The Rays play their home games this season in the Spring Training home of the Yankees, the team they are chasing hard right now in the American League East. And because it is a Spring Training facility, George M. Steinbrenner Field has a capacity of just 10,046. Small house this season. Big story.
And there’s more complicating their prospects for repeating over the second half of the season than they’ve done already: Because the schedule makers wanted to do a workaround on the high heat of Tampa summers, they front-loaded games at Steinbrenner Field, which means the Rays will play 50 of their last 81 regular-season games on the road.
Through it all, you know what manager Kevin Cash’s ballclub does? It keeps coming. But then the Rays always seem to do that, wherever they’re playing and whatever year it is.
There are better records right now in baseball. But there is no tougher out than the Rays, who come into the weekend a half-game behind the Yankees, whose payroll is a cool $200 million higher than the Rays, who rank 28th in payroll in the sport. It doesn’t seem to matter, or bother them very much. They started out their season 21-26 and have been 25-9 since, the best record that anybody has had over the same time frame.
Look at what the Rays are once again doing through another prism, just because of the way the team ahead of them in the AL East -- the Yankees -- spends big money on baseball players from year to year. Starting in 2008, when the Rays made their first World Series before losing to the Phillies, they’ve been to the Fall Classic as many times as the Yankees have.
Before just finishing a three-game sweep of the Royals, the Rays took two out of three from the Tigers, who started that series with the best record in baseball. When it was over, I asked Tigers manager A.J. Hinch what continues to make the Rays so tough.
"They always seem to be underrated, but they shouldn’t be,” he said. "They make it really hard to match up. They are built to have a counter to every move. They do everything well and Kevin does a great job putting his guys in their strengths. You have to play to well to beat them, because they don’t beat themselves.”
Hinch, whose Tigers also play to their strengths and who don’t beat themselves, is talking, of course, about the 2025 version of the Rays. But he could be talking about any Rays team from the past several seasons. They are always underrated even when they shouldn’t be. They don’t beat themselves. What they do, year to year -- even when they are playing in front of small crowds at The Trop in St. Petersburg and even when they're outspent by the world -- is pitch, play strong fundamental baseball and play you all the way to the parking lot to win the game.
Again: No one will have to overcome more to make it to October this time and the Rays just keep finding ways to figure it all out, with this year’s collection of grinders and winners. Junior Caminero leads the team with 20 home runs and 51 RBIs. He hit a home run against the Royals on Thursday afternoon. So did Brandon Lowe, a lifer with the Rays who’s having another fine season, with 16 homers, 43 RBIs and a .267 batting average. Jonathan Aranda, batting .329 as Cash’s first baseman, and Yandy Díaz follow them in the order.
Shane Baz pitched eight shutout innings against the Royals on Thursday, allowing just three hits and striking out nine. It was his 16th start of the season. It means he has been part of not just a sturdy rotation for Cash, but a pretty remarkable one, because his other four starters -- Ryan Pepiot, Taj Bradley, Drew Rasmussen and Zack Littell -- also have made 16 starts. At a time when so many starting pitchers in baseball have gotten hurt -- the Dodgers would certainly like a word on the subject -- the Rays’ starters have continued to post up through the first half of the season.
Behind them is Pete Fairbanks, one of the sport’s most reliable closers. He came on after Baz on Thursday against the Royals to record his 15th save. So from the time when the Rays were five games under .500, they have come on so hard and so well that they head into this weekend just four games worse than the Dodgers and the Tigers, the two best records at 51-31.
“I think our momentum has built over the past month,” Cash said after the sweep of the Royals. “We’ve done a lot of really good things, and I know our guys are eager to see it continue.”
The Rays stay on the road this weekend against the Orioles in Baltimore, with a chance to keep grinding their way all the way into first place before the baseball calendar arrives at the traditional mile marker on the Fourth of July. Too easy to call these guys road warriors. Just warriors.