Excessive groups: Rangers and Rays

The Texas Rangers and Tampa Bay Rays are two of the most effective groups in Main League Baseball, each thought-about to be strong contenders for 2023’s world championship.

But the 2 franchises aren’t any strangers to disappointment. Neither has ever gained a World Collection. That’s a 62-year dry spell for the Rangers, who date again to 1961 (after they have been born because the Washington Senators), and a 25-year shutout for the Rays, who have been based in 1998 (after they have been referred to as the Satan Rays).

The Rangers and Rays are the topics of this eleventh installment in my 15-part sequence concerning the excessive seasons — the most effective and worst performances — posted by all 30 MLB franchises through the Fashionable Period, the span from 1961 to the current. Every Friday brings a narrative a couple of new pair of golf equipment, which seem in alphabetical order.

These rankings are primarily based on workforce scores (TS), that are plotted on an equalized 100-point scale, thereby permitting direct comparisons of golf equipment from completely different seasons. (Click on right here to study extra concerning the TS system.)

Listed below are the years at each extremes for in the present day’s franchises:

Finest yr for the Rangers: Texas posted 96 wins in 2011, the best complete within the membership’s historical past. The Rangers ousted the Rays and Detroit Tigers to achieve that yr’s World Collection, the place they seized a 3-2 lead over St. Louis. The title gave the impression to be within the bag, however the Cardinals accomplished an epic comeback by successful the ultimate two video games. Third baseman Adrian Beltre and second baseman Ian Kinsler tied for the Texas lead with 32 residence runs. Designated hitter Michael Younger batted .338 with 106 runs batted in. C.J. Wilson and Derek Holland paced the pitching employees with 16 wins every.

Worst yr for the Rangers: The franchise’s very first yr within the Dallas-Fort Value space proved to be its worst. The Rangers went 54-100 in 1972, ending 38.5 video games behind first-place Oakland within the American League West. Proper fielder Ted Ford, with 14, was the one batter to achieve double digits in residence runs. Pitcher Wealthy Hand led the membership with 10 wins.

Finest yr for the Rays: The Covid-truncated 2020 schedule labored out properly for Tampa Bay, which gained two-thirds of its regular-season video games and superior all the way in which to the World Collection. The unlucky upshot was a six-game loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers. Second baseman Brandon Lowe led the Rays in homers (14) and RBIs (37). Third baseman Yandy Diaz batted .307. Beginning pitchers Tyler Glasnow and Blake Snell respectively went 5-1 and 4-2.

Worst yr for the Rays: The Tampa Bay franchise was referred to as the Satan Rays throughout its first decade (1998-2007), and the membership coincidentally suffered greater than 90 defeats in every of these seasons. It touched backside (in keeping with the TS system) in 2006, when the Satan Rays struggled to a 61-101 file. Left fielder Carl Crawford topped that workforce with a .305 batting common, whereas pitcher Scott Kazmir went 10-8 with a 3.24 ERA.

Scroll right down to see the highest 10 and backside 10 seasons between 1961 and 2022 for Washington/Texas or between 1998 and 2022 for Tampa Bay. Related rankings for all different MLB golf equipment will be discovered within the print version of Baseball’s Best (and Worst) 2023 Yearbook.

Every workforce is listed beneath with the yr in brackets, adopted by its regular-season win-loss file, postseason outcomes (if any) in parentheses, margin between runs scored and allowed per sport, and Fashionable Period percentile.

These are the postseason abbreviations: P signifies {that a} membership made the playoffs, L signifies that it gained a league championship, and W signifies that it gained the World Collection.

The Fashionable Period percentile is the share of all 1,656 major-league golf equipment from 1961 by 2022 {that a} given workforce outperformed, primarily based on TS comparisons.

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