Interesting Spring Facts

The Rays are having a great spring, as you can see by their now 14-4 record. But does having a great spring correlate to having a successful regular season? On his ESPN.com blog Jayson Stark looked at the last five years of spring training to see what he could find. Here’s what he came up with:


“I found six teams since 2003 that finished spring training at least nine games over .500. Those six went on to average 86 wins that season. And the only two clubs in the group that had losing records still managed to stay in some kind of race deep into September. Take a look:


2007 Tigers: Spring Rec(21-10) Season Rec(88-74)
2006 Reds: Spring Rec(22-11) Season Rec(80-82)
2006 Marlins: Spring Rec(19-9) Season Rec(78-84)
2005 Angels: Spring Rec(21-11) Season Rec(95-67)
2004 Twins: Spring Rec(20-11) Season Rec(92-70)
2003 Royals: Spring Rec(19-10) Season Rec(83-79)


So to all those people who have been saying lately that the buzz about Tampa Bay is overblown, history says: Uh, think again.”


The Rays play in a tougher division than the Reds, Marlins or Royals, so I doubt that they’ll be in contention late with 86 wins or so, but we can hope, can’t we?