Sep 8th 2008 6:30PM by Andrew Johnson (author feed)

The Rays have been the darlings of baseball all season long, a cuddly teddy bear of a baseball team for the mainstream media to fawn over. But September is here, and it’s time to start looking at Tampa Bay as just another serious World Series contender instead of some AL East sideshow. Like every other playoff team, the Rays aren’t without flaws.

Their offense is very middle of the road. They rank 12th in the AL in batting average and seventh in slugging, and they’re still without Evan Longoria — the only regular currently slugging over .500. Indeed, it seems 3/4 of the core of their offense (Longoria, Carlos Pena, Carl Crawford, B.J. Upton) is banged up in some fashion with the revelation that Upton has played with an injured shoulder for much of the season.

On the pitching side, most of Tampa Bay’s young starting staff is on track to pitch more innings than ever before, raising concerns about fatigue over the finals weeks of the regular season and in the playoffs. The bullpen is strong, but closer Troy Percival’s frequent trips to the disabled list raises questions about roles.

All this isn’t meant to take away from the Rays — after all, isn’t this what they’ve wanted all along, to be just another contending baseball club. They are going to make the playoffs and have the type of team that could make a deep run.

But they’re going to be tested like never before in the coming weeks — first by facing the Red Sox in six of their next nine games and then by whoever they draw in the first round of the playoffs. As great as the Rays have been all year, they woke up Monday morning with a worse run differential than the third-place Blue Jays.Continue Reading