Rays' rising status a result of their depth

The Rays made a fair amount of headline news last offseason, signing free agents Troy Percival and Cliff Floyd, making the huge deal with Minnesota (Delmon Young and Brendan Harris for Matt Garza and Jason Bartlett), and going long-term with Carlos Pena and James Shields.

But it was some of their smaller moves that now are paying off big.

Between the sound bites, Rays officials talked a lot about improving their depth and how important that would be to their overall improvement.

And, as it turns out, what they were saying was very much the case.

Where would they be, given the issues they've had in rightfield, without Eric Hinske, who signed a minor-league deal a week before the start of spring? He leads the team with 20 extra-base hits and his 10 homers are tied for the team lead with Pena.

And how much worse off would they be, given the injury to closer Percival, if they hadn't re-signed (or had traded) veteran relievers Al Reyes and/or Dan Wheeler? Either of whom could have been considered expendable, or too expensive, to keep, but give the Rays experienced alternatives.

"If you want to battle through some difficult moments, you have to have depth," manager Joe Maddon said. "Every team is going to go through it, and if you want to be in the hunt, you have to have solid replacements, people that have done it before."

Executive vice president Andrew Friedman said the point was reinforced last season, when a slew of injuries led to a scramble for replacements and a series of losses. If nothing else, they were determined to not let it happen again.

"A big focus of ours this offseason was to address that, to almost go around the diamond and say if this guy were to get hurt for this amount of time, to make sure we were adequately covered everywhere," he said.

Realistically, Friedman said, a team needs at least 17-20 pitchers and 16-18 position players to get through a season. Already, they've used 17 pitchers and 19 players, and they haven't really suffered for it.

"We feel that we addressed that," Friedman said. "And the credit goes to the guys who are here because they've gotten the opportunity and really stepped up and delivered."