The Rays Confidence Graph will appear every Wednesday and will have a permanent home in the sidebar. The graph is designed to give us a look at how our emotional bias as Rays fans fluctuates through time. The “confidence” in the team is an inexact measure of how we feel about the team’s current strength as well as how much confidence we have in the franchise for the next 3-4 years. Notes on this weeks agida-level can be found after the graph..

Notes on the RI Confidence Graph…

  • This weeks graph is the first in which the ratings were generated from a fan survey. All values prior to this week’s are a reflection of the views of the Rays Index staff and any number of alcoholic beverages. As can be seen, fans on average have more confidence in the Rays than we do.
  • As can be seen in the first poll, nearly half of the respondents gave the 2008 Rays a confidence rating of 7 and more than half believe the team has a shot at the playoffs. However, the confidence is skewed downward giving an average value of 6.2. All of the votes that were more than 1 value away from the most common response (7) were below that value, suggesting that there there is still a negative attitude towards the current incarnation of the Tampa Bay Rays.
  • As can be seen in the second poll, again nearly half of the respondents gave the franchise a confidence rating of 8, however in this case, the results were slightly skewed toward the positive, giving an average value of 8.1. In this case, there were considerably more votes that were more than 1 position greater than the most common response (8) than there were values more than one position lower. This suggests that there is a general sense of “hope” with the franchise.