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Byline: Chelsea Janes BALTIMORE - The Tampa Bay Rays clinched a playoff spot Sunday afternoon when the Texas Rangers fell to the Cleveland Guardians. The Rays were in the ninth [...]

Byline: Bob Nightengale, USA TODAY PHOENIX - They're the guys driving a Ford Taurus and leading the Indy 500. They're the guys who can't afford a double-double burger, let alone [...]

Tampa Bay's outrageous season has been fueled by home runs. Cleveland barely hits any. Both teams follow the numbers and emphasize what they do well. When Mike Trout or Shohei [...]

A team known for innovation, Tampa Bay finally has some stability -- and the best offense and pitching in baseball. Or, as Harold Ramírez said, ''everything we do is right.'' [...]

Byline: Gabe Lacques, USA TODAY The Tampa Bay Rays' rampage is over. Reality will finally settle over the American League East, and it's going to be a wild ride. A [...]

Byline: Bob Nightengale, USA TODAY The MLB season is just over a week old, but so far, well, money isn't necessarily translating into victories. The New York Mets, who have [...]

Byline: Gabe Lacques USA TODAY WASHINGTON - After signing the biggest free agent contract in Tampa Bay Rays history, Zach Eflin did not strut into the clubhouse bent on influencing [...]

Kansas City's approach had been boom and (mostly) bust. A new strategy has the team trying to attain the sustained relevance of Tampa Bay and Cleveland. SURPRISE, Ariz. -- The [...]

Byline: Bob Nightengale, Columnist, USA TODAY LAS VEGAS - Nothing personal, but with the exception of a certain team in the Bronx, everyone in the American League East is wildly [...]

With a low payroll that requires some trade-offs, Tampa Bay leads the majors in runs despite leading the A.L. in strikeouts. ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- Chad Mottola was sure he [...]

Byline: Gabe Lacques, USA TODAY For the next five weeks, the American League East may very well play host to a compelling four-team jamboree, with a handful of very different [...]

Byline: Chelsea Janes NEW YORK - Until this week, the Tampa Bay Rays had played 731 straight regular season games without one of their starters throwing a complete game. When [...]

Tampa Bay's unassuming roster continues to confound. After beating the Yankees on Monday, they have won 16 of 17 games. If there were a way to quantify what makes a [...]

Blake Snell was dominating the Dodgers in a must-win World Series game. Kevin Cash still pulled him, raising painful questions of what might have been. ARLINGTON, Texas -- The Tampa [...]

Tampa Bay Manager Kevin Cash said he felt like his pitchers had been too conservative so far in the World Series. Fortunately for the Rays, it will be Blake Snell, [...]

Byline: Dave Sheinin ARLINGTON, Texas - In the waning moments of Game 2 of the World Series on Wednesday night, with two outs and the bases empty in the bottom [...]

A relatively unheralded group of relievers has been crucial to Tampa Bay's success this year, bucking the trend among recent contenders. ARLINGTON, Texas -- The baseball gods might have sent [...]

Byline: RONALD BLUM, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ARLINGTON, TEX. -- Lead Andrew Friedman isn't quite torn. The Dodgers' president of baseball operations since October, 2014, he helped build Los Angeles into [...]

Byline: Bob Nightengale, Columnist, USA TODAY ARLINGTON, Texas - David Price was sitting in his spacious Scottsdale, Arizona, home Sunday night, watching his Dodgers teammates celebrate on the field at [...]

Byline: Gabe Lacques, USA TODAY ARLINGTON, Texas - It is the best against the best, and Major League Baseball can't often say that about its jewel event. For the first [...]

Los Angeles vs. Tampa Bay. Big spenders vs. penny-pinchers. Stars vs. relative unknowns. The Dodgers and the Rays both dominated to get to this point, but did so in different [...]

Byline: Jerry Brewer In this debilitating year of the novel coronavirus, no city has been able to rejoice over sports as much as Tampa. Most are salvaging, scrounging, redefining joy. [...]

Despite a losing record in the regular season, Houston has blitzed through the postseason and reached the A.L.C.S., where a crafty Rays squad awaits. There was symbolism in the timing [...]

Byline: Jesse Dougherty If not for the Tampa Bay Rays - for their pitching staff, for a line drive that just kept going Friday night - the rest of this [...]

Byline: Bob Nightengale USA TODAY SAN DIEGO - The Tampa Bay Rays and New York Yankees don't care for each other. 'They don't like us, we don't like them,' Rays [...]

The Yankees are in an unfamiliar position as underdogs against Tampa Bay after losing eight of their 10 games against the Rays in the regular season. SAN DIEGO -- This [...]

Byline: Gabe Lacques, USA TODAY Moments after the Tampa Bay Rays clinched a playoff berth for a second consecutive season, infielder Joey Wendle briefly pondered the Major League Baseball-sanctioned hat [...]

Byline: Gabe Lacques, USA TODAY PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla. - The music is always loud and the mood perpetually light in the land of the underdog, and on this spring training [...]

Byline: Gabe Lacques, USA TODAY SAN DIEGO - For teams perpetually in the bottom third of MLB's payroll pecking order, one word defines almost all of their movements. 'We try,' [...]

Byline: Jesse Yomtov, USA TODAY After dropping the first two games of the AL Division Series, the Rays have rallied back to force a decisive Game 5 against the Astros. [...]

Byline: CATHAL KELLY, Staff TORONTO -- Lead The Tampa Bay Rays have some structural disadvantages. They play in an airless, concrete tomb. No one in Tampa likes them. Their owner [...]

Byline: Scott Boeck, USA TODAY The Rays have a tall order to fill against the mighty Astros. While the Rays didn't sneak into the American League Division Series, they are [...]

Byline: Gabe Lacques, USA TODAY For all of their innovation - the Openers, the books and movie, the constant churn of talent that leaves their fans fretting and efficiency experts [...]

Byline: Dave Sheinin Very soon, the Major League Baseball postseason will belong to the old-money bluebloods and the new-money tech giants - teams such as the New York Yankees, the [...]

Byline: Gabe Lacques, USA TODAY It was a momentous Thursday for baseball aficionados in Montreal. It was a significant day for baseball lovers in Portland, Oregon, and maybe Nashville, Tennessee, [...]

Byline: Jesse Yomtov, USA TODAY The year after combining for 298 wins, the Yankees, Rays and Red Sox are primed for an intense three-way race in the American League East [...]

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- A mile and a half from the locus of baseball surrealism is a monument to the master of the medium. The Dalí Museum, home to more [...]

Every so often in a 162-game schedule, a series takes on outsize importance, even if the players involved are reluctant to admit it. One game at a time, they'll say, [...]

Byline: Gabe Lacques, USA TODAY For the better part of a decade, the Tampa Bay Rays have attracted certain buzzwords that stick to them like a sweat-soaked shirt in a [...]

Byline: Jesse Yomtov, USA TODAY There's usually a legitimate reason to write off the Rays. This season feels different. As hard as it is to believe, it's been 11 years [...]

The Tampa Bay Rays arrived in Toronto this weekend with the only winning record in the American League East. They were 10-3 entering Friday's games, with a 1.98 team earned [...]

LOS ANGELES -- When Nathan Eovaldi joined the Boston Red Sox this summer, his old team was a source of curiosity in his new clubhouse. Eovaldi had pitched for the [...]

The Tampa Bay Rays are a little like the Whos down in Who-ville in ''How the Grinch Stole Christmas.'' They lose all their possessions on Christmas morning, and yet -- [...]

Byline: Gabe Lacques, USA TODAY With one-third of their season remaining, the Rays appear, on paper, the definition of average: 53 wins, 53 losses, six fewer runs scored than allowed, [...]

Byline: FRED GOODALL; THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ST. PETERSBURG, FLA. -- The young Tampa Bay Rays feel they have a chance to be more competitive than an off-season of trimming salary [...]

Byline: Gabe Lacques, USA TODAY PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla. - Denard Span says he is taking things one day at a time, as one does in spring training, but baseball's ultimate [...]

The history of Tampa Bay's major league baseball team divides neatly in half -- 10 seasons as the stumbling and hopeless Devil Rays, 10 more as the clever and resourceful [...]

Byline: Jorge L. Ortiz, @jorgelortiz, USA TODAY Sports As the networks trained their eyes on the New York Yankees-Boston Red Sox four-game series last weekend, televising three of the games [...]

Maybe Corey Dickerson should have brought a cellphone with him when he went to the plate at the All-Star Game. That is what Nelson Cruz did, and his photo with [...]