Rays biding time, look forward to hitting stride

DETROIT — Hovering around the .500 mark isn’t where the Rays want to be. On the other hand, given their situation, it’s not a bad place to be, either.

“It’s encouraging,” Chris Archer said. “And the reason why is if you play .500 baseball for five months of the season and then one month you go off, say you win 17 out of 27, I think that’s where the separator is really going to be.”

Archer elaborated, saying he didn’t mean strictly winning as many as they lose.

“Maybe a game or two above,” Archer said. “[But] it usually takes that one month or that 10-game stretch where you win eight out of 10, or nine out of 10, that really is a separator at the end of the season.

“You look, and very rarely are teams, unless you’re the Cubs, consistently up seven …

continue reading in source mlb.mlb.com