So this is something I started in August over at the other place, and then let it slide for a while. The idea is that I look at a team who is out of it this year but might have designs on next year, and talk about what they need to do to get there. So far I've done the Mariners, the Reds, and the Cubs.

I thought the Rays were the best team in the Majors both last year and this one, and for the first several months, they played like it, though their record didn't show it. Then the wheels came off, and they traded Scott Kazmir, and they're gonna end up just a touch over .500, 20 or so games behind the Yankees and ten or so out of the wildcard. How about next year?

2010 Rays now under contract, with 2009 WAR
C: Dioner Navarro (-0.1)
1B: Carlos Pena (2.8)
2B: Ben Zobrist (8.0)
3B: Evan Longoria (7.1)
SS: Jason Bartlett (4.8)
LF: Carl Crawford (5.3)
CF: B.J. Upton (2.2)
RF: Desmond Jennings (rookie: .318/.401/.487 in double-triple A)
DH: Pat Burrell (-0.3)

Pitchers, with 2009 FIPs:
James Shields, 4.01
Matt Garza, 4.19
Jeff Niemann, 4.09
David Price, 4.67
Wade Davis, rookie (3.40 in AAA, 3.45 in 5 MLB starts)
Bullpen: J.P. Howell (3.71), Randy Choate (4.06), Dan Wheeler (4.62)

It's actually really hard to see where this team went wrong. Zobrist has been one of the three or four best players in the game in 2009, Longoria will be one of the five or ten best players in the game for the next ten years, and Carlos Pena was leading the league in homers when he went down. Yeah, Upton was a disappointment, but still one of the best defensive CFs in the game (which made him an average player despite a putrid 74 OPS+). Right field was a really ineffective platoon of Gabes (Kapler and Gross), but they've got Jennings, suddenly one of the best prospects around, waiting in the wings. (Incidentally, there's some speculation they might trade Crawford to make room for Jennings, but that would be dumb since they only have two competent outfielders at the ML level, so I'll just pretend that doesn't happen.) In the rotation, they've got three really good #2 starters, a guy who was the best prospect in the game a year ago, and another really good prospect. Their bullpen, though a step back from 2008, was still very good (Balfour and Bradford not pictured, as free agents to be).

So what did they do wrong? Basically, they ended up in the wrong division. Put all those pieces together on a team in the AL Central, and it's impossible to see that team not winning 92-95 games and the division. But the Rays' two biggest faults in 2009 were, in order: (a) not being the Yankees; and (b) not being the Red Sox.

Well, we can't fix those. And with Pena and some others looking at free agency in 2011, the time is now. So what could we do to get them back to the postseason in 2010?

(click to keep reading)

Three things they need to make happen
1. Sign two more quality, cheap relievers. A big part of the Rays' success in 2008 was that a bullpen picked entirely off the scrap heap -- Percival, Balfour, Howell, and others -- became one of the best in baseball. The thing is, there are guys like that out there every year; guys who strike fools out and don't give up too many home runs and generally throw strikes, so that if you put them in front of one of the best defenses in the league -- which the Rays are -- they become superstuds. It may be as simple as re-signing Bradford and Balfour, but if pitching in front of the Rays' defense has made them too expensive, there are more Bradfords and Balfours out there. I don't think Choate and Wheeler are going to get it done, though they're nice pieces to have.

2. Trade Iwamura for...something. Before an injury in late May ended his 2009 season, Akinori Iwamura had spent two and a half seasons showing himself to be a perfectly adequate, Major-League-average second baseman. Unfortunately for Aki, his injury paved the way for Ben Zobrist to show that he was one of the best players in the league. (No, I don't really think he's this good, but his OPSes by month: 1.004, 1.064, 1.017, .878, .822, .856. Given that he was a top defensive second baseman throughout, he played like an All-Star in every single month of the season. He's for real.) The Rays have a club option on Iwamura for 2010 at $4.25 million. That's a very, very low figure; fangraphs thinks he was worth $5.5 mil in just his 1/3 of a season in 2009. Pick up that option and trade him for something to help you in 2010. Maybe it's an even better reliver than the ones they could pick up through number 1 below above (don't drink and blog, kids). Maybe it's a couple good complementary pieces, like a slick-fielding backup shortstop and a good fourth outfielder. Because they really need to...

3. Sign/trade for some depth. The Rays actually have one of the best bench players in the game, too, in Willy Aybar, a league-average hitter who had a bit of an off-year but can generally hold his own at first, second or third (how are they not awesome, again? Oh yeah--Yankees and Sox). But it's pretty thin after that. Kapler is likely leaving as a free agent, guys like Matt Joyce and Fernando Perez have been terrible, and former top prospect Reid Brignac has been pretty stagnant in the minors. It would be nice not to be completely screwed when, inevitably, Pena or Crawford or Upton or Longoria or Bartlett or Zobrist goes down.

Three things they need to have happen; really, in this case it's just three players they need to be better:
1, B.J. Upton. Man, is this guy talented. In 2007, he hit .300/.386/.508. In the 2008 postseason, he hit .288/.333/.652 with seven homers in 66 AB and stole six bases without being caught. Back in '07, though, he was a crappy second baseman; now, he's an all-world center fielder. He's stolen over 40 bases a year in each of the last two years. But he hasn't hit, at all, for the last two regular seasons. If his '07 offense and '09 fielding and baserunning were to come together, he'd be something pretty close to the perfect center fielder, like 1986-89 Eric Davis. That would give the Rays All-Star calibre players at six different positions, and by that point you're getting into Yankees territory.

2. Pat Burrell. Gotta be honest; this is just as important for me as it is for the Rays. If I knew one thing coming into the 2009 season, it was that the Rays got a steal with Burrell, and the Phillies were idiots for signing Raul Ibanez to take his place. I still believe the second part is true -- the guy's 37, and they gave him three years at a well-above-market price -- but I still need Pat the Bat to prove me right on the first part. Burrell was more than just a flop for the Rays, hitting at below replacement level in a position where his only job was to hit. He'll be 33. His OPS+ was between 120 and 130 in every year from 2005 to 2008. One might expect him to drop off a bit from age and switching to the tougher league, but not from 125 to 81. He's signed for 2010, and it's not like anybody's going to want him at $9 million, so they might as well keep plugging him in and hope he bounces back.

3. Dioner Navarro. I tend to ignore the catcher position in analyses like these, because they're usually zeroes (which is why I think Mauer is probably even better than most metrics make him look). But Navarro was an All-Star in 2008, and a deserving one. In 2009, though, he's fallen off the map, with an almost unfathomable .259 OBP and very little power. He's hitting the ball in the air almost 50% more often than he did in 2008, and he's never going to be a home run hitter; he needs to go back to hitting line drives and ground balls. He's still just 26, and a bounce back to his 2008 levels means about three more wins for the Rays. Upton hitting like 2007 would be worht about four wins, and Burrell hitting like he did in 2008 would add close to three more. That takes the Rays from about an 85-win team to about a 95-win team, and they'd be ahead of the Sox for the wild card. Make some improvements like the ones I suggest above, and they're competing with the Yankees.