Another regular season is in the books. Final standings and leaders:
Several Rays led the majors in various categories: Josh Beckett in BA, Josh Alexander in RBI, Seth Williams in OPS (although he may be slightly behind Luis Barela in the NL, I'm not going to take it down to a 4th decimal point), Johnny Soland in wins and not pictured here, Brad Jackson in pitcher WAR at 6.3. Our final team stats:
The usual offensive dominance (1000 runs!), the usual very good pitching and the usual lousy defense despite elite defenders at SS and CF. We won 9 more games than our Pythag record, so we were lucky
and good.
Individual batting:
Seth Williams should win MVP, and I'd like to think Dave Frick takes Rookie of the Year. Pretty impressive to have 4 outfielders go over the 4-WAR mark, and none of them played much at DH as Andy Ruggles (who had a down year) was the main guy at that position. Jimmy Leonard was a beast after coming back from injury.
The pitching stats:
The starters were really good, with Brockman suffering a bit of bad BABIP luck (as did Jackson, but he was so good he overcame it). What a year for Freddie Zamora. I originally figured him as one and done since he's due for nearly $15M in arbitration next year, but I may have to reconsider that since that's the amount I'm saving when Kawase goes. Speaking of Kikuo, this was his first sub-2 WAR season and the age is starting to show, even if his numbers were superficially good.