PECOTA added all of this up, coupled it with the fact that the Rays' talent core was young and still on the upswing, and concluded that the club was liable to win somewhere between 88 and 90 ballgames in 2008. Not even the Rays themselves were entirely convinced by this forecast. The team executives I spoke with this winter expected -- or hoped -- to go .500 this year, perhaps making a serious run at the playoffs in 2009.

But a quick run through their offseason checklist reveals that sometimes the best-laid plans go even better than expected: