There have been a lot of articles recently about how the Rays have unexpectedly become the best team in baseball, measured by won-loss records.  As I was reading two yesterday, what really struck me was how different the Rays' way and the Cubs' are.

First, a summary of what the Rays have done - the Rays biggest move of the winter was the trade of Delmon Young and Brendan Harris for Matt Garza and Jason Bartlett.  The trade added a pitcher with frontline potential and put the capstone on the shift the Rays had been working on even in 2007, the shift from being one of the worst defensive teams in baseball to being one of the best.  That defensive improvement lets starters get deeper into games and decreases the workload on the bullpen.  The 'pen is the other major place the Rays upgraded.  They brought in Troy Percival (FA) and Dan Wheeler (trading Wigginton) to cover the last two innings; amazing to say that bringing in those two, coupled with the rest of their 'pen being a year older has fairly well cut their bullpen ERA in half.  The last thing the the Rays have done over the past year is trust the talent their farm system has developed.  On May 11, Evan Longoria's AVG sat at .211.  Last year at the All-Star Break, Dioner Navarro (hitting .312/.366/.433 on the year) had an OPS below .500.  Trusting rookie talent and showing that trust even when the players look horrid has paid huge dividends for the Rays.

The Cubs contrast with this plan at nearly every point.  While the Rays opened a hole in RF to increase their overall defense, the Cubs biggest off-season goal was to add Kosuke Fukudome, increasing OF defense and providing a role model of the patient hitting approach which has become the team hallmark.  Whereas the Rays have gone from worst to best in defense, the Cubs have made the same kind of shift from least patient team to most patient team.  Both shifts were team-wide, but capped by moves involving star RFs.

The Rays traded their version of Ryan Theriot - Brendan Harris - an out-of-position SS whose surprising hitting earned him extended playing time.  They also took Akinori Iwamura, a player who could have the positional versatility of Mark DeRosa, and set him down in only one position, 2B.  As DeRosa has ranged all over the field playing 35 games at 4 positions other than 2B and Theriot has ranged hardly at all, missing grounder after grounder, the Cubs middle IF has struggled defensively even as they have shined offensively.  In the middle IF, the Cubs and Rays have gone in the opposite directions, as both Iwamura and Bartlett have disappointed offensively.

The Rays saw a link between their defensive improvement and their starters going deeper in the game.  While the Cubs have had two pitchers, Ryan Dempster and Carlos Zambrano, take steps forward in their game, every other starter from last year has regressed.  Jason Marquis' WHIP is up .10 points.  Ted Lilly's WHIP is up .16 points.  The improvements of Z and Demp look to be attributable to their conditioning and pitching approach.  Are the other pitchers suffering from the defense failing to make outs?

Just as the defense helping the starters trickles down for the Rays in a positive as their 'pen is used less, the Cubs 'pen has been used much more, particularly Carlos Marmol who appears to be wearing down.  While the Rays added arms to the back of their 'pen, the Cubs added several arms to the fringe of their 'pen, from Ascanio and Lahey to Fox and Takatsu. 

While the Rays have suffered through the growing pains of their rookies, the Cubs have instead sought cheap veteran help, getting great bargains out of Jim Edmonds and Reed Johnson, just as they did last year with Jason Kendall.

In many ways the Rays and Cubs have gone in opposite directions, except in the most important way, both teams have gone the same way, racing towards the best record in baseball.