Tampa Bay Rays by Marc Normandin

The Yankees have the youth and the Orioles have the dingers, but I’m putting the Rays third place because I can’t quit on their rotation. Even without Drew Smyly and Matt Moore, this feels like a rotation that should succeed, if only because the poindexters in the front office went back to the dry-erase board and reimagined the organizational strategy in a post-rabbit-ball league. They won’t be caught off guard with a dinger-happy environment this time.

Will they have the offense, though? No, probably not. Losing Logan Forsythe will hurt them less than it might have hurt other lineups, just because of the positional flexibility they’ve accumulated, but they’re not a better offensive team than last year, when they might have been average. They have a couple of options:

• Be better. Instead of Kevin Kiermaier being the Brandon Crawford of the outfield, maybe he could be vintage Torii Hunter. Maybe Corey Dickerson can split the difference between Coors and Tropicana. Maybe Steven Souza can half-justify the cost of acquiring him, which was essentially Trea Turner and Joe Ross. Which still keeps me up at night.
• Be lucky. The Rays will have enough pitching to succeed with a few breaks, and the difference between 84 wins and 90 wins is a one-run game here and a one-run game here. All the nerds will scream about expected wins and Pythagorean records, and the Rays will laugh and refuse to give the wins back, even when threatened with a nerd audit.
• Lope around, directionless, caught between fiscal reality and reasonable expectations, a team that continually proves that being smart just isn’t enough, as the rest of baseball whispers “I don’t care.”

But what are the chances of that last one happening? Ha ha, you have some imagination on you.