American League Wild Card Preview: Tampa Bay Rays vs. Texas Rangers

Despite being second and third in record among AL clubs and sporting the top two run differentials in the Junior Circuit, the Rays and Rangers will meet in the wild card round as the fourth and fifth seeds, respectively. Tampa Bay secured the top wild card spot after losing a close division race, finishing just two games behind the first-place Orioles, the only 100-win team in the AL, and will play host to the Rangers. Their 90 wins tied them with the Astros for first place in the West, but they lost the division crown via tiebreaker under the new rules that sent Game 163 into extinction. These two squads may be a bit above the caliber of the average wild card series, but only one will be on a flight to Baltimore this weekend for the ALDS.

Let’s look at a brief overview of our two combatants.

Of the 750 team-seasons since the Rays were founded in 1998 (and excluding 2020), their current offense is tied for eighth in wRC+. Their 117 wRC+ would lead the league in most years, but this year’s spotlight was on the Braves, who tied the all-time home run record in a lower offensive environment and became the first team to slug .500. Tampa’s lineup is a complete force from top to bottom, but has been primarily led by the quartet of AL batting champion Yandy Díaz, home run leader Isaac Paredes, chaos demon Randy Arozarena, and rookie outfielders Luke Raley and Josh Lowe (who will be playing against his brother Nathaniel in this series). The Rays join the Astros as the only teams with four hitters with a wRC+ of 130 or higher with at least 400 plate appearances.

While each member of the Rays with at least 350 plate appearances finished with an above-average wRC+, they’ll be without much of their talent for this series. Second baseman Brandon Lowe will miss the postseason with a knee injury; Raley and center field speedster Jose Siri, meanwhile, sat out the last couple weeks of the regular season, and it’s unclear whether they’ll be ready in time for Tuesday. Along with Wander Franco’s continued administrative leave, the Rays may have up to 12.6 WAR worth of players sidelined for this series — 39% of their overall offensive contributions for the season.

In response to that banged-up lineup, Tampa Bay has called upon some of its top prospects to fill in, bringing infielders Curtis Mead, Junior Caminero, Jonathan Aranda, and Osleivis Basabe to the big league club. None have performed to the standard of their injured teammates with the bat, though each has played multiple positions and could provide additional flexibility depending on which players are able to return.

In contrast to the highly modular, platoon-heavy Rays, it seems as though Bruce Bochy and the Rangers make one lineup card for the week and use it in every game. In their race to make it to October, they rolled out nearly the same lineup in nearly the same order every day. Most notably, catcher Jonah Heim started behind the dish ten days in a row to close out the regular season. Just look at their lineups in their final six games:

Aside from giving two starts to veteran outfielder Robbie Grossman, each starter played the exact same position every day in almost the exact same spot in the lineup. Bochy and Texas will likely continue that strategy in the playoffs, as the Monday off-day allows the team to reset before it begins the gauntlet of win-or-go-home series. On one hand, I could grovel and complain that Bochy could be doing more with his available personnel. On the other, he’s made my job a lot easier, given that I know his exact lineup for this series.

Well, that explains why the Rangers never change their lineup; they don’t have to! This is a fearsome group, led by the middle infield duo of Seager and Semien, who finished the season ranked second and third in the AL in WAR. After missing the first 40 games of the year, Seager set the world on fire with his bat, trailing only Shohei Ohtani in wRC+ and slugging percentage. If you can retire those two, then good luck dealing with García, who clubbed 39 homers in his best offensive season to date. And even though they won’t be called upon to start games, there are certainly some late-game situational options on Texas’ bench. Grossman is the likely pinch-hit option against lefties should Lowe’s or Carter’s spot come up against one; defensive specialist Austin Hedges is available to sub in for Heim behind the plate; and 89th-percentile runner Travis Jankowski should have a chance to add to his 58 career pinch-run appearances.

Given the quick nature of the wild card series, both teams will have more available arms than innings to cover (unless…), putting short-burst performance at a premium compared to the ability to provide length. Let’s see who each team will roll with, at least for the first two games of the series:

Both teams will have their two best available starters dueling on full rest. Unfortunately for Texas, Jon Gray and Max Scherzer won’t be available due to forearm and shoulder issues, though both could return later in the postseason should they be needed. If the series goes to a Game 3, the Rays’ most likely option appears to be Aaron Civale. The Rangers could go to either Andrew Heaney or Dane Dunning, though all hands would be on deck in a winner-take-all matchup.

Despite losing the three best arms from their Opening Day roster, the Rays built a new rotation on the fly, calling up Taj Bradley, trading a top prospect for Civale, and converting faceless reliever Zack Littell into an innings-eater. The top three of Glasnow, Eflin, and Civale, meanwhile, can go toe to toe with any other rotation trio in the league. Glasnow led the AL in strikeout rate, xFIP, and SIERA in his return from Tommy John surgery. Eflin harnessed his command to register the best season of his career, amassing nearly 5 WAR and putting him on track to receive down-ballot Cy Young votes. Civale’s surface-level results in 45 innings since joining the Rays don’t look great, but he underperformed his FIP by nearly two runs and had by far the best strikeout rate of his career.

The Rangers also had to make significant additions to their rotation due to injury, most notably Jacob deGrom’s torn UCL. But while the Rays had depth options that turned into viable rotation frontmen, Texas primarily added from outside the organization, most notably by getting Montgomery and Scherzer at the trade deadline. Montgomery has been exactly what the Rangers needed, averaging six innings per start with a 2.79 ERA on his new team to take the weight off a highly shaky bullpen. His changeup and curveball have allowed him to minimize his platoon split — especially necessary given that the Rays will likely run an all-righty lineup against him. Eovaldi looked like a Cy Young contender before missing August with a forearm strain and putting up a string of rough starts upon his return, even as his workload has been carefully managed, making him a potential weak link.

While both these AL powerhouses have strong offenses and formidable starting rotations, their bullpens are what truly separate them in skill. The Rangers led the AL West for the vast majority of the season but faltered in the second half largely due to repeated bullpen collapses. While their 14–22 record in one-run games and 2–8 mark in extra inning games can be written off as luck in a small sample, those losses are far more explainable by their league-worst save percentage and bottom-five bullpen WPA. Just one reliever on the team, José Leclerc, pitched at least 40 innings with an ERA below four; every other team had at least two. Texas’ biggest mid-season upgrade was the trade that brought Aroldis Chapman to Arlington, yet it cost the team Cole Ragans, who put together a blazing second half in a deal that the Rangers may come to regret deeply.

It wasn’t this way all season, but the Rays are now stacked with a collection of impressive relief arms. I’ve looked at them twice this season, first focusing on their uncharacteristic early-season struggles, then recently on their (perhaps unsurprising) return to dominance. Even with Jason Adam out with an oblique injury, they still boast about a half-dozen closer-level pitchers, notably headlined by Robert Stephenson and Pete Fairbanks, who rank first and fifth in the AL in CSW. Sidewinding Rule 5 pick Kevin Kelly should see some more run in this series against the Rangers’ string of righties in the lineup; lefties Colin Poche and Jake Diekman might see more targeted usage against specific batters.

The Rays enter the series as favorites thanks to their stronger regular season, but their roster construction, especially on the pitching side, is far better suited for the differences in play in short playoff series. The biggest questions they face with their dedication to openers, bullpen games, and keeping starters from facing the order a third time is “can this be sustained for a full season?” In a setting like this, they don’t have to worry about that; they simply have to complete 27 innings (plus extras) with 13 roster spots dedicated to pitchers. For the Rangers, they’ll need big-time performances from Montgomery and Eovaldi to prevent the scary proposition of having the series decided by a reliever parade. Regardless, seeing arguably the two most talented AL teams on paper square off should make for one of the most high-stakes matchups of this opening round.