TAMPA, Fla. — The Tampa Bay Rays are the best team in baseball so far in 2023.
Small sample sizes await you, but they’ve won ten in a row to open the season, and their run differential is already at +58 (they’ve outscored their opponents 76-19 in those nine games). The next-closest team in that stat is the Los Angeles Dodgers, who are at +28.
They’ve played full series' Detroit Tigers, Washington Nationals, and Oakland A’s to start the season, and all three of those teams, let’s face it, are not going to be contenders in 2023. But this means the Rays are doing what good teams are supposed to do; handily beat bad teams. They outscored the A’s 31-5 this weekend and the final two games by a combined score of 22-0.
Hosts Ulises Sambrano and Kevin Weiss of the Locked On Rays podcast are understandably excited about this hot start for Tampa.
But both hosts also tempered about the hot start realizing that the teams the Rays have beaten so far aren’t that good and that the Rays aren’t always going to beat teams 11-0. Sambrano said, “You’re never as good as the nine-game winning streak, and those teams aren’t always going to be that bad.”
They brought specific plays the A’s couldn’t execute that aided the Rays in their big wins as an example of when a team just has a bad game, and nothing goes right for them.
Then, on Monday against the Red Sox, all they needed was one run to win and run the streak to 10.
So far, everything is going right for the Tampa Bay Rays. They are the seventh team to open a season with a perfect 10-0 record, and they’re the first team since the 1939 Yankees to win nine of those games by at least four runs at any point during the season. That’s not bad company.
Its stellar starting rotation isn’t only helping Tampa Bay during this streak, but the offense is also kicking it into high gear. They had 24 home runs through Sunday. The only team to hit more home runs during their first nine games was the 2000 St. Louis Cardinals, who hit 25.
Wander Franco leads the team with four, while Harold Ramirez and Luke Raley have three. Six players, including Manuel Margot, Randy Arozarena, and Yandy Diaz, have two apiece, and three players, including Taylor Walls, have hit at least one.
Before the season began, the Rays got the bad news that starter Tyler Glasnow would miss 6-8 weeks with an oblique injury, but so far, the starting rotation hasn’t missed a beat.
The only starter with any issues was Josh Fleming, who gave up five runs in three innings to the Nationals on April 4, but the Rays’ offense scored ten off the Nationals' pitching, and they won the game regardless.
The other starters, Jeffrey Springs, Drew Rasmussen, Shane McClanahan, and Zack Eflin, are all 2-0 to start the season, with Springs and Rusmussen both having pitched 13 innings without giving up any runs. Eflin has the highest ERA out of the top four starters at 3.27, and McClanahan is sitting at 1.50.
Is this sustainable? Of course not. No team has ever gone 162-0, but getting off to a 10-0 start and beating the teams you’re supposed to beat is how teams get to the playoffs. Playing crisp defense, hitting the ball well, and keeping your opponent from scoring is how you build a lead in your division, and while it’s still early for the Rays (and everyone else in MLB), this first week and a half was a fun ride for the team and their fans.
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