Failure and the Rays seemed to go hand in hand, especially because the teams average attendance at Tropicana Field nearly always ranked at the bottom of the league even when the team performed well providing bad optics for fans tuning in on TV. And the Rays worked with a much smaller budget than the behemoths of the game, making sustained contention difficult.
The team emerged from its doldrums to earn an unlikely World Series trip in 2008 (their first season as merely the Rays), losing to the Phillies in five games, and its been pretty good in the years since.
Still, the signs did not point to a return to the World Series in 2020. The Rays were 0-4 in playoff series in the 11 years between World Series appearances.
But Tampa Bay beat the Yankees in the 2020 division series, then eliminated the defending American League champion Houston Astros in the A.L.C.S. As World Series underdogs again last October, they took the Dodgers to six games before falling just short of the big prize. Brandon Lowe hit 14 homers in the abbreviated 60-game season and reliever Nick Anderson had an 0.55 ERA in 19 appearances, but the team got this close to the championship mostly without stars, and continued to have one of the five lowest payrolls in the league.read more
Could Tampa Bay Be the New Titletown?
