The Blue Workhorse

With their 3-1 victory over Boston and the Red Sox Nation in Game 7 Sunday night, the Tampa Bay (no longer Devil) Rays have advanced to their first ever World Series where they will face off with the Philadelphia Phillies.

While I feel sorry for the Phillies fans that had to endure the opposing fan treatment (yea, stay classy LA), I will be rooting for my Rays and here are 23 reasons why you should be rooting for them as well.

1. Worst to First - The Rays are the new Atlanta Braves.

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Most of this comes from a comment I made when Sports Dawg wrote on An Opinion On Sports about expanding the All-Star rosters after Clint Hurdle and Terry Francona nearly had to use David Wright and J.D. Drew as pitchers due to a limited number of innings available from the All-Star pitchers.

Sports Dawg isn’t the only one to make the suggestion as I’ve heard a lot of people talk about expanding the rosters because “now the game counts.”

However, I have to respectfully disagree.

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Earlier today, Major League Baseball announced the rosters for the 79th All-Star Game being held at Yankee Stadium, which is only appropriate since this is the final season for the historic ballpark.

The starters were determined solely by the fan vote once again, unfortunately.

Nevertheless, we wanted to do what we hadn’t seen anywhere else and break down the selections team-by-team, so that you could easily see who was selected from your favorite team (starters are in bold):

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The Tampa Bay (no longer Devil) Rays are following the design Atlanta’s John Schuerholz so masterfully created after taking over as the general manager for the Braves and are now doing the unfathomable by leading the Boston Red Sox, the New York Yankees, and the remainder of the AL East while having the best record in baseball.

The Rays have used each of their high draft picks to build their organization from the farm system up much the same way the Atlanta Braves have been renowned for doing. Tampa Bay also has focused on building around a talented young pitching staff (their starting rotation is aged 24-26) just as Schuerholz did with Atlanta.

How similar are this year’s Rays to the Atlanta squads from the early ’90s? We’ve compared this year’s squad of the AL East leading Rays, who are coming off a sweep of perennial power Boston, to the Atlanta squads from their early 1990s heydays:

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The Red Sox, with two World Series titles in the last four years, are one of the favorites again this year. While the Red Sox are looking for championship titles, other division rivals have other goals: the Toronto Blue Jays are looking to move pass either the Red Sox or Yankees and get back into the top two in the division. However, they may have to hold off the upstart Tampa Bay (no longer Devil) Rays just to keep the #3 slot. The Rays first goal will be to finish above .500 for the first time in team history, but greater goals are just beyond the horizon.

Young whiz Scott Kazmir was shut down Tuesday afternoon after experiencing pain in his left elbow after his final warm-up pitch before a scrimmage. While it is not uncommon for a pitcher to precautiously shut down an early spring training session, if this injury turns into something serious, it could have an immediate impact on your fantasy drafts.

The left-handed Kazmir has posted stellar numbers since coming to Tampa Bay as part of the Victor Zambrano trade (sorry to remind you, Mets fans). In his short career, Kazmir has struckout an astonishing 617 batters in only 570.2 innings worked.

Despite pitching in the slugging AL East, his career ERA is an impressive 3.64, and last season, he posted career highs in wins, innings pitched, and strikeouts while pitching for the last-place Rays: 13 W, 206.2 IP, 3.48 ERA, 1.38 WHIP, and an AL-high 239 K’s, which was only one behind major league leader Jake Peavy’s 240.