Quite a few Rays ended up on the leaderboards with Angel Gonzales topping the league in RBI and OPS, Elijah Whitaker in ERA and Dave Rose in wins. Not shown here is that Rose was tied for second in strikeouts in the AL as well.
The playoff tree:
Team stats:
What a finish to the season, going 23-3 in September. First in virtually every offensive category except we struck out more than anybody (sue us), great pitching and one of the better defensive clubs we've put out there, only a couple of years removed from being one of the worst.
What a year for Gonzales, who went from a platoon player with us last season to one of the league's best hitters. And had he not missed nearly a month Bland would have been north of 7 WAR in a real breakthrough season for him. Avalos bounced back nicely although quite to his early-career MVP form and Mayes and Dominguez took strides in their second seasons. Really no disappointments other than Aponte tailing off badly in September (191/247/250) yet he and the traded Colon still combined for 3.1 WAR at first. White couldn't stay healthy but at least he came back at the end of the season so we'll be strong for the playoffs.
We had twin aces in Rose and Whitaker and with the way Barraza pitched in the second half, triplets. Guzman had the weirdest season, good for 2.7 WAR in only 119 innings yet he had a 4.29 ERA and it wasn't BABIP-related (.286) nor did he give up the homers (only 9). It seemed that every time the damage against him was clustered in one inning where he gave up 2-3 runs. Cid turned out to be our best reliever although Tadlock was victimized by a .378 BABIP, out of character with the defense over the season. Navarro was very good after coming over in trade as well.
A not great but not terrible farm system. Gaitan had a cup of coffee at the end of the year and projects as our #1 catcher next season, while Diaz is woefully underrated at #18 in our system as he totally mashed with the big club as you can see in the hitting stats above.