Do you think the Tampa Bay Rays are lucky or good?

Question

With a record of 76-48 and 38 games to go all they need to do is play .500 ball the rest of the way to win 95 games and they are like 24 games ahead of .500 for the entire season. 5 games over .500 the rest of the way to make 100 wins is a piece of cake! They keep beating the best teams while people keep waiting for them to take a dive. Don't hold your breath.

Answer 1

I think they're good. I don't want to say that any team is lucky because well that's not fair. They have good players. Angels couldn't get anything done today.  

Answer 2

It is too late into the year to say they are lucky. That is a good ball club.  

Answer 3

All those high draft picks paying off. Great job by the starting rotation. Finding ways to win games they "shouldn't win". Team chemistry. Up until just now, a closer who has a lot of experience. A manager who I hear preaches to just have fun out there.

No this isnt luck. Its all the pieces coming together. Keep it up, Tampa! Besides fans of the Yankees and Red Sox, is there anyone out there NOT rooting for these guys?

And to the person who said the Rays are this year's Rockies....you may want to take note the Rockies weren't in contention and leading the division for the majority of the season.

Answer 4

They are just good. I doubt luck could get them THIS far.

Answer 5

I am a Yankee fan and they are great and will win the world series...  Mark my word..  grant m in pennsylvania

Answer 6

they're a good team ..but their stadium has a lot to do with their success

..same with the twins.

Answer 7

you can't luckily win that many games. absolutely ridiculous question.

Answer 8

It is a mix of both.

Answer 9

obviously good

Answer 10

Every team has a mix of both.

Think about it. If luck didn't exsist, I bet the Yankees wouldn't have won 26 World Championships.

Marlins @ Cubs, 2003 ALCS. There's a ball hit to left field, Moises Alou looks like it's a catch..But wait! A fan takes it! Oh No!

If That's not luck, I don't know what is.

Answer 11

Anyone who thinks luck has anything to do with the Rays' success this season doesn't know a lot about baseball. All the rumors of luck were squashed at the all-star break when they were leading their division then. And now we're late enough in the season to say that even though the Yankees and BoSox have monster payrolls compared to the Rays, the Yanks aren't making the playoffs, and Boston is barely beating out the Twins for the Wild Card. Luck maybe attributed to some of their wins, but to say they're only doing well because they're lucky is c**p. They're just a solid ball club with an above average offense, rotation, power, and speed.

Answer 12

i think theyve been just really really lucky this season...they have pretty much the same players as last season when they were last in the division...and somehow now they are in 1st o.O

Answer 13

They have been pretty lucky this year. I'm not denying that they are a good team, which they have been thus far, but without a lot of factors going their way this year, they might have ended up in 3rd or 4th place yet again.

3 of the teams in the division that arguably were better than them on paper sustained tremendous injuries all season long.

Yankees- Wang, Posada, Matsui, A-Rod, Chamberlain, Hughes, Kennedy, Bruney, etc

Boston- Ortiz, Matsuzaka, Lowell, Beckett, Schilling, Wakefield, etc

Toronto- Marcum, Wells, Rios, Hill, Chacin

If all of these teams have all of these impact players ,Tampa could have been a decent team, but first place would have been a lot tougher to attain. Who knows, maybe they would have either way, but it's hard to think that adding the players they did would have had the impact without the huge opening in the division from those players going down. Putting some of those guys back on their teams, especially the long term injuries, and it's hard to see those teams not being many games better in the standings, which then must bring Tampa down a bit since they're beating them a few more times and thus making the race a lot tighter.

Edit: But Tampa didn't sustain their injuries until RECENTLY. That's the difference, and that's my point. If Longoria and Crawford went down in say May, they might have lost a significant amount more games than they did, say 5 or 6 more let's say, which basically puts 3 or 4 teams in the East within 5 games and makes it a lot tighter a race. Tampa, until about a week or two ago, has been nearly entirely healthy in the starting lineup and starting rotation, which are the parts that matter. The Yankees and Sox have both sustained injuries to everyday players and top line starting pitchers. Imagine if Tampa lost Kazmir to injury how much more they'd struggle. He might have been out a tiny amount early on, but the Yankees have lost 3 or 4 of their starting rotation for 2-3 months and Boston has lost Schilling for the whole season.

Edit 2: You must be joking. What teams has Tampa played during that stretch?

1) Seattle - beyond awful this year

2) Texas- in a huge slide

They have 6 more against the Sox and Yankees. Without 2 key bats and with guys returning to those teams, they're going to have to fight to hold on, and even if they do, how are they going to go deep in the playoffs without those guys? Going to be hard to score runs.

If you don't want to hear other viewpoints then don't post the question. You're obviously a Rays fan (and was there even such a thing before this season? Lol), so why don't you put aside your biases for once and look at things without the rose colored glasses.

It's called a SMALL SAMPLE. The Yankees statistically are better too when Jeter is not in the starting lineup, but do you think they would be a better team if he were out for 3 months?

Answer 14

they are defiantly a good team, they have good progressing players that keep getting better. alot of there players are first round draft picks that are just starting to Bloom

Answer 15

AL East is too competitive for the Rays to be lucky.  No, this year the Rays are just good.

Answer 16

Good luck can get you through a short stretch of a season, but after 120 some odd games, I think you pretty much are what you are.  

Answer 17

Let me just put it this way, they are this years colorado rockies.

Answer 18

I think they are Great. Despite all their injuries they are overcoming many odds.

Answer 19

They're good. But I hate that they're doing better than the Red Sox..

Answer 20

the only way to really tell is wait and see what they do next year..if this year was a splash in the pan or they are the new up and coming team