Tampa Bay's recent surge has team out of basement

The Devil Rays had a 12-game winning streak and 14 wins in their last 15 games.
THE BALTIMORE SUN
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- Somebody wake up the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.
The team that has never finished anywhere but last in the American League East has suddenly barged into the middle of the division standings with a recent 12-game winning streak and a month-long surge that also has carried them into the national spotlight.
Who would have imagined?
This is the same club that Lou Piniella guaranteed would finally get out of the AL East cellar, only to leave him looking silly after a 10-28 start that seemed to reaffirm the Rays' laughingstock status.
Nobody's laughing anymore.
The Devil Rays came home to Tropicana Field to open a three-game interleague series against the Florida Marlins with the best record in the majors since May 19, the day they hit rock bottom 18 games under .500. They are 26-7 and have streaked past the Orioles and Toronto Blue Jays to settle comfortably in third place.
Brazelton leads win
Things are going so well they were greeted Friday night by a large walkup crowd that saw 24-year-old right-hander Dewon Brazelton carry a no-hitter into the eighth inning on the way to a 2-0 victory -- the Rays' 14th victory in their past 15 games.
It evened their record at 35-35 and gave them an interesting piece of history. They became the first team to get back to .500 after being 18 games under at any point in the season since the 1899 Louisville Colonels rebounded from a 16-38 start to even their record at 72-72 late in the season.
The turnaround has been so dynamic -- and so unexpected -- that Piniella returned to The Trop Friday to a stack of interview requests from national broadcast outlets and a level of excitement among the local media not seen in these parts since the expansion Devil Rays were unveiled in April 1998.
"It's been fun," Piniella said. "It really has been. These kids are playing great baseball. We've been aggressive. We've taken it to the opposition and good things have happened for us."
Streak got attention
The Devil Rays remain on a major roll, but it was the 12-game winning streak that ended on Wednesday night that got everyone's attention and allowed team officials to reaffirm what they believed about the team when it opened spring training last February.
"Lou and I felt that we had put together the best team we have ever had," said general manager Chuck Lamar. "To get off to the start we got off to was unexplainable."
To the rest of the baseball world, of course, it was just the Devil Rays being the Devil Rays until the they started putting some victories back-to-back and gathering the momentum that would take them on a winning streak that doubled the previous club record.
"I told them a month ago, the only way for them to turn their fortunes around was to play hard, have fun and come back out and do that every day," Piniella said.
"Nobody likes to lose. When we were struggling, we weren't as bad as our record. We just weren't scoring runs. In the American League, you've got to score five or six runs a night and we were averaging 3.5. You can't win doing that."
Even so, Piniella said he never regretted his prediction that the Rays would finish ahead of somebody in the AL East, though he admits that he sometimes gets a little carried away.
"It did look stupid that I said that," he said. "And I reminded myself that I am out of the prediction business. But I knew we were a better team than that."
Somehow, he managed to convey that to a team that easily could have packed it in at 18 below .500. The starting rotation was in disarray and the offensive attack was sporadic, but something just clicked in late May.
Pitching has been strong
"You can't say enough about our pitching," said speedy outfielder Carl Crawford, who has been the offensive catalyst with a .309 batting average and a league-leading 30 stolen bases. "That was a question mark going in. You've got guys coming in and doing the job."
Of course, when a team experiences such a dramatic upturn, there is always the distinct possibility that reality is lurking right around the next corner.
"This just caught everybody by surprise," said veteran Fred McGriff, who rejoined the Rays recently to continue his countdown to 500 home runs [he has 493]. "If the Yankees go out and win 10 or 11 games in a row, people say, 'Oh, we know they're a good team.' But when the Devil Rays do it, it catches everyone by surprise."