For the second straight season, the Tampa Bay Rays are the American League’s top seed in the playoffs. Carrying MLB’s fifth-smallest payroll, they handily captured a division that featured four 90-plus win teams.
And for the second straight year, they could eliminate one of that division’s monied behemoths in the playoffs as they begin a series with the Boston Red Sox on Thursday.
Even more notable, though, is the extremely on brand way in which the Rays have gone about defending their 2020 AL pennant. They traded away Blake Snell in the offseason.