals	0.33
Marlins	0.32
White Sox	0.32
Padres	0.32
Braves	0.31
Reds	0.31
Angels	0.31
Athletics	0.31
Mets	0.31
Orioles	0.31
Pirates	0.31
Indians	0.31
Rangers	0.31
Mariners	0.29
Astros	0.27

The Rays are 10th in team wOBA following our 2 AL east rivals.

If we break it down to the player level, the numbers get more concerning. Our top wOBA performer is John Jaso(.470) who is sporting an unsustainable walk rate (23.1%) and a very small sample size. Thanks be to Evan Longoria and Carl Crawford who have good offensive production that we can expect to continue. After the small sample size of Willy Aybar we get into struggle town which is where most of our team is residing. Slightly above .330 wOBA for Upton and Brignac and sub .320 for everybody else including our lead off hitter at an underwhelming .300.

Surely these numbers suggest that we shouldn't be at the top of the league in offense and we won't be able to sustain our offensive production going forward unless we have some improvements out of 60% of the lineup.

I do expect some of the offensive production to increase from Bartlett, Zobrist and Pena. I don't know when it will happen, and if it never does we will be in some big trouble.

This post was written by a member of the DRaysBay community and does not necessarily express the views or opinions of DRaysBay staff.

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Comments

Banned for Buzzkill

I’ve heard some people here saying there were some anomalies in the Rays run production, there’s also the fact that the team by and large isn’t hitting home runs.

by kericr on May 6, 2010 12:09 PM EDT reply actions

If that sets your teeth a-chattering, don't look at our strand rate.

DRB: There is certainly good content, but other than that the behavior here is pretty poor; They are right, you are wrong. End of story.

This is supposed to be the less technical, more relaxed blog for cool kids.

by Top Gun Numba 1 on May 6, 2010 12:14 PM EDT reply actions

Ya the same concern can be expressed about when the pitching staff will come crashing down to earth.

by kurby on May 6, 2010 12:17 PM EDT up reply actions

On the bright side

We can play .550 ball the rest of the way and still win 94 games.

So our lead affords us the luxury of being able to come back to earth a bit.

Free Dan Johnson!

by Sveet on May 6, 2010 12:37 PM EDT reply actions

It's almost encouraging to think that so many are struggling

Because they won’t over the course of a whole season. Just like Jaso and Longoria aren’t going to keep up their torrid paces all season, Zobrist won’t go homerless and Bartlett’s not gonna wOBA .300 all year.

by staplemaniac on May 6, 2010 12:42 PM EDT reply actions

Or, if he does, it'll be Briggy time

by ChiBurbRaysFan on May 6, 2010 12:44 PM EDT up reply actions

exactly

by rglass44 on May 6, 2010 12:50 PM EDT up reply actions

Right...

this is telling the story the wrong way. The way I look at it the rays have scored a ton of runs while underperforming offensively. We can’t possible continue to perform so poorly. So our decrease in timely hitting can offset our increase in performance.

Pitching might be a different story.

by kevinjc on May 6, 2010 12:59 PM EDT up reply actions

The concern is what happens if the struggles continue.

Surely the run production will decrease. I guess the question is, what will happen first? Will the run production level out to what it should be or will the players increase their offensive output? The former before the latter could mean a streak of losses.

by kurby on May 6, 2010 1:07 PM EDT up reply actions

Maybe....

To win 97 games we need to win 57% of our games from here on out. If we do a pythag expectation gor that then we need to outscore our opponent by about 15% per game. Right now we’re poutscoring them by 90%. We have some room for error to still get a guaranteed playoff spot.

by rglass44 on May 6, 2010 1:15 PM EDT up reply actions

The math

97-20=77 Wins needed
162-27=135 remaining games
77/135=57%

57%= 1/(1+(RA/RS)^2))
.57+.57(RA/RS)^2)=1
(RA/RS)^2=.43/.57
SQRT=RA/RS
.869=RA/RS
RS/RA=1.15

by rglass44 on May 6, 2010 1:20 PM EDT up reply actions

Furthermore

Right now the team xFIP is 4.12. Our defense definitely helps that (UZR/150 of 11.9 right now and 8.4 last year), so if we assume the true talent level of the defense is 9 UZR/150 that will lnock off an additional .06 runs. So we should expect to give up 4.06 runs per game. To win 97 games we’d need to average 4.669 runs per game. That’s 1.26 runs less than we’re averaging per game right now and right at .3 R/G less than last year.

by rglass44 on May 6, 2010 1:37 PM EDT up reply actions 1 recs