1. David Price
2. Jeremy Hellickson
3. Matt Moore
4. Alex Cobb
5. Roberto Hernandez
6. Jeff Niemann (DL)
7. Chris Archer (AAA)
8. Jake Odorizzi (AAA)
9. Alex Colome (AAA)
10. Alex Torres (AAA)

The Rays’ big league rotation is really good (although Hernandez has not done much so far), but why do the Rays have four pitchers at Triple-A who could be the core of a rotation that might be better than that of several teams in the major leagues? Why did the Rays sign Hernandez when one of several pitchers could have stepped up to their rotation right at the start of the season? Archer is at Triple-A Durham to work on his command and changeup, but wouldn’t he be better served doing that in the major leagues? It’s not like the Rays would ask him to be anything more than a 5th starter as a rookie, and Archer could certainly be that right now after how well he pitched at the end of last season. The same can probably be said of Odorizzi. What are the Rays doing? Look no further than the plight of the Los Angeles Dodgers so far this season for the answer. Here was their starting pitching depth entering the season.

1. Clayton Kershaw
2. Zack Greinke
3. Hyun-jin Ryu
4. Josh Beckett
5. Chad Billingsley
6. Chris Capuan0
7. Aaron Harang
8. Ted Lilly (DL)
9. Stephen Fife (AAA)
10. Matt Magill (AAA)

The Dodgers had an even bigger logjam with the trio of Billingsley, Capuano, and Harang being established major league pitchers without rotation spots available, not prospects. The Dodgers had an exorbitant amount of pitching depth and designated Harang for assignment to address some of it. But since then, they have watched their entire staff come apart. Kershaw has been unhittable and Ryu has been great as well, and Beckett has stayed healthy. But beyond them, everything has come apart. Greinke will be out until June after the whole incident with Carlos Quentin. Billingsley will miss the rest of the season after undergoing Tommy John Surgery. Capuano is out with a calf strain. And Fife came up from Triple-A to make a start, but he’s out with shoulder bursitis. All of that necessitated the Dodgers to rely on Lilly straight off the DL and Magill in his major league debut. Suddenly the Dodgers are down to just five starters, and one more injury and they’ll be forced to either call up an organizational arm from Triple-A or rush a top prospect like Zach Lee or Chris Reed from Double-A. The Dodgers’ enviable depth disappeared in a flash and suddenly they’re hanging by a thread.

The past several years, the Rays have been extremely lucky. Since Scott Kazmir left in 2009, just one Rays pitcher has missed time with a significant injury: Jeff Niemann in 2011 and 2012. That’s it. David Price and Jeremy Hellickson have missed a couple starts, but other than that, everyone has made each of their starts on turn. It’s a credit to the Rays for finding not just talented pitchers but durable ones. At the same time, though, their run of rotation health is something that could end at any second. If two pitchers go down, suddenly Archer and Odorizzi are key to the Rays’ success. That seems like an unlikely scenario–after all, the Dodgers have fallen victim to extreme misfortune and not a situation that happens with any regularity in baseball. Here’s one that could very well happen, though: let’s say that Hernandez’s results never improve, leading to a release to bring Archer to the major leagues. Then, the Rays would be just one injury way from calling up Odorizzi.

The chances are that the Rays’ incredible starting pitching depth will not do them much good this season. Their starting staff will stay basically healthy and they’ll be too many quality pitchers for five spots, prompting fans to demand that their team trades a starter to address their offensive woes. It’s only if everything goes wrong and several pitchers get injured that we would truly appreciate the Rays’ depth. No one wants to see that and it probably won’t happen. But even with that being the case, Rays fans should be content to know that the Rays are ready for the worst-case scenario and are going to do whatever they can to keep contending even if the injury bug their starting pitchers have avoided for years rears its ugly head.

Here’s a quick chart comparing the Rays’ starting pitchers to the Dodgers. Obviously a lot of things will be different, but let’s see what’s the same.

(Note that “Age” is seasonal age for the 2013 season and “Free Agency Year” is the year following their last season under contract, counting all option years.)

Comparing the two groups of pitchers, obviously the money is completely different and any comparison we try to make is flimsy as best. Both rotations have young ace lefties in David Price and Clayton Kershaw, another promising lefty still looking to establish himself in the big leagues in Moore and Ryu, and an enigmatic middle-aged righty in  Hernandez and Josh Beckett, and maybe we can stretch and compare Niemann to Billingsley as pitchers who have shown talent in the past but are coming off injuries. But when we go back to where the Rays rotation was early this offseason, before the big Shields trade, the comparison is a little more compelling.

David Price and Clayton Kershaw are both dominant ace left-handers making their first big payday this season as they reached an eight-figure salary for the first time. Shields and Greinke are high-priced veteran right-handers a clear step who have never quite established themselves as true aces except for one great season (Greinke in 2009 and Shields in 2011) but are clear frontline arms with the ability to be a second ace in the rotation. Hellickson and Billingsley are talented right-handers who still need to prove they can sustain their past performance, Hellickson because of his peripheral statistics and Billingsley because of his injury concerns. Moore and Ryu are both young lefties with the ability to become very good pitchers right now but who still have much to prove. Niemann and Beckett are right-handers who were really good not that long ago and are struggling to become the pitchers they once were. Cobb and Capuano are solid middle-of-the-rotation arms but lack the upside of the guys around them. Davis and Harang are right-handers who showed quite a bit of ability in the past but took a step back and may not be worth their salary anymore (as the Rays showed by trading Davis). Archer and Lilly are awfully hard to compare, but both are pitchers with talent with questions remaining over whether they’ll be able to contribute in the major leagues this season, with Archer still needing to work on his control and changeup and Lilly needing to stay healthy. So what does this tell us? Simply that we can make a halfway-decent comparison between these two starting staffs or at least between where they were earlier this offseason. But we still haven’t answered our question: have the Dodgers and Rays carried out similar strategies in the handling of their rotation surpluses?

The knee-jerk reaction to that question is that the Rays and Dodgers’ strategies could not be any more different- after all, the Rays traded away Shields and Davis while the Dodgers added Greinke and Ryu. That’s certainly a key difference between the Rays and Dodgers- the Rays have to fight to remain competitive despite major budgetary constraints while the Dodgers are willing to spend as much as it takes to make their team one of the best in baseball. But the mindset behind all the moves both teams made this offseason were actually very similar. Why could the Rays trade Shields and Davis? Because they believed that Hellickson and Moore could step up to become at least a solid number two and number three in their rotation and that Moore had the ability to expedite his development and become a second ace alongside Price before they knew it. The Dodgers added Greinke and Ryu to secure the number two and number three spots in their starting staff while the Rays traded away Shields knowing that they had that and needing to address other needs. But the comparison stretches farther than that.

Both teams had solid rotations even after the Shields trade for the Rays and after the Greinke signing for the Dodgers, but both teams felt the need to sign one more starter, Hernandez for the Rays and Ryu for Los Angeles. Obviously Ryu is a much better insurance policy considering that he’s been dominating in Korea while Hernandez hasn’t been any good since 2010, but both teams saw the risk in the players they had, with the Rays worrying about how unproven their rotation was while the Dodgers were primarily concerned with the potential for injury on their staff. And even though both teams have eight strong rotation candidates, neither are rushing to trade their back-end guys, with other teams having interesting in the Rays’ Niemann and the Dodgers’ Harang but nothing likely to happen until at least the end of spring training when both teams have their starting five firmed up.

The Dodgers will spend around 80 million dollars on their rotation even if there’s a trade while the Rays will spend under 20 million dollars. But the thought process of the two teams is extremely similar: prioritize getting a strong top three in their rotation, sign additional depth when the opportunity arises, and don’t make a trade except when you’re absolutely sure that you have sufficient pitchers remaining to keep from losing a beat. None of those ideas is that crazy- I’m sure every team in baseball would love to get an amazing rotation with a dynamite top three and ridiculous depth, and also have the luxury of trading a starting pitcher at their terms- but the way both the Rays and Dodgers place a premium on starting pitching in a very similar way is pretty staggering. The two teams work in completely different ways- the Rays have made their rotation one of the best in baseball through a series of excellent draft picks and trades while the Dodgers have done so by spending money like crazy- but the end result is the same even in the process is extremely different.

The Rays and Dodgers will take on each other in a three-game series at Dodger Stadium from August 9th to 11th, and fans will see two teams who work in entirely different financial stratospheres. But when the pitchers take the mound and go up against one another, the results for the two pitchers could be incredibly similar. Although you can’t predict baseball and it’s far too early to tell, there’s a great chance that the games will be pitchers’ duels heading right down the wire. That’s not meant as praise of the Rays’ ability to work with a small payroll or disdain to what the Dodgers have done with their large one- just a statement to how the minds behind two of the best teams in baseball work alike even when their financial realities couldn’t be any more at odds.

The prototypical reliever comes into a game amped up knowing that it’s his opportunity to overpower hitters, earn his paycheck, and do everything in his power to lead his team to victory. J.P. Howell was not your prototypical reliever. He almost seemed to enter every game scared, wondering if this was the game where his bubble would burst and his career would finally come apart again. He couldn’t simply relax and let his potential come out because he knew he was running on fumes. When he allowed a home run, you saw him put his head down sulking, wondering “why here, why now.” It was as depressing of a site as you’ll see in baseball during that 2011 season when Howell managed just a 6.16 ERA in 46 relief appearances and his frustration only continued to build. And even when Howell was successful and got a huge strikeout to escape a jam, he pumped his fist but always had this look on his face that made it seem like he couldn’t believe what he had just done.

The emotions that play a huge part in Howell’s game were what made him fail so badly as a starter, managing just a 6.34 ERA in 33 starts and 166 innings pitched with the Kansas City Royals and the Devil Rays from 2005 to 2007, as he got too down on himself after a tough inning and could never recover. But out of the bullpen, Howell’s grasp of the fact that any game could be his last was what drove him to all the success he achieved. It made him push himself to the limits and fight through his fear to give hitters everything he had. It made him do everything in his power to make something out of nothing and pull a rabbit out of the hat one more time. For two years in 2008 and 2009 and then in his finale performance in a Rays uniform in the second half of 2012, J.P. Howell left the crowds mystified as he pulled off his act again and again and gave Rays fans a show they will never forget. Best of luck to Howell as a member of the Los Angeles Dodgers.