Weighing Rays' Bats Against Yankees, Red Sox

If you want to make a short, convincing case that the first-place Tampa Bay Rays will inevitably fall behind the Yankees and the Boston Red Sox in the American League East, thus putting right the natural order in baseball, you'll have an easy time of it. Simply point to their offense: It isn't very good.

As of the start of play last night, the Rays were 10th in the league in scoring, a quarter of a run per game behind the Yankees and a half-run behind the Red Sox. Since the Rays' pitching and defense is barely better than that of their rivals — they're allowing 4.10 runs a game, against the Yankees' 4.23 and Boston's 4.14 — if everything holds even, a fall is probably coming.

Probably doesn't mean definitely, though, and there is hope for those who'd like to cheer on a team full of electric young players who among them make less money than the left half of the Yankee infield. The Rays don't have the firepower of the Yankees or Red Sox, but when you run the three teams down position by position, there's a plausible case to be made that the Rays can hang the rest of the way.

The first spot where both the Yankees and Red Sox have a big advantage is designated hitter. Even hobbled, Johnny Damon and especially David Ortiz are in a different class than Cliff Floyd, who's been a league-average hitter for Tampa this year. The Yankees have had an .889 OPS from the DH spot this year, and the Red Sox an .883; Damon and Ortiz are strong bets to match or better that during the rest of the year, while Floyd probably won't come near it.

The second spot is shortstop. Tampa's Jason Bartlett plays more out of his zone than anyone in the league, but he's atrocious with the bat, with both on-base and slugging averages below .300. Even in a down year Derek Jeter is better by an order of magnitude, and whether Boston ends up playing ball-slaying prospect Jed Lowrie or lousy incumbent Julio Lugo down the stretch, they're probably going to do better than Bartlett.

None of this has to be a problem for Tampa, though, because the easiest problem to fix in baseball is a position where you're getting nothing. A clever front office such as Tampa's should be able to come up with a decent hitter to help out in the DH spot, and even with shortstop prospect Reid Brignac not doing much at Class AAA, he's still a viable candidate for an offense/defense platoon with Bartlett. Where you're getting nothing, something counts as a big relative improvement.

Fixing these holes up would count for a lot, because there's reason to be optimistic about the rest of the Rays lineup relative to the competition. Most important is that they have the strongest hitters in the division at two crucial defensive positions. Twenty-four-year-old catcher Dioner Navarro, a onetime Yankees prospect, is enjoying his long-awaited breakout season, hitting .310 with some walks and gap power. Meanwhile, Sox captain Jason Varitek seems to have completely broken down, while with Jorge Posada out for the year the Yankees are reliant on Jose Molina, who's something like the Bartlett of catchers. The other spot is center field: While the Yankees suffer through the long summer of Melky Cabrera, and the Sox watch Coco Crisp and Jacoby Ellsbury hit like Cabrera, the Rays are enjoying the talents of B.J. Upton, who's had a miserable July (.216 with no home runs), but is a cut above the competition right now.

At three other positions, the Rays are running out lesser-known players who match their more famous peers more closely than you might think. Second baseman Akinori Iwamura is a solid, league-average hitter; Boston's Dustin Pedroia is better than that, but not overwhelmingly so, while Robinson Cano's on-base average is at .303 despite his having hit nearly .370 for a solid month. You never know what you're going to get out of Cano over any given span of time, but most likely neither the Yankees nor the Red Sox is going to enjoy a huge edge at second the rest of the way. First baseman Carlos Pena, meanwhile, had a season last year that would fit in right alongside Albert Pujols's best, and in July he's hit about as well as Jason Giambi and Kevin Youkilis have all season. There are good odds the Rays will get as much production as the Yankees and Red Sox do during the last two months. And while Rookie of the Year candidate Evan Longoria can't match Alex Rodriguez, he is hitting about as well as David Wright usually does, and much better than Mike Lowell is.

Taken as a whole, the Rays do pretty well at these five positions; they're getting offense from spots that are utter voids for the Sox and Yankees, and can at least compete at the others. This leaves the corner outfield positions, which may end up being the ones that determine whether the Rays can stitch together enough to hang in the race through September.

In right field, the Rays are playing Eric Hinske, a journeyman who's somewhat implausibly hitting .253/.353/.488. That's not near J.D. Drew's nearly MVP-class production, but it is more than what the Yankees are getting from Bobby Abreu. Hinske probably won't keep this up, but he has hit at this level before. In left, Carl Crawford is the big mystery for Tampa. At 26, coming off a long string of good but not excellent seasons, he seemed the very definition of a breakout waiting to happen. As is, his OBA is barely above .300, and he's scored one run since the Rays' series against the Yankees earlier this month. He's no Manny Ramirez, but he's a better player than Xavier Nady, and if he can rediscover his form he'll do his team immense good.

Looking things over this way, it's easy to see the Rays' problem, which is that while there are few spots where they embarrass themselves, even at their best positions they don't enjoy the kind of monstrous advantages the Yankees have at third and the Red Sox have at designated hitter. It's also easy to see the one thing they have going for them, which is that while none of their hitters seems in for a serious downturn, several of their best — Pena, Crawford, and to some extent Upton — have hit well below what they're capable of. It may be unlikely that everything that's gone well will continue to do so while everything that hasn't will suddenly improve — but would it be any more unlikely than them being in first place this late in July to begin with?

tmarchman@nysun.com