Tropicana Field Playing Field Opening Day 2010

The

Tampa Bay Rays The Tampa Bay Rays are an American professional baseball team based in St. Petersburg, Florida. The Rays compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) East division. Since its inception, the team's home v ...

are a

professional baseball Professional baseball is organized baseball in which players are selected for their talents and are paid to play for a specific team or club system. It is played in leagues and associated farm teams throughout the world. Modern professiona ...

team based in St. Petersburg, Florida. The Rays are a member of the Eastern Division of

Major League Baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (A ...

's (MLB)

American League The American League of Professional Baseball Clubs, known simply as the American League (AL), is one of two leagues that make up Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States and Canada. It developed from the Western League, a minor league b ...

(AL). Since their inaugural season in 1998, the Rays have played their home games at

Tropicana Field Tropicana Field (commonly known as the Trop) is a multi-purpose domed stadium located in St. Petersburg, Florida, United States. The stadium has been the home of the Tampa Bay Rays of Major League Baseball (MLB) since the team's inaugural sea ...

. The team was originally known as the "Tampa Bay Devil Rays", which was inspired by a common nickname of the

manta ray Manta rays are large rays belonging to the genus ''Mobula'' (formerly its own genus ''Manta''). The larger species, '' M. birostris'', reaches in width, while the smaller, '' M. alfredi'', reaches . Both have triangular pectoral fins, horn-s ...

, but after the 2007 season, they shortened their official name to the "Tampa Bay Rays." Tampa Bay made their Major League debut in 1998, where they were an

expansion team An expansion team is a new team in a sports league, usually from a city that has not hosted a team in that league before, formed with the intention of satisfying the demand for a local team from a population in a new area. Sporting leagues also ...

. For their first ten seasons, Tampa Bay struggled, never had a winning record, and always finished fifth in the American League Eastern Division, except for a fourth-place finish in the 2004 season. Since 2008 however, the Rays have advanced to the postseason eight times and have played in the World Series twice, in

2008 File:2008 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Lehman Brothers went bankrupt following the Subprime mortgage crisis; Cyclone Nargis killed more than 138,000 in Myanmar; A scene from the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing; ...

and

2020 2020 was heavily defined by the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to global social and economic disruption, mass cancellations and postponements of events, worldwide lockdowns and the largest economic recession since the Great Depression in t ...

. In

2021 File:2021 collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: the James Webb Space Telescope was launched in 2021; Protesters in Yangon, Myanmar following the coup d'état; A civil demonstration against the October 2021 coup in Sudan; Crowd shortly after t ...

the Rays achieved a 100-win regular season for the first time.

Table Key

Regular season results

Record by decade

The following table describes the Rays' MLB win–loss record by decade. These statistics are from Baseball-Reference.com's ''Tampa Bay Rays History & Encyclopedia'', and are current through the regular season.

Post-season record by year

The Rays have made the postseason seven times in their history, with their first being in 2008 and the most recent being in 2021.

References

External links

Rays Year-By-Year Results at ''MLB.com''

Rays Postseason Results at ''MLB.com''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tampa Bay Rays Seasons Major League Baseball teams seasons