For all the talk about the AL East being the sport's toughest division, the Tampa Bay Rays and Toronto Blue Jays went out rather feebly in the Wild Card Series this week. Both teams scored only one run in two-game sweeps at the hands of the Texas Rangers and Minnesota Twins, respectively and they made more headlines with their sloppy defense and careless baserunning than with anything positive. The Blue Jays and Rays are going home for the winter.
"They just outplayed us," Rays manager Kevin Cash told MLB.com after Wednesday's Game 2 loss against Texas. "We probably didn't do ourselves any favors, but that's a good Rangers team over there, and we just got outplayed."
Tampa's postseason scoring drought reached 33 innings before Curtis Mead pulled an RBI single through the right side in the seventh inning of Game 2. It was, for all intents and purposes, a meaningless run. The Rays trailed 7-0 at the time. It was too little, too late. That 33-inning scoreless streak is the second-longest in postseason history.
For the Rays, this is becoming a pattern. They have a great regular season, one that far outpaces expectations for a team with that level of payroll and ownership investment, then they go out quietly in the postseason. Look at their last three seasons:
| Season | Regular season | Postseason |
|---|---|---|
2021 | 100-62 (won AL East) | Lost 3-1 in ALDS |
2022 | 86-76 (third wild-card) | Lost 2-0 in Wild Card Series |
2023 | 99-63 (first wild-card) | Lost 2-0 in Wild Card Series |
The Rays won the pennant during the shortened pandemic season in 2020 and they have not won a single postseason series in any other year since going to the 2008 World Series. They perform well -- very well -- during the regular season, then get pushed aside in the postseason by teams that operate similarly (though not quite as well as Tampa) but spend more money.
Teams built around platoons and optimizing specific skills of role players tend to have a ceiling. It's not just the Rays. We've seen it with the post-MVP Christian Yelich era Milwaukee Brewers and also the 2021 San Francisco Giants. They're built better for the regular season marathon than the postseason sprint. Star power is the great separator in October and these teams lack it.
Other than Randy Arozarena, the Rays do not have anyone capable of putting a team on his back on offense, and they didn't bring in another bat after getting shut down by the Cleveland Guardians in the Wild Card Series last year. The repeated carelessness in the field in the Wild Card Series suggests the Rays caved under the pressure of an offense that provides no breathing room.
Tampa's pitchers all break down -- every year they lose 2-3 guys to Tommy John surgery and it's an organizational flaw at this point, not a fluke -- and they lack the high-end talent to compensate. They're a good team with good players, but good players only take you so far, and unless ownership ups payroll, how are the Rays supposed to bring in the offensive difference-makers they lack?
"You'd rather be playing your best ball in October than you would be throughout the rest of the year," Rays shortstop Taylor Walls told MLB.com. "But 162 is tough, man. You can't ever overlook the success we've had throughout those amount of games throughout the past few years. It sucks that we get in these situations and we just fell short the past couple years."
As for the Blue Jays, the whole is less than the sum of the parts. They are 0-6 in the postseason in the Bo Bichette/Vladimir Guerrero Jr. era and they've finished no closer than seven games back of first place with those two. There's a worrisome trend of players going backward here. Consider:
- Vlad Jr. was very good in 2023 but not truly great. His 2023 was worse than his 2022, and his 2022 was worse than his 2021. At age 24 and with his talent, this dude should be contending for MVPs every year.
- Alek Manoah went from third place in the Cy Young voting last year to essentially out of the picture this year. He was demoted back to Triple-A on Aug. 11 and never pitched in a game after that. It's unclear where he's at physically.
- Alejandro Kirk was an All-Star in 2022 and then he lost nearly 100 points off his OPS and slugged .358 in 2023. Danny Jansen had taken over as the starting catcher before breaking his hand on Sept. 1.
That's three cornerstone type players reaching great heights early in the careers but not building on it, and instead sliding back. There is no reason Kirk, Manoah, and Vlad Jr. can't bounce back in 2024. They don't lack talent. But when one young player backslides, it's bad. When two backslide, it's a red flag. When three backslide, alarms should be going off. Something's wrong.
"I think that we can all look at each other in the face and say collectively we fell short of executing what we wanted to do," Blue Jays manager John Schneider told MLB.com following Wednesday's Game 2 loss.
Now that the Minnesota Twins have snapped their record 18-game losing streak, the Blue Jays and Rays share the longest active postseason losing streak at seven games. They're both stuck in the mud. Tampa has a great regular season and then falls flat in October. The Blue Jays fight tooth and nail for a wild-card spot, then come up empty in the postseason. It's an annual thing now.
How do the Rays and Blue Jays take the next step? Tampa must figure out how to keep their pitchers healthy, first and foremost. Otherwise I'm not sure what more they can do other than up payroll and bring in more high-end talent. They have to stop talking about making a run at guys like Freddie Freeman and actually go get a game-changer like that at some point. The smartest team in baseball act is beginning to ring hollow.
The Blue Jays appear to have deeper issues organizationally. Important young players are going backward and there's something holding back a group with the talent to be better than they have been the last few years. They diversified the lineup with lefty bats this year and have a tremendous pitching staff, and it didn't help. Ultimately, this offense continues to fall short of expectations.
"I've got to get better on everything," Guerrero told Sportsnet. "I'll take it as a good season, but I expect more from myself."
