3 weeks in and things are actually going pretty well. 11-8, tied for 1st with NYY. Given the crazy amount of injuries, this is highly encouraging. They have had 12 players hit the DL (second most on the DL before the end of April in the last 20 years).
Smyly came back last week and performed well. Colome is due back later this week, McGee next week and Cobb hopefully 2nd half of May. Odorizzi and Archer have been lights out. Once everyone is back, there is a pretty good chance that this is one of the best rotations in the game, even before Matt Moore comes back over the summer.
The offense, as usual, is the issue for the Rays, but there is a fair bit of optimism around many of the new additions, particularly Souza and Beckham. Loney came back late last week and has been good, Longoria is breaking out of his early slump, Kiermaier has been very good, Dejesus has been better than anyone expected. There is a decent chance Desmond Jennings finds himself spending a lot more time on the bench, given how the rest of the outfield is shaping up. Jaso and Franklin should be back in the next couple of weeks. Cabrera is off to a lousy start, so will be interesting to see how Franklin, Beckham, Forsythe and Cabrera split middle infield duties. Beckham may be playing his way into a full-time gig soon.
Relief pitching has been pretty lousy, but the relief has been in a tough spot given a heavy workload with all the starting pitchers on the DL and basically having 2-3 starting slots filled by absolute garbage up until recently. Boxberger and Jepsen have been good. Once McGee comes back, it's possible that they could have a very solid 1-2-3 punch out of the pen. Also, Cash seems to reject the set innings for set relievers dogma, so that's kind of cool to see.
Overall, many reasons for optimism.