Tampa Bay Rays, League Leader in Runs and Shots


NS. PETERSBURG, Fla. – Chad Mottola was sure he was done with baseball. He had given the game 16 years, all to get 25 hits in the majors and a thousand restless nights in the minors. At odd hours, nagging questions swirled in his mind: How could he change his oscillation? Would he get another call to the majors? Should he quit?

When Mottola finally retired in 2007 at the age of 36, he considered a career in football watching. However, a friend thought he would make a good baseball coach, and the job offered to him—at the lowest rank of minors—was suitable for his young family. Mottola took it, loved it, and now guides the surprisingly solid offense of the Tampa Bay Rays, the best team in the American League.

“The kids were so innocent and it brought back my innocence,” Mottola said recently at his home shelter at Tropicana Field, not far from his first coaching job with a Toronto farm team in Dunedin, Florida. “I thought, ‘You know what, I think I have something to offer these guys.’ “I enjoy seeing people succeed, even getting a good night’s sleep, and I talk a lot about it. That’s my whole purpose for the day: How do I get you to rest when you lay your head down?”

These days, it seems it’s the Rays who keep the Opponents up at night. They’ve gleefully overturned conventional thinking since their first winning season in 2008, but now they’re doing it better than ever: They set a franchise record with 100 wins in a major league, with the best offense in team history this season. -high 857 runs were made.

Rays make their way into the playoffs as rivals fight for wild spots, and while scoring all those runs, they also managed the AL in the qualifiers, challenging the traditionalist idea that teams should – or at least should – strive for contact.

With the help of rookie short defender Wander Franco, who had more hits than swings in a 43-game final winning streak reaching base, they reduced their stretches. But the Rays, who will host the winner of the wild game on Thursday to kick off their episode series, are not a slapstick team.

“Nobody’s afraid of the guy who’s going to break his kick and make contact and short or second a ball on the ground,” said second baseman Brandon Lowe, who led the team at Homers (39, with three on Saturday) but he also has 166 strikeouts. “So if a guy is going to do it 0-0 or 0-1, with our defense and the team we have, he’s like, ‘Thank you, thank you for selling your club like that.’

“There’s something to be said about hitting your two-hits – and if you really look at it, how many guys take a two-hit approach? How many times do you go to batting practice and say, ‘Okay, I’m going to take it like I’m hitting it with two hits.’ A lot of guys don’t do that. it’s hard to get there and completely change your shot, so obviously nobody wants to shoot out. However, I think it’s a more positive point of view to be able to take your hit and inflict damage rather than just breaking your hit to make contact.

The Rays can live with strikes as they realize they are not perfect players – at least none in their price range. According to the Baseball Prospectus, they’ve spent just $83 million this season without making $12 million without a single player on their 40-man roster (26th in the majors). Rays seek out players with certain skills and place them in the right spots to make up for the lack of versatile stars.

They admit flaws, highlight their strengths, and now have a five-year streak of improving their overall standings in scored runs, from 25th place in 2017 to date.

“They all have trade-ins,” said Erik Neander, Rays head of baseball operations. “It doesn’t have to be like, ‘Oh, strikethroughs, whatever.’ But we try to make the most of what we have and what’s best for our players. It’s the guys in the batting box, also those who run the bases, but also the defenders and some guys who strike. exceptional in other areas. That’s also important.”

While the Rays missed their first three players from last year’s World Series – they traded Blake Snell to San Diego, let Charlie Morton go to Atlanta as a free agent and lost Tyler Glasnow to Tommy John surgery – their offense remained largely intact . Add Franco and Nelson Cruz, subtract Willy Adames and Hunter Renfroe, and it’s pretty much the same group that hit .207 in the last three rounds of the season.

In theory, the Rays’ penchant for strikes makes them vulnerable to the power levers most teams used in October. (“It’s fair to always have that in the back of your mind,” Director Kevin Cash agreed. “When you’re facing big-hit shooters or staffs, how do we match up?”)

But the Rays led the majors in strikeouts last season and still snatched away two of their first championship victories, largely aided by a sudden hard blast from outfielder Randy Arozarena. Cash is the master of exploiting matches; This season, he used the league’s highest 157 different squads and frequently recruited substitutes. The team excels in situational inning, hitting .357 hits with runners in the third and less than two outs (MLB average: .316) until Friday, and recording by far the most points in the majors in the ninth round.

Mottola said he never pays attention to team totals because every hitter has different strengths and weaknesses. His touring professional career, which began in 1992 as Cincinnati’s fifth overall draft pick, one point ahead of Derek Jeter, has taught him that there is nothing absolute in his craft.

“Nobody understood hitting,” Mottola said. “I know a lot of people on the internet claim to have all these answers and everything. But my experience as an actor has made me realize that no one is answering and that there is no one way to think. I played with many good players and none of them taught me the same.”

The proliferation of personal swing trainers worries Mottola; He fears that thriving hitters will be trained as robots working on outdated techniques that may not be the best for them. Then again, he said it was part of his responsibility to examine any theory that might be of interest to his hitters.

“You hear about the cookie cutter approach all the time, and it’s the least bit against the cookie cutter,” Lowe said. “When I first came here in 2018, he sat me down and said, ‘I want you to tell me everything about your kick, how you want to hit, your approach, your drill work, everything so I can help you understand better your kick and what you need to do to optimize it.’ He wants to know something about you before he tells you something to do.”

This is a useful tip for understanding an organization that is often portrayed as tightly tied to analytics. No matter how much the Rays looked to the data for answers, they couldn’t translate the lessons without the kind of personal connection Mottola was looking for.

Coaches build trust by listening to players, so players don’t panic when Cash writes an unconventional roster or Neander makes a surprising trade. They usually just shrug and keep winning.

“It’s an approach that is the priority of the team here – it’s that kind of atmosphere that’s set for us, and it starts from the top down,” said third baseman Joey Wendle. “We’ve seen success in doing this, and if we’re succeeding, why would we want to change that?”



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