Here's an interesting take on those Rampaging Rays, who have surprised the baseball world so far by jumping out to 12-games-OVER-.500 and trail the Red Sox by just one game in the AL East.

Jacob Wheatley-Schaller, of Vegas Watch in an article that appears on Covers.com, identifies fielding as one of the two major contributing factors in Tampa Bay's success so far. The other is relief pitching. Interestingly, the same is true of the Orioles, if not on such a dramatic scale.

The writer, using measurements from Baseball Prospectus, points out that Tampa Bay's defensive efficiency rating has improved to just about a major league best  of 71.8 from what was a league worst of 66.2 last year. The defensive rating is a ratio of balls-in-play that are turned into outs. That 5-point-plus increase translates -- in some estimates -- to 200 runs over the course of a season, or 20 wins. I can't vouch for the specific math and the assumptions implied here but the correlation between improved defense and the W-L record seems to hold up.

But more to the point, I think, is that the Tampa Bay improvement, particularly defensively, did not involve going out and signing big-money free agents. Instead, they did it with more subtle tweaking: trades, promotions from the minors and internal position switching. One move that many baseball fans would recognize was moving the promising B.J. Upton from the middle infield to center field.