After talking about infuriatingly good the Yankees are and how shockingly-under-the-radar good the Red Sox are, it’ll be nice to spew some words on how terrible the Tampa Bay Rays are going to be. They’re, like, Devil Rays era level bad. Given how difficult the American League BEAST is going to be, the Blue Jays badly need a shitty opponent to routinely hammer to help their wild card endeavours.

The Rays blew it up this winter. They traded franchise GOAT Evan Longoria to the San Fransisco Giants, for a pretty light return, dealt solid pitcher Jake Odorizzi to the Minnesota Twins for yet another light return, and then DFA’d slugger Corey Dickerson to save cash. They also let Logan Morrison and Alex Cobb walk in free agency.

Their roster is now loaded with random, computer generated players that may or may not actually exist. The Tampa Bay Rays are essentially a team you face when you’re, like, eight seasons deep into a Be A Pro file on MLB The Show.

After a six-year stretch between 2008 and 2013 during the height of the Longoria era that featured four playoff appearances, the Rays took a turn downwards and have come nowhere near the playoffs in each of their past four seasons. As a result, management is retreating back to the scorched earth, tanking days of the Devil Rays days. The Rays have a good group of prospects and they want to add to it with a high draft pick in 2019.

The Rays rotation looks something like Chris Archer as the ace, *checks notes* youngsters Blake Snell and Jacob Faria as the next two high-upside arms, and then *digs through papers* uhhhhh, a random fan from the audience chosen before each game and Matt Andriese at the back of the rotation.

Nathan Eovaldi was slated to make the starting rotation, but, after missing all of 2017 due to injury, he’s on the shelf again. That could open a spot for an interesting prospect like Anthony Banda, who was acquired when the Rays dealt Steven Souza in the winter, or it could just be filled by cloning Chris Archer.

I don’t know. Archer is good. Snell could be good but he hands out walks like Halloween candy. Faria was good last year and will likely continue to be good. Otherwise? Ugly.

The Rays have toyed around with the strategy in which they use the fuck out of their middle relievers and have a shortened rotation, but it’s kind of resulted in them burning out arms before the end of the season. They had a lot of relievers toss a lot of innings last season, and, predictably, it crashed on them at the end of the year.

This year, they’re rolling out a ‘pen equally as underwhelming as their rotation. They have Alex Colome as the closer and then Sergio Romo, who was actually solid last year after Tampa picked him up, and Daniel Hudson, who used to be pretty good, as the main options to help reach the ninth inning. I imagine we’ll see a lot of different arms coming out of the ‘pen for Tampa this season.

The Rays lost a lot of offence in Longoria, Souza, Dickerson, and Morrison. Those guys were the top four on the team in homers last year. Combined, those guys cranked 115 of the team’s 228 homers. That offence isn’t going to be made up by off-season acquisitions *squints at notes again* Carlos Gomez, Denard Span, and C.J. Cron.

The lineup is largely trash, featuring names that can’t hit like Mallex Smith and Adeiny Hechavarria and a bunch of boom-or-bust guys like Brad Miller, Wilson Ramos, and Span. The only real saving grace for the Rays would be top prospects like Willy Adames, Matt Duffy, Jake Bauers, or Christian Arroyo coming up and joining the lineup. At least that would make the team fun to watch, because otherwise, it’s a collection of players grabbed from the lost and found bin.

The Rays are going to be bad! Maybe everything goes right and everyone stays healthy and a bunch of those lost and found players find themselves in the warm confined of the abandoned Costco the team plays in and the young pitching rotation pulls it together and the Rays end up being inexplicably good.

But that would be going against the plan. The front office wants the team to be bad. They rank to tank. They’re even calling their new social media thing The Rays Tank to get it into their fans’ heads.

The Jays badly need to kick the shit out of the Rays this year. The AL East is good, the Yankees and Red Sox are excellent and even the Orioles are, like, OK. The Twins, another team competing for a wild card, get to pound Detroit, Chicago, and Kansas City all year, and the Jays only have one divison rival to beat up on. They absolutely have to capitalize on the Rays Tank.