Rays Fighting the Sox for both Division and Blood

Suddenly this year it’s not so bad to have tickets to a Red Sox vs. Tampa Bay game at Fenway. Here it’s June and the Sox are atop the division with a game and a half lead. Number two in the division? Tampa Bay by five games over the Blue Jays and Yankees who are tied for third. The games are shockingly good to watch and as the most recent brawl showed, you’re more likely to see a scuffle at one of those games than just about anyone else (including the Yankees).

The Sox and the Rays have had more than a few fights over the last few years. The most recent scuffle occurred because last Wednesday Coco Crisp had an aggressive slide into second and exchanged words with Rays Manager Joe Maddon. The next night, Coco was pegged by James Shields and Crisp charged the mound and did a nice matrix move to elude a sweeping hook from the pitcher. Nobody landed serious blows but teammates piled in and eight players were suspended for a cumulative 38 games.

The two teams have scuffled quite a bit since 2000 when Pedro nailed Gerald Williams with his first pitch (a game that turned into a 1-hit gem for him). Since then, players like Nixon, Castillo, Arroyo, Tavarez, and Schilling have all been key players involved in scuffles on different occasions. Nixon was perhaps the most active amongst all the Sox players when it came to fights with the Rays. Plenty of other players have been tossed for joining in on the fights. Last Thursday, it seemed as if Youkilis yelled at Manny for not getting out of the dugout to fight sooner.
This most recent scuffle was different from the rest. This time both teams were fighting for the top of the division.

Tampa Bay’s surge has shocked many baseball fans around Red Sox Nation. They used to be the team that we’d beat up on and Tim Wakefield was known for humiliating their bats. They never signed big names; they seemed like an elevated AAA team that was destined to anchor the American League East for decades. Luckily for the Rays, times have changed.

Today the Rays actually have a few stars. There is Carl Crawford who is one of the best base stealers in the league, Troy Percival who is one of the most seasoned and admired closers, Scott Kazmir who is a legit ace and one of the best lefties in the game (1.40 ERA in 7 starts this season), and the young centerfield B.J. Upton who is going to mature into a great outfielder.

Alongside the whole new “winning thing” and the new stars, the team has a new name and look. The team shortened things up to the Tampa Bay Rays when before it had been the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. The uniforms were redone last year and rumor has it that there is a small fine each time someone says “Devil Rays” in the clubhouse.

All of this was part of a serious building effort by management that is starting to pay off. Being at the bottom for so long allowed for the Rays to get some good draft picks. In 2002 they had #2 and got B.J. Upton, in 2003 they got Delmon Young with the #1, in 2004 they got #4 Jeff Niemann, #8 in 2005 with Wade Townsend, in 2006 they got Evan Longoria with #3, David Price last year was #1, and this year they got #1 Tim Beckham overall as well. Must be a killer minor league system, right?

Tampa needed to lock in the good players it had rather than letting them disappear to free agency at the very first second they could (Julio Lugo) or trade them away the year before they could walk. Locked up now are James Shields, Carlos Pena, Evan Longoria, Dan Wheeler, and Kazmir just signed a deal that could be worth $40 million. Wade Davis, Jake McGee, and David Price are all waiting in the wings to emerge as K-minded pitchers in their minor league system. They have one of the best starting pitching staffs in baseball and more in the reserves.

Indicating that the Rays are really serious, they’re starting talks with St. Petersburg, FL about a new stadium. They’ve proposed a 34,000 seat stadium with a retractable roof (for the Florida heat and rain) at a cost of $450 million. They want it open in 2012 and so doesn’t MLB Commissioner Bud Selig. "There's no question that the Rays need a new stadium. There's just no question," Selig said. “I'm grateful they're having a wonderful year this year, but their stadium now just can't produce the revenue you need to be competitive on a year-in and year-out basis," he added. The Rays are trying to build a presence because they know that if they start winning, they’ll have to get players to come by other means than the pity draft picks they’ve been getting over the last 10 years. If they don’t figure out how to make baseball work in Florida for something other than spring training, if they don’t secure funds to land free agents and retain key players, they will fizzle out. For now, the Rays seem to have built themselves into a legit team that will be here for at least a few seasons down the road.

So, this team that we have won 116 games against and only lost 61 to since 1998 might actually become a problem this year. They swept us in our first series in Florida, remember. They’ll be good games to watch this year. You might see some good pitching, some good base stealing, maybe a fight or two, and don’t be surprised to see the Sox lose one or two either.