Why you should watch A's vs. Rays, the Spider-Man meme of baseball

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The Oakland Athletics leave Baltimore this evening refreshed and revivified as only three games with the second worst team of the century can. But now comes the biggest test left to them before October.
 
The End Of Days War Of The Doppelgangers.
 
The A’s go to Tampa to face the equally precocious Rays for three games this weekend, and you will struggle to find two more similar, bizarrely successful teams.
 
Most immediately, the Rays are the poster child for the latest innovation in the sport – bullpenning, which is a stupid name and does not proper honor its inventors – try Tampa-ing instead to be historically charitable. The A’s are just now trying to master it, at the least advantageous time of all. Either way, each team has only three regular starting pitchers, and the Rays are making their plan work.
 
The Rays play in a stadium that repels humans even more than the Coliseum does. They draw 5,000 fewer fans per game to the dreaded Trop, have exceeded only 15,000 announced onlookers only five times since July 31 (including three against Boston, which is an automatic draw everywhere), and has an even more amorphous stadium plan than Oakland does (as in no discernible plan at all).
 
They are both run on what baseball would call the cheap. Based on numbers provided by Spotrac their combined payrolls of $148,596,359 would place them 13th in baseball, below the New York Mets and above the Colorado Rockies, $79 million and change behind Boston and, because you’re just sick that way, $57 million behind San Francisco.
 
And the Rays have the third best record in the world (48-28) since June 15, which was the day the A’s (55-21) stopped being the old A’s. Boston is second at 52-23, and we only mention that out of pedantry.
 
Now they meet, and it is the last time the A’s will feel threatened by an equal this regular season. And not just an equal, but a fun-house mirror reflection of themselves.
 
Not everything about these two teams is exact. For example, the A’s hit homers and the Rays don’t, naming the Rays’ starting nine every day would tax even manager Kevin Cash, while naming the A’s first nine is slightly easier even after you filter out local bias. I mean, Matt Chapman and Matt Duffy are only a wash in these parts because Duffy won the hearts of Giants fans in the 45 minutes he was here, and Blake Treinen is a better though less versatile version of Sergio Romo, another ex-Giant, but everywhere else the Rays are easily the youngest, least expensive and most anonymous team in the game.
 
In other words, we are suggesting that you get very interested in a series involving the A’s and Rays, which is as heretical a notion as baseball can offer. In a clickbait world that revolves around Sox-Yanks and Cardinals-Cubs, A’s-Rays is kind of a thing.
 
See? These are truly the end times.
 
The A’s would seem to be locked into a postseason berth, and only a sweep by the Rays can change that because it would reduce Oakland’s cushion for the second wild card berth from 8½ games to 5½, which with 12 games to go still seems gargantuan.
 
But the A’s have also closed on the Yankees for home field in the Wild Card Game, one game back though the number is effectively 1½ games because the Yankees win all the tiebreakers. The A’s have no reason to look behind them unless the Rays and their oppressive home record make them do so.
 
Nevertheless, this weekend will be a tribute to mutant baseball, and between the possibility of games that never end because of pitching changes or the notion that there is still some uncertainty to be created in the American League playoff race, this will be one of those series to watch.
 
Or would you rather pretend you still have an interest in Rockies-Giants?

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