Spring Success Might Carry Over; Then Again

ST. PETERSBURG - The Rays have the best record in the American League East.

In July, June - even May - that statement would be cause for shock and consternation across the baseball universe.

In March, well, who knows what to make of it?

Just because the Rays are headed for their most successful Grapefruit League campaign ever, and only their second winning record in the spring, does that mean wins will follow once the games start to count?

"It depends on who you ask," left fielder Carl Crawford said. "If you ask a team on the other side, they might say, 'It's just spring training, it don't mean nothing.' But a team like us, where we're trying to build some momentum going into the season, it's a good thing.

"We know it's spring training, but we're trying to build up a certain kind of feel. We want to get used to that winning feel, whether it's spring training or whatever. We want that to become like normal for us."

Hey, you've got to start somewhere, and it might as well be at the beginning.

The Rays' only other spring with a winning record before this one was 2004, when they went 11-8 in a Grapefruit League campaign shortened by a season-opening trip to Japan. That also happened to be the most successful regular season in team history, with a 70-91 record and fourth-place finish, so maybe there is something to this.

Or, maybe not. Joe Maddon, derided in some quarters for his apparently bottomless reserve of optimism, is not at all convinced that the Rays' ability to rack up wins this spring will mean anything once the calendar flips to April.

"I'm just so cognizant of the regular season, how different it is from spring training," he said. "And then you also have to guard against this sense of 'We're so much better because we've had a good spring training.'

"The part of the game that's the same is, you play it hard and play it right every day, but the other part is the constant substitution and the people that you're going to be facing and how the game is concluded. ... The game is different."

The one aspect of spring training that perhaps bears the least resemblance to its regular-season counterpart is relief pitching, which of course was the Rays' biggest downfall last year. With pitchers scheduled out days in advance and situational work usually not occurring until the final week of March - if then - it's all but impossible to gauge how relievers will react in a late-game pressure situation.

Without such real-world examples of how real games might play out, the Rays are left to hope the concepts Maddon and his staff have hammered home all spring have sunk in properly.

"The guys are seeing it work," Maddon said. "They're seeing that this hardball approach on a daily basis and the cutting down of errors and the better situational hitting and the pitchers throwing the ball down in the zone and catching the ball on defense - they're seeing it translates into wins."

And now it's a matter of seeing how spring wins translate into wins people actually will remember. History has shown that can be a dicey proposition.

Take the 2003 Indians, who won the Grapefruit League title with a 19-11 record and plunged to 68-94 in the regular season. The Mariners suffered the same fate the following year. After pacing the Cactus League at 18-11, they went 63-99 from April through September. In 2006, the Royals went 17-10 to tie for second in the Cactus League and managed to lose 100 games.

Then again, last year's top dogs during spring training - Arizona in the Cactus League and Detroit in the Grapefruit League - fared pretty well over the long haul, winning 90 and 88 games, respectively.

The bottom line is, the Rays' spring record will be forgotten by the time they take the field in Baltimore on March 31. For now, about the best that can be said is it beats the alternative - like the Rays' 10-19 mark last spring, which was the worst in Florida.

"We have to change the culture, and part of the change is to win," Maddon said. "If it has to start here in spring training this year, so be it."