STOP LAUGHING, IT'S TIME TO START RESPECTING THE TAMPA BAY RAYS

Mario Russo

Nearly a quarter of the way into the 2023 MLB season and the Tampa Bay Rays historically stand uncontested atop the league standings.

It’s May 10th and manager Kevin Cash has a 8.5 game lead over the New York Yankees to go along nicely with being nearly a week's worth of wins ahead of the second-placed Baltimore Orioles.

Some home ballparks haven't even recorded consistent warm temperatures and yet, the Rays’ potent bats are hanging half a dozen runs on their victims after every morning coffee, throwing more and more wrenches at the league's esteemed record book.

No matter how hard you try and make the timeline more digestible, the overarching identity of this Florida team will never be altered or excused.

The Tampa Bay Rays are lapping the rest of the league, and it’s time to start respecting their dominance.

It’s long overdue.

The clock doesn't even have to be wound that far back to find an era of baseball that witnessed the Rays dominate (albeit with less strands of ink in the record books) and proceed to get ridiculed in the process.

In 2020, the Rays toyed with the competition during a shortened 60 game season that saw the team post the league’s second best win percentage through their 40-20 season. Only the Los Angeles Dodgers held a better record, even when the two teams batted heads in the World Series that saw the Rays fall in six games.

At that point, the team was only blossoming into their current identity of turning head-scratching names into head-scratching results. Guys like Pete Fairbanks (A ninth-round pick in 2015) and Ryan Thompson (A 23rd round pick in 2014) unexpectedly became the cornerstones of the Rays pitching depth - an element of their game that has, and continues to keep the group ahead of the curve day-in and day-out.

Yet with management financially handcuffed to splash both throughout the season and off it, big names rarely popped up in central Florida. Despite their successes, attracting fans to the ballpark continued to be an issue that no form of promotion or advertising could save.

As a result, the fanbase - or lack thereof, was mocked around the league. Players in the midst of having career seasons failed to even register on the relevancy radar of the major leagues. Even while residing in baseball’s most competitive division, the Rays found a way to come out on top as everyone grasped to take them down.

A team with miniscule star power, so few offseason transactions - and located in a marketing graveyard - didn't deserve all the success that came their way.

Yet as the entire league sided against them, prayed on their downfall, and continued to mock their raised moneyball approach, Tampa Bay stuck to their game plan and walked down the road they’ve become overly familiar with in recent years.

They severed, thwarted, and emphatically embarrassed all the doubters that stood in their way.

This year, it’s just coming a little earlier than usual.

Kicking off the season with a perfect 13-0 record was swifty discredited and labeled as a ‘hot start’ to the campaign - despite just two teams in the modern era of the sport able to match that level of success in the season’s early going.

That nearly-historic stretch saw emerging ace Shane McClanahan toss his hat in the ring for the American League Cy Young award, who has since then, wielded a perfect 7-0 record without surrendering more than two runs in the process.

The group’s dominion stems from the batters box as well, with four of the Rays starting nine players slashing above a .300 batting average while latching onto a league-best 116 run differential.

For context, the runner up in that department is the AL West leading Texas Rangers at 81.

Laughable right?

For years, fans have attempted to enclose the Rays into the corner of irrelevance within the major leagues, satirizing their home-grown players and B-line talent. Even as the Rays march along their masterful start to the 2023 season, the treatment of this team remains identical to what’s been the comedic norm throughout history.

At least the Rays know how to rewrite that.

This team is no longer the laughing stock, the joke contestant, or the imposter sitting atop the standings. Tampa Bay has earned their place and took it upon themselves to rake in the respect that was always so quick to be bailed from them.

Label them as the villain, the outlaw or the rebel on the loose, but if fear fails to overpower you while you speak their name and watch their games, you clearly have a lot of learning to do.

And even more respect to give.