“The whole is greater than the sum of the parts,” Rays outfielder Sam Fuld said last week. “If you look at our lineup on any given night, you might go, ‘How is that a playoff team?’ But we make it work. You see Oakland doing the same thing.”

The A’s and the Reds have been daring internationally, signing the Cuban free agents Yoenis Cespedes and Aroldis Chapman for contracts the Yankees and others deemed too risky. The Dodgers got into the bidding last year, adding Yasiel Puig for $42 million and Hyun-Jin Ryu, from South Korea, for $36 million.

The Rays cannot even think about playing the high-stakes international game or spending much on major league free agents. So they find a more efficient way, paying more attention to developing their own prospects, trading for those from other teams and keeping them healthy and durable enough to contribute right away in the majors.

“I think it gets back to each respective organization having a different operating model,” said Andrew Friedman, the Rays’ general manager. “If we had a lot more in the way of resources, we wouldn’t necessarily operate this same way. But it’s hard to say exactly what would differ and how, because we just have a very laserlike focus on what we can control, and no focus on anything outside of that.”

If the Rays beat the Indians on Wednesday, they will meet the Red Sox in the division series. For most of last summer, the Red Sox seemed locked into a payroll quandary similar to that of the Yankees, the Philadelphia Phillies and the Los Angeles Angels, with crippling long-term commitments to the wrong kinds of players. Then the Dodgers offered an escape hatch.