Can Anyone in the MLB Catch the Rays?

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Next week, all eyes in the baseball world will turn to Yankee Stadium for the 2008 Major League Baseball All-Star Game -- so it's the perfect time to look at where the teams stand and what's left to come.

After all, it's far enough into the season to separate the contenders from the pretenders and to start legitimately talking about the biggest surprises, busts, moves and more of the season.

Any talk about this season's first-half surprises starts and ends with that nearly forgotten franchise down in Tampa Bay, Fla. The Rays had been the laughing stock of the MLB world since their inception in 1998, finishing in last place every single year except 2004, when they finished next-to-last. Yet, they now sit in a position entirely unfamiliar to anyone who follows baseball: first place.

The Rays own the best record in the majors, are two games up on second-place Boston, and have the second-lowest payroll in the league. They're winning with young talent that they signed cheap and early, such as star rookie third baseman Evan Longoria, and the once-abysmal pitching staff is now lights out.

If you claim you saw this coming at the beginning of the season, you're lying through your teeth.

But shocking as it is, and with all due respect to those loveable losers in Chicago, the Rays look to continue the second half as baseball's best success story.