At Home Plate

2003 Postmortem: The Tampa Bay Devil Rays

2003 Season postmortem: The Tampa Bay Devil Rays

Regular Season Record: 63-99
Last in the AL East - 38 Games Back

Offensive leaders:
Home Runs: Aubrey Huff 34
Average: Aubrey Huff .311
RBI: Aubrey Huff 107
Runs: Aubrey Huff 91
Steals: Carl Crawford 55

Wins: Victor Zambrano 12
ERA: Victor Zambrano 4.21
Strikeouts: Victor Zambrano 132
Saves: Lance Carter 26

Highlight of the season: The transformation of Carl Crawford and Rocco Baldelli from talented prospects into real major league talent.

Low point of the season: Actually all in all the season was a pretty good one in Tampa Bay with lots of steps being made in the right direction. They finished eight games better in the win column, avoided another 100 loss season, and improved 10 games in the standings.

Best move of the season: Pushing Rocco Baldelli to the forefront and letting him play the whole season in the major leagues instead of giving him another season in the minors, which many pundits thought he should have had.

Worst move of the season: The Rays rushed a lot of players up from the minor and many of them did really well, however many is not all, and one notable exception was top prospect Dewon Brazelton who had dazzling stuff in the minors but had such a ugly time that he finished with a 1-6 record with a 6.89 ERA. The D’rays have to hope there are no psychic scars for the future.

Key Player: Aubrey Huff who led the team in almost every single offensive characteristic is the primary leader on the field.

Up and Coming Player: While it appears to be a toss up between Rocco Baldelli and Carl Crawford its really no contest. Crawford is definitely the one to watch as he looks like a young Lou Brock with his speed and his solid batting average. If he learns to walk a little more and can raise his BA 10-20 points he will be an elite ballplayer.

What went right: Rocco Baldelli and Carl Crawford really stole the show in Tampa by both emerging as potential stars and showing off their talent. Aubrey Huff was once again a team leader at the plate.

Several of their pitchers stepped up and had good seasons. They may not have won as many games as they could have but that was due to an offense that ranked 12th of the 14 teams in the AL. While the statistics pitching-wise were not much better (they ranked 11 of 14).

Three of the better ones were:
Jeremi Gonzalez 3.91 ERA but only 6 wins
Victor Zambrano 4.21 ERA but only 12 wins
Jorge Sosa 4.62 ERA but only 5 wins

I think there is a lot of room for improvement here.

What went wrong: Well this is a young team and there are bound to be some rough patches however all in all this team should not complain. They young players got experience but played in a strong division where they had to match up in 57 games against the Yankee, Red Sox and Blue Jays and only had the weak sister Orioles in their own division who they matched up well against. Their pitching ranked 11th of 14 with a 4.91 ERA which was kind of ugly but it was more an issue of inconsistency in finding the 3-4-5 men in the rotation.

The offense was also rather inconsistent but that was not unexpected.

Offseason Preview: The Devil Rays have already made some huge strides towards making themselves a better team for 2004. They’ve signed two veteran free agent pitchers in John Halama and Paul Abbott who should help stabilize the back end of the rotation and take some pressure off the youngsters who are learning how to carry a team as well as offer their experience.

On the offensive front they D’rays traded for the 36 year old Tino Martinez a Tampa native who hopes to find his career re-kindled at home. If he will be better than Travis Lee is questionable but he’s the kind of player who could be a real spark plug for a team if he can get going.

The Rays are not going to challenge for the division title in 2004 (or ‘05 or ‘06 most likely) but they will be a better team and could make an improvement for next year. In any case they, like all AL East teams will be better next season and will help make that the toughest division in the game.