Looking at Our Hitters: 2008 Tampa Bay Rays (MLB)

The last team in our look at batters-by-level from last year is the Tampa Bay Rays. First, here are the definitions of the stats used from the StatCorner Glossary:

PA: Plate Appearances. This is how much they hit.

wOBA: "wOBA or weighted on base average is a statistic developed by and used with the permission of Tom Tango. In a nutshell, wOBA uses linear weights on certain batting events to come up with a metric that is more statistically sound than OPS and is scaled onto an OBP scale. According to Tango "An average hitter is around 0.340 or so, a great hitter is 0.400 or higher, and a poor hitter would be under 0.300." This is how well they hit.

bRAA: "Stands for batting runs above average. It is computed by taking the hitter's RV/PA (Run value per PA above average = (wOBA for player - wOBA for league) / 1.15.) and multiplying by the number of plate appearances he has had that season." This is how much 'value' they added (or cost) their team based on the quality and quantity of their hitting.

Tampa Bay Rays (MLB)

Batter	Age	Level	PA	wOBA	bRAA
Pena, Carlos	30.6	MLB	606	.386	25.3
Longoria, Evan	23.2	MLB	508	.374	16.4
Upton, B.J.	24.3	MLB	639	.356	10.8
Zobrist, Ben	27.5	MLB	227	.367	5.9
Floyd, Cliff	36.0	MLB	284	.360	5.7
Navarro, Dioner	24.8	MLB	470	.348	5.2
Hinske, Eric	31.3	MLB	432	.347	3.8
Gross, Gabe	29.2	MLB	344	.348	3.3
Baldelli, Rocco	27.2	MLB	90	.377	3.1
Iwamura, Akinori	29.8	MLB	706	.338	1.1
Perez, Fernando	25.6	MLB	72	.340	0.2
Aybar, Willy	25.8	MLB	362	.332	-1.4
Crawford, Carl	27.3	MLB	479	.330	-2.7
Ruggiano, Justin	26.7	MLB	81	.266	-5.0
Gomes, Jonny	28.0	MLB	176	.304	-5.4
Bartlett, Jason	29.1	MLB	494	.318	-8.0

Comments: The big league Rays have been discussed extensively at other sites so I'll just add a couple of comments. Picking up Pena off the scrap heap was truly a stroke of genius by the front office. Looking forward to a full, healthy season from Longoria. Zobrist is a surprisingly valuable utility player off the bench. And of course, Baldelli, Floyd, Gomes, and Hinske are currently free agents.

Notes: Age is as of today. Hitters are listed by level, so some appear in other posts. I only included those who had many plate appearances or are high profile (top prospect, ex-prospect, in the news lately). StatCorner only covers down to full-season A ball, so no Hudson Valley, Princeton, DSL or VSL players are included in these summaries.