What happened to the Rays?

[John DiFool]

[Delurking mode]
 
Wow.  Yes like many of you how the Sox have been playing (until their recent hot streak) has been disappointing-for sure before the season started you would have thought that with the Sox below .500 that surely the Rays would be sprinting to the division crown in such circumstances.
 
Instead they are 23-34, and that isn't much of an illusion at least in terms of current performance: Baseball Prospectus has them about 3 games behind where they should be.  Scanning the overall performances of their regulars 2013 vs. now, offense is down pretty much across the entire lineup, with the biggest drops being from Evan Longoria (-36 points of OPS) and Will Myers (-42), with only David DeJesus overperforming.
 
Pitching-wise it's probably even worse: ERA+ drops include David Price (-25) and Chris Archer (-24), with Matt Moore on the DL most of the year.  The pen looks like a real disaster tho (aggregrate regular ERA drop of 46 points), with closer Grant Balfour living down to his name (8.2 BB/9).
 
Can they turn it around, or perhaps they never were really all that good to begin with?  One thing which is striking to me is that they are no longer a young team-lineup averages almost 30 years now.  Any imminent help waiting on the farm?

 

[MakMan44]

The Rays fans on the board can speak to this better than I but as I understand it, they're striking out on the draft quite a bit lately. So while their major league pitchers are struggling/injured, they don't have a lot of depth to turn to in AAA.

 

[bosockboy]

They are thin on the farm. If they have a bad week or two here 2014 might be lost. The Moore/Hellickson/Cobb injuries gutted them, and their depth was thinner having traded Davis, Niemann, etc....in the last year or two.

Friedman needs to nail the Price deal for them to continue to be competitive. Not having a top pick like the Devil Dogs used to has finally caught up with them.

 

[curly2]

The Rays fans on the board can speak to this better than I but as I understand it, they're striking out on the draft quite a bit lately.

 
This is the big reason. As bad as it was taking Tim Beckham No. 1 overall in 2008, Beckham's cup of coffee last year makes him the only person from their 2008 class to play in the majors. 

 

[Darnell's Son]

The Rays fans on the board can speak to this better than I but as I understand it, they're striking out on the draft quite a bit lately. So while their major league pitchers are struggling/injured, they don't have a lot of depth to turn to in AAA.

This is big. They were able to build through the draft because they were picking early every round. Last few years they've been picking later and the lack of funding is starting to show. If they can manage to keep the FO in tact, then they may be able to rebuild through a few years of sucktitude in the draft, but I find it hard to believe they'll be a contender every year with the monetary restraints they have.

 

[VORP Speed]

We've had this discussion around here several times before, but the idea that the Rays success was due to large numbers of high first round picks is false. Longoria and Price were the only high picks that worked out extremely well. Upton and Niemann were OK. Their list of high picks is full of horrible decisions (Beckham over Posey), potential derailed by unusual circumstances (Baldelli, Josh Hamilton) and just general busts (Brazelton, Delmon Young, Townsend, Sale headed in that direction). 
 
What made the Rays successful was being on the forefront of buying out arb years and early free agency with team-friendly contracts, developing new pitchers and fixing broken pitchers really well and, most importantly, picking the pockets of other organizations with go for it now mentalities who overvalued short-term fixes and undervalued prospects. The Shields trade, the Kazmir trade, the incoming Garza trade, the outgoing Garza trade, etc etc. The Rays have had a siege mentality wherein the value of all assets is unemotionally maximized at all times. Unless a player can be locked up long-term at way below market prices he must be turned into a prospect haul before his value disappears. Unfortunately, they're becoming a victim of their own success. Everyone values prospects more highly now and the classic Rays trade is becoming harder and harder to come by (witness Price this off-season). Teams like the Red Sox are being run in a similar fashion, except with money to paper over mistakes, fill in the inevitable gaps and land the occasional big-budget superstar. The whole league is moving away from a reliance on aging veterans and generally offering far more competition for the types of players the Rays used to pick-up in trades. These market inefficiencies only last so long and they're not going to get the same bang for their buck from defensive shifting strategies or teaching all their pitchers change-ups as they did from hoarding players who were being incorrectly valued by stupid front offices.
 
As for this year, the bullpen absolutely blows. Losing three starters to injuries has been tough, but Bedard has actually been a pretty good fill-in and they probably could have weathered it OK if the bullpen wasn't blowing games left and right. Of the entire expected bullpen, only Mcgee has been good (and he's becoming a total stud). Bell - sucked.. DFA, Lueke - sucks, Peralta - fallen off a cliff, Balfour - disaster, Oviedo/Nunez - mediocre, Ramos - mediocre. Maybe Boxberger will help some now that he's up. The offense has generally underperformed, too, of course…down years for Longoria, Jennings, Myers. Dejesus has been pretty good. Joyce is OK, but is proving that he's never going to be anything special, Hanigan has been a nice pick-up. Forsythe has been a total bust.
 
Bottom line, they're on the shitty end of the projected performances spectrum this year and they didn't have that much margin for error. Long-term, the performance of their overall model is starting to degrade somewhat and it's crucially important that they turn some current players (Price) into prospect hauls. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Fortunately Maddon is still a genius, though.

 

[Van Everyman]

Exceptional post, VORP.

 

[Darnell's Son]

Exceptional post, VORP.

Yeah, put me in my place why don't ya.

 

[snowmanny]

In the "Bold Predictions" thread I picked them to finish fourth, and even that could be an overvaluation.  The thing with the Rays is that their lineup and depth looked thin (they were a below league-average offense in 2013), their bullpen looked average and the optimism was all built on their starting pitching.  And really Archer, Cobb and Moore had what looked like outlier good seasons last year and the odds of all of them - or even two of them -matching their 2013 performances seemed pretty low.

 

[Paradigm]

No depth no depth no depth. They have no Barnes, Ranaudo, Webster, RDLR at Durham to back things up. Every team needs pitching depth to win. 

 

[Paradigm]

No depth no depth no depth. They have no Barnes, Ranaudo, Webster, RDLR at Durham to back things up. Every team needs pitching depth to win. 

 
I continue to believe this will also sink the Yankees this year too.

 

[Toe Nash]

We've had this discussion around here several times before, but the idea that the Rays success was due to large numbers of high first round picks is false. Longoria and Price were the only high picks that worked out extremely well. Upton and Niemann were OK. Their list of high picks is full of horrible decisions (Beckham over Posey), potential derailed by unusual circumstances (Baldelli, Josh Hamilton) and just general busts (Brazelton, Delmon Young, Townsend, Sale headed in that direction). 
 

I agree with most of this post, but I'll add that it's not just the first-round picks that have been misses. They haven't been hitting in the supplemental - 4th rounds (or later) at all either, which is where some other teams have had lots of success (Sox), and where they used to see a fair bit of success. This is especially important because they have basically never given up these picks by signing FAs, and they've received a lot of compensatory picks, so with better drafting they'd be still sitting pretty.
 
Guys taken beyond the first round:
04: Wade Davis, McGee
05: Hellickson (4th)
06: Cobb (4th), Jennings (10th)
07: Moore (8th)
08 (Beckham draft): None
09: None
10: None of note (Had two supplemental firsts - could have taken Syndergaard, Olt, Castellanos)
11: This could be killer. They had 11 picks in the top 75 and while I'm not a prospect expert, according to Sickels' rankings just two are in their top 20 in a weak system. Their top prospect from that draft, Guerrieri, is recovering from TJ and has a drug suspension too. And the Red Sox picked up Barnes, Owens, Swihart and JBJ with their first four picks in 2011.
 
2012 and later is pretty much too early to tell, but I wouldn't understate the poor scouting and drafting.

 

[VORP Speed]

I agree with most of this post, but I'll add that it's not just the first-round picks that have been misses. They haven't been hitting in the supplemental - 4th rounds (or later) at all either, which is where some other teams have had lots of success (Sox), and where they used to see a fair bit of success. This is especially important because they have basically never given up these picks by signing FAs, and they've received a lot of compensatory picks, so with better drafting they'd be still sitting pretty.
 
Guys taken beyond the first round:
04: Wade Davis, McGee
05: Hellickson (4th)
06: Cobb (4th), Jennings (10th)
07: Moore (8th)
08 (Beckham draft): None
09: None
10: None of note (Had two supplemental firsts - could have taken Syndergaard, Olt, Castellanos)
11: This could be killer. They had 11 picks in the top 75 and while I'm not a prospect expert, according to Sickels' rankings just two are in their top 20 in a weak system. Their top prospect from that draft, Guerrieri, is recovering from TJ and has a drug suspension too. And the Red Sox picked up Barnes, Owens, Swihart and JBJ with their first four picks in 2011.
 
2012 and later is pretty much too early to tell, but I wouldn't understate the poor scouting and drafting.

Yeah, totally agree.

5/6 you mention are pitchers. This is part of what I was trying to get at with my comment about developing new pitchers, but you put a finer point on it. They've been pretty lousy in drafting position player talent all through this run. They seem to be much better at scouting other clubs' farms than amateur talent.

 

[jon abbey]

 
I continue to believe this will also sink the Yankees this year too.

 
They're already using starters 6-8 who are doing reasonably well. What will inevitably sink this year's Yankees is their shitty roster construction, mediocre at best offense, and horrid infield D.