The Tampa Bay Rays went 77-85 last year, lost their best pitcher midway through the season, and parted ways with their highly-regarded manager after it.

You’d be excused for having low expectations for the franchise in 2015, but could there be some reason for optimism?

Let’s take a look at the numbers.

While the Rays tied for the 12th-worst record in baseball last year, they were probably not the Majors' 12th-worst team.

You are probably expecting me to talk about Tampa Bay's run differential and Pythagorean record now, but they don’t tell a much different story here.

The Rays had a minus-13 run differential, which translates to a 79-83 Pythagorean record (tied for 16th in the Majors). This is just a two-win improvement over their actual record.

If we look a bit deeper though, there is evidence the Rays’ record undersold their true talent.

A Deeper Look

Since we can use run differential to calculate an expected win-loss record, we can also use underlying stats to derive an expected run differential, and that is what FanGraphs strives to do using its BaseRuns metric. Doing so strips away the sequencing luck involved in scoring runs to give us a more accurate picture of a team’s true performance.

The Rays ranked 12th in the Majors in BaseRuns last season, with an implied record of 83-79.

It’s not great, but it is six wins better than their actual record. It also makes sense, given the Rays tied for 11th in the Majors in both hitting (in terms of wRC+) and pitching (in terms of FIP-).

Third-order winning percentage at Baseball Prospectus, which also uses underlying stats in addition to a strength of schedule adjustment to calculate an expected record, paints an even rosier picture.

Here, the Rays ranked 10th in baseball with an 86.4-75.6 record, and only the A’s underperformed their third-order winning percentage by a wider margin.

Factoring out sequencing makes Tampa Bay look better, and no team would rather you ignore sequencing more than the 2014 Rays.

Clutch Problems

The club was the baseball equivalent of what the internet thought of yet dropped into a tie for 24th with an OPS+ of 91 with runners in scoring position.

In high-leverage situations, its OPS+ dropped to 85 (27th in MLB) and in late-and-close situations, the Rays posted a Major League worst OPS+ of 74.

Overall, the Rays were one of the least clutch teams in baseball last season. Tampa Bay’s offense ranked 26th in win probability added last season, despite coming in 17th in context-neutral WPA, according to FanGraphs.

The gap can be attributed to “clutch” performance, and only the Blue Jays had a more negative gap in overall WPA and context-neutral WPA.

The Rays pitching staff ranked 25th in clutch score, with its bullpen ranking 27th and starting rotation ranking 19th.

The good news for Tampa Bay is that, while clutch performance is obviously very important to a team’s success, it is not consistent over time, as Richard Cramer, Jeff Sullivan, and countless others have written.

We should expect Tampa Bay’s performance in key situations to regress to its overall level of performance in the future.

Roster Changes

That said, while the 2014 Rays may have had the true talent of an 86-win squad, the team will have a different look in 2015 thanks to a number of roster changes, so we’ll have to take a closer look before drawing any conclusions about the coming season.

Ben Zobrist, per FanGraphs. Put it all together, and Longoria produced 3.4 fWAR, marking only the second time in his career he was worth less than 5.5 fWAR in a season.

While 3.4 WAR is nothing to sneeze at, we should probably assume Longoria returns to his old self in 2015. The projection models expect as much, with Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA model forecasting 4.7 WARP and a .261/.344/.453 line, while Steamer projects 5.3 WAR and .256/.332/.445.

Steamer and PECOTA both expect Kiermaier finished eighth in the majors in UZR), his ability to hit for power was his greatest asset, posting a .450 slugging percentage and .187 isolated power.

Rivera, who was acquired from San Diego in the Myers and Hannigan deal, coupled his typically strong defense with a career year at the plate in 2014, posting a 114 wRC+ in 329 plate appearances en route to a 3.0 fWAR season. Seeing as Rivera had a slash line of only .206/.241/.290 in 344 previous plate appearances scattered between 2004 and 2013, some offensive regression is probably in order for the 31-year-old.

In addition to Kiermaier, Jennings, and Longoria, PECOTA projects Franklin (2.3) and outfielder also made earlier this week.

2015 Projections

PECOTA likely projects the best possible outcome, forecasting the Rays to win 86 games and grab the American League’s second wild card.

The projections at FanGraphs and here at numberFire are a bit more modest. The former has Tampa Bay going 83-79, in a tie with the Yankees for third place in the AL East. We also have the Rays finishing 83-79, and have them as the 12th best team in the Majors and second to Boston in the division.

2015 could go a number of different ways for the Rays, but we can probably expect it to be better than last season at least.