Final Record: 93-69 (15-13 for the month)
1st place, AL East, 3 games ahead of Baltimore
September was a bit of a touch and go month for the Rays with some injuries and inconsistent play, but in the end they won the AL East and secured a bye through the wild card round. Things did get a bit dicey in the penultimate weekend when the Orioles took the first 2 games and pulled within 2 games of the lead, but a win in the series finale beat back Baltimore and they clinched just before the final 3-game return series with the Orioles:
We were hit hard in the injury department.
Junior Caminero, who broke out to the tune of 287/342/479 and took over 2B, tore a labrum in his shoulder and is done until next May. The bullpen took it on the chin as well as
Fernando Costume ruptured his UCL and is out until July and
Matt Canterino sprained an ankle and is out until mid-October. And we played the last couple of weeks without star 3B
Elly De La Cruz as he suffered elbow inflammation but he'll be back for the playoffs.
How the season shook out around MLB:
Houston did take the final AL wild card, making up two games on Cleveland over the final two days and edging them on the tiebreaker. The Astros scored 4 runs in the bottom of the 9th to win on the final day in a high-drama event. Aaron Judge closed with a flourish, hitting .308-13-32 in September and possibly pipping Tsuneharu Sugihara, who had a massive year and looked like a shoo-in, for MVP.
Can we say the bullpen carried this team to 93 wins? The offense was OK but not great and the starting pitching and defense were mediocre, so that leaves the pen, whose 2.86 ERA was the best in baseball.
You can see why Caminero is missed - 3.2 WAR in only 91 games implies a 5+ WAR player. De La Cruz would have hit that mark had he stayed healthy but the real unsung heroes in the field were
Shea Langeliers and
Carson Williams, who picked up a lot of the offensive slack over the final couple of months. Langeliers is a free agent this winter and we were fully prepared to let him go; in fact he started the year in a job-share with
Patrick Bailey but took control of the position. The big disappointment was the power trio of
Bobby Marsh, Triston Casas and
Kevin Alcantara, who
combined for only 3.1 WAR. Meanwhile
Zach Gelof and
Baylon Lora were very productive off the bench.
Still ruing the loss of McClanahan as the playoff rotation doesn't exactly inspire confidence. Springs pitched pretty well and is now our "ace" and he'll be followed by Bradley and Ramirez, who did pitch somewhat better than their surface numbers as both were BABIP victims to an extent. Not sure who the 4th starter will be as Santana continued his inconsistency after coming back from injury while Hall was also inconsistent but had better results. I'd also prefer if the back end of the pen was better as Alvarado and Peguero both had problems giving up homers.
We're short on high-end prospects although Kim and Holliday look like they could contribute in 2029.
So it's off to the playoffs again as we try to finally bring home a title, coming so close last year before losing in the World Series to the Dodgers. I'm less confident about this year's squad due to the starting pitching but we'll see.