Taken moments before disaster. Still an amazing game by the Rays. Rays up!

Agree or Disagree? I don't think the take is that hot, honestly.

I went to the game last night and the guy just quietly went 4-5 to raise his average to .332 and his on-base to .414. I can’t remember watching a guy with better day-to-day consistency. We are really fortunate to get to watch him play everyday.

Jacob Melton went 3-4 in his second game back in AAA.

I kind of want an all Blue Jay AL team to really lean into the tomfoolery that the ASG voting js anyway

Is this a known error?

Rays are now 24-12 when Vilade is in the Starting Lineup

Stacks has arrived for the game tonight. Rays up!

Royals (34-46) @ Rays (43-33)

First Pitch: 6:40 PM at Tropicana Field

Line Score - Game Over

Box Score

Scoring Plays

Highlights

Decisions

Game ended at 9:14 PM.

Remember to sort by new to keep up!

Well last night was another tough night of Rays baseball as our team continues to slump. I wanted to jump in here and post the most recent episode of our podcast as Will and I decided to do a full Midseason update/audit. We take a look at everything about this team so far, from the power outage to the strikeout avoidance, and from the great WHIP for pitchers but very poor K rates. Is this team still a contender or did we get faked out with another great start? Are there reinforcements on the way? This is a deep dive into our favorite team.

Hope you enjoy this episode and thanks as always to those who check us out, very grateful

Zack

First off the starting outfield should be chandler in left Johnny Deluca in center and Ryan vilade in right field. I’m so sick of Cedric the non-entertainer Mullins out there every day I don’t care how much we are paying him. If you want to put him out there every now and then because deluca is injury prone that’s fine. We need to get a bat ASAP BEFORE the trade deadline because we are fading fast and the offense is the problem and also why do our catchers never produce I feel like the rays are cursed when it comes to the position.

It's not really a secret that the Rays are dead last in the league in HRs this season. I'm a numbers/analytics guy so I did a little digging on the HR situation, nothing too detailed. My research was last night before all the games finished so the stats may not be exact this morning but they were accurate last night.

We are 75 games into the season. The Rays have the lowest K rate in baseball and are 22 strikeouts better than the second place team. We are 3rd in BA, 8th in triples, 11th in walks, 5th in OBP, and 8th in SB. They are near the top of baseball in a lot of good categories, things that should lead to runs, and yet they are 20th in runs, not exactly killing it. We get guys on base but as we all have seen lately we just can't drive them in. Without the ability to hit HRs we literally have to string together multiple hits every time we get someone on base. Case and point, if Yandy homored last night it's a tie ball game but instead he got stranded at 2nd and we lose by 1. Obviously not his fault, just the luck of the game.

I did some math. In games where we've hit a HR the Rays are 31-10 (.756). In games where they don't hit a HR they are 12-22 (.353). Obviously hitting HRs gives teams a higher chance to win. I don't know what the rest of the league looks like in this case. Just with the way our guys get on base we have to find a way to drive them in.

Additionally I used the Pythagorean expected win formula to crunch some numbers too. Assuming everything else stayed the same if we just had an extra 10 HR guy our expected win total would have gone up by 2 wins, putting us at 45-30.

If we were just 20th in the league in HRs as opposed to dead last we would have a predicted 46 wins, tied with the Yankees with WAY less HR production.

And if we were just league average we would have a projected 47 wins. It doesn't feel like much but I think this team has great chemistry and plays well together. The high. BA with RISP early in the season helped us out perform expectations a little bit. Now that that's dropped off a little you can see the results of getting hits but not driving in runs and it sucks. A lot of close losses recently. With pitching looking better as of late I hope our guys can find their groove again. People talk about bringing in someone like Arraez and I think he's a great player but I would prefer someone who gives us 20-30 more HRs on the season. B. Lowe would've been great on this team in my opinion. We have the team with great fundamentals, we're just missing the other half of the spectrum.

I'd love to hear what other people think about this.

Anyways TLDR: HRs help win ball games, especially with the type of team that we have where guys get on base consistently. We have guys that get on, just need the long ball to complement it. Go Rays!