Rays Are Wobbling: Will They Fall Down?

After 130 games of baseball, wouldn't it be safe to say that a team with a .600 winning percentage is roughly a .600 team. Maybe they're a little better or a little worse, but it would be surprising to see a .600 team over 130 games suddenly melt into a .333 team over the last 30.

Right?

And yet, here we go again.

Last year, we saw the 62-46 Pirates morph into a 17-37 team down the stretch.  Admittedly that's a .574 team after "only" 108 games but it seems like quite the stumble. We take for granted that the Bucs weren't .500 quality because they hadn't reached that milestone in Miley Cyrus's lifetime, but those first 108 games had to mean something.

In 2011, both Boston and Atlanta succumbed simultaneously to a fatal choking. The Sox won 82 of their first 133 games (.617 winning percentage) only to secure just eight more victories in their last 29 opportunities (.275). The Braves (79-53, .598)crashed to a 10-20 record (.333) over the final month. We saw the same thing in '09 with the Tigers (75-61 followed by 11-16) and in '07 with the Mets(83-62 before a 5-12 skid).

How could that be? Do the first five months tell us nothing about the competence of a ballclub? Were the Red Sox a first place team or a last place team? They had a few injuries on the pitching staff down the stretch, but were otherwise essentially the same club in September as in April-through-August. The beneficiary of Boston's 2011 collapse is this year the collapsers. Tampa Bay was cruising to a Wild Card, if not the AL East crown before late August happened.

On August 24, they stood at 74-53, .583 and still drooling over a division title. A 4-13 slide later, mostly against bottom feeders like the Mariners, and they're clinging to a Wild Card lead thinner than George Zimmerman's excuses. A run by any of Baltimore, New York, Cleveland or Kansas City looks like it will dislodge the nose-diving Rays.

Once again, it's difficult to discern where the wheels have come off. The Rays have navigated around injuries and in fact have returned starter Alex Cobb to their six-deep starting rotation. Both hitting and pitching have ebbed a bit in recent weeks, but neither has fallen off a 4-13 cliff. This is a top-5 hitting team by OPS that features four stellar starters. Perhaps it's their fire-starting relief corps and empty bats with runners in scoring position that are taking their toll.

There remain more questions than answers. If any team can wobble without falling down it's the team with Joe Maddon managing. So, as is often the case in baseball, we'll just have to watch and let the game surprise us.