I wish the Tampa Bay Rays and the Cleveland Indians weren't playing tonight.
Unlikely First-Place Teams Battle This Week
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Because somebody has to lose.
Somebody has to lose tonight, and somebody has to lose the three-game series.
Wait a minute, let me check something ... Ah, good. At least there is some hope for thunderstorms this week ... Maybe one of the games will get rained out, and they can split the series, one game apiece.
The Rays were supposed to finish third this season, well out of the money. The Indians were supposed to finish fourth or fifth this season, much further out of the money.
The Rays’ and Indians’ payrolls this season add up to $91 million.
Life-wise, that's a lot of money. If you win $91 million in the Super Lotto, you're probably going to quit your job at the Gas-N-Sip. In baseball, $91 million is chump change. At the moment, there are 19 major league players with contracts guaranteeing them more than $91 million, from Alex Rodriguez ($257 million) to Carlos Zambrano ($91.5 million).
That’s right, folks. Carlos Zambrano makes more money on his current deal than every player on the Rays and the Indians will make this season, combined.*
* By the way, the list of players making more than the Rays and Indians would have been a lot longer if the Indians weren't paying Travis Hafner $13 million this season. Which is a lot, and would be a bitter pill -- as it was in each of the last three seasons -- except Hafner's having his best season since 2006, which is one of the big reasons the Indians are doing so well.
All of which is mostly just a curiosity. The Indians and Rays aren’t the first low-payroll teams to show flashes of greatness before Memorial Day, nor will they be the first to reach the postseason tournament, if one or both of them do. What makes them more interesting -- at this moment to me, anyway -- is 1) how recently each club was given up for dead, and 2) how little they’ve been able to translate their recent successes into box-office success.
The Rays weren't supposed to win (a lot) this season, because they lost Carl Crawford and their league-leading relief corps. They really weren't supposed to win after they lost a) their first six games of the season, b) eight of their first nine, and c) Evan Longoria to the Disabled List.
The Indians weren't supposed to win this season, because they lost 93 games last season and their big off-season move was signing 36-year-old Orlando Cabrera, who's working on 2,000 career hits but has never sniffed an All-Star Game. They weren't supposed to win after being outscored 23-13 in their first two games. Of course we're supposed to pay almost no attention to any two games in a 162-game season. But 23-13 ...
Of course, after the Indians were blown out in those first two games, they won eight straight games and really haven’t stopped winning since. After the Rays lost eight of their first nine, they won five straight and really haven’t stopped winning since.
Mirages, both of them? Perhaps. According to Baseball Prospectus's latest Playoff Odds Report, the Rays still figure to finish third, with just a 7-percent chance of winning their division and a 24-percent chance of reaching the postseason; the Indians still figure to finish second (behind the Tigers), with a 32-percent chance of reaching the postseason.
But let us speak no more of October. Let us enjoy May, when two cash- and attendance-poor franchises are playing better than anyone expected. And let us hope that both acquit themselves well in a series that wasn’t supposed to mean anything, but suddenly seems to mean something.
To read more about the Rays and Indians, please visit DRaysBay and Let’s Go Tribe.
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