The Cincinnati Reds have scored just 78 runs through their 22 games played this year, yet they\u2019ve managed to win 14 of those and sit in 1st place in their division after their weekend sweep of the Minnesota Twins.<\/p>\n
The Tampa Bay Rays, meanwhile, have seen their runners score 103 times through just 21 games, yet they sit in 2nd place in their own division with 12 wins after dropping two of three over the weekend against Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n
Not all baseball is played alike, of course. Tampa\u2019s offense has come out of the gate in impressive fashion, their team wOBA ranking 11th overall, their team wRC+ 10th, and their 18.6% K-rate at the plate the second lowest of any team in baseball. The flip side to that, though, is that their 4.90 expected ERA through those 21 games is 5th worst as they\u2019ve yielded 1.28 homers per game (5th highest) – and the collective 5.81 xERA from their relievers is the single worst of any bullpen unit to date.<\/p>\n
In many ways, the 12-9 Rays are the inverse of the 14-8 Reds, who have gotten where they are thanks to elite bullpen work and improved defense (Cincinnati ranks 13th in DEF at FanGraphs while Tampa ranks 2nd worst) despite bottom of the barrel offense. Both clubs, though, have managed to win a lot more than they\u2019ve lost despite both still boasting negative run differentials for the season, with Tampa mimicking the Reds with a 4-1 record in one-run games of their own.<\/p>\n
Something will likely have to give in this series, though that\u2019s not a given. We could get a 9-6 win from Tampa followed by a pair of pair of 2-1 Reds victories, and that would just about sum up where both clubs are on the baseball result spectrum at this point in the galaxy\u2019s history.<\/p>\n
Rhett Lowder will toe the rubber in Monday\u2019s series opener, with Chase Burns (Tuesday) and Brandon Williamson (Wednesday) slated to follow. First pitch Monday at the renovated Trop is set for 6:40 PM ET, and the Reds will line up like so:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Cincinnati Reds have scored just 78 runs through their 22 games played this year, yet they\u2019ve managed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":679937,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2377],"tags":[5,79233,4,297,2550,68,2551,2549],"class_list":{"0":"post-679936","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tampa-bay-rays","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-cincinnati-reds-game-information","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-rays","12":"tag-tampa-bay","13":"tag-tampa-bay-rays","14":"tag-tampabay","15":"tag-tampabayrays"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116438652673528022","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=679936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679936\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/679937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=679936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=679936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=679936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}