Quote:
Originally Posted by KSigkid
The Rays certainly have some guys who can play; even more so than fielding percentage (which can be misleading in a lot of cases), they're currently 3rd in defensive efficiency in baseball. I would argue that Navarro is having an out-of-his-mind, over-his-head start to the season (he's probably not going to continue having .326/.364/.440 triple slash rates and is around his 90th percentile PECOTA projection), but it's impressive they've done so well thus far.
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Meh, I'm not so pessimistic on Navarro - remember, his PECOTA projection is driven down by his poor years post-LA, although he's still quite young. PECOTA heavily regresses for missed time, especially at a young age - it's quite possible his LAD numbers are closer to true talent than anything else. He's gotten a little lucky, with a BABIP of .355 - his LD% is 19.5% this year (GB% has gone through the roof to 49.9%), making his expected BABIP something around .315 - obviously, subtracting 40 points from his triple-slash hurts, but that's still a .720 OPS from C, way above league average and quite valuable. I'm not sure that qualifies as "way over his head" - I'd expect him to be a .700-.750 OPS player going forward, and that's fine.
The Rays are currently outperforming their expected record by about 3 games according to pythag, and their bullpen is far from rock solid so there's a little room for regression. The biggest change isn't the pitching, it's the defense - it'll take a larger sample to check things like UZR with any certainty, but the pitching improvements can't be severed from going from a terrible, terrible defensive team to a very solid one in the offseason. Obviously getting more starts out of Kazmir will help going forward, but there is some evidence Sonnanstine etc. are doing it with smoke and mirrors (FIP/DERA much higher than actual ERA, etc.).
The core of the team is very young and mostly cost-controlled - there aren't many position prospects, but that's fine because they're stacked. Adding a 1B to eliminate the peak-fluke corpse of Carlos Pena will help, as would a RF/DH, but it looks like Friedman and the new ownership cabal is on the right track. They'll be quite solid going forward - just an impressive collection of talent.
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