Archive for Rays

For my final Postseason Manager Report Card of the 2026 season, I’m here to evaluate Kevin Cash, Rays manager and World Series loser. While Tampa Bay fell short of its first World Series championship in franchise history and ended the year with something of a whimper, Cash did a commendable job steering his club during its a deep postseason run.

As both Ben Clemens and I have mentioned before each of our previous manager report cards this postseason, I care about process and not results here. It’s easy to say, “That was a great move because it worked,” or “That was a bad move because it failed,” but managers obviously can’t know the results of their decisions as they’re making them. I’ve tried my best to transport myself back to the moment of each decision — taking into account the pitches, innings, and plate appearances that led up to it — while ignoring the outcome.

Lastly, before we get into the grades, I’ll also reiterate that while these are ostensibly manager report cards, there’s a much larger group of people behind the skipper that helps to inform his decisions. Before the game, that includes discussions with the front office, which provides the reams of data that every manager has at his disposal during play. During the game, he’s getting feedback from his coaching staff and players on their levels of health and readiness. It really does take a village to get through a baseball game, and realistically, the praise and scorn doesn’t belong to the manager alone. Read the rest of this entry »

This post is part of a series covering the 2027 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee Managers/Umpires/Executives ballot, which includes candidates in those categories who made their greatest impact from 1980 to the present. You’ll find an introduction to the ballot here. The eight candidates will be voted on in San Diego on December 6, and anyone receiving at least 75% of the vote from the 16 committee members will be inducted in Cooperstown on July 25, 2027 along with any candidates elected by the BBWAA.

Lou Piniella spent even more years managing in the majors (23, between 1986 and 2010) than he did playing the outfield (18, between 1964 and ’84). To both roles, “Sweet Lou” brought a flair for the dramatic and a fiery intensity — his dust-kicking, hat-stomping, base-throwing tirades became the stuff of legend — as well as tremendous baseball acumen. Like fellow 2019 Today’s Game and 2024 Contemporary Baseball candidate Davey Johnson, he won championships in both phases of his career, but his failure even to reach the World Series a second time as a manager cast a long shadow on every successive stop. Unlike Johnson, he came close to election on both of those ballots, missing by just one vote each time. However, that doesn’t mean it will be easy for him to get to 75% this time. Read the rest of this entry »

Induction Day in Cooperstown next summer could be a Giant affair, or at least have a very Bay Area-oriented theme. On Monday, the Hall of Fame announced its slate of eight candidates for the 2027 Contemporary Baseball Managers/Umpires/Executives ballot, dedicated to non-player candidates who made their greatest impact from 1980 to the present. The group is headlined by a pair of first-time eligible managers with ties to San Francisco, namely Dusty Baker and Bruce Bochy, plus the general manager who oversaw their most successful seasons in the Giants dugout, Brian Sabean. Also on the ballot is another Bay Area general manager, Sandy Alderson, who built an A’s team that won three straight pennants and a World Series. On December 6 we’ll find out if any of them will be inducted next July 25, very possibly alongside former Giants superstar (and current president of baseball operations) Buster Posey, the top newcomer on the BBWAA ballot, which will be released on November 16.

There’s plenty more to digest regarding this ballot, which also includes two other World Series-winning managers in Joe Maddon and Lou Piniella, maverick owner Ted Turner, and pioneering executive Bill White. Piniella and White are the top two returnees from the 2024 slate that elected Jim Leyland. Piniella has missed by one vote in each of his past two appearances counting the 2019 Today’s Game Era Committee ballot from the previous four-committee format. White (who also played for the Giants, though it’s each candidate’s post-playing career that’s the focus here) missed by two votes on the 2024 ballot but was the recipient of this year’s Buck O’Neil Award, given once every three years to “an individual whose extraordinary efforts enhanced baseball’s positive impact on society, broadened the game’s appeal, and whose character, integrity and dignity are comparable to the qualities exhibited by O’Neil.” Of the eight candidates, Turner is the only one who is deceased; he died on May 6 at age 87.

I’ll have more to say about each of those candidates below and in the coming weeks, but first, some nuts and bolts. The eight candidates will be voted on by a 16-member committee of Hall of Famers, executives, and writer/historians that was appointed by the Hall’s board of directors. They will meet and discuss the candidates in person in San Diego on December 6, where the Winter Meetings would be held if not for the impending lockout by the owners. Each voter can include up to three candidates on his or her ballot (down from four in the previous 10-candidate format, which ran through the aforementioned 2022 ballots). Election to the Hall requires 75%, meaning votes from 12 of the 16 panelists. The results of the voting will be announced live on MLB Network’s MLB Tonight at 8:00 p.m. ET, and any candidate elected will be inducted into the Hall next July 25 in Cooperstown along with anyone elected from the upcoming BBWAA ballot. Read the rest of this entry »

Cooper Pratt doesn’t drink alcohol, but he should never have to buy a Fanta in Wisconsin again for as long as he lives.

The 22-year-old shortstop had a World Series for the ages, stroking eight hits in his 19 at-bats (.421 batting average) and driving in a series-high seven runs, including one that would have clinched the trophy if not for a blown save. It was a remarkable, probably MVP-worthy performance that any player in the grand history of the game would kill to have on his résumé. The fact that Pratt is a rookie who was playing high school ball in Mississippi three years ago makes it feel borderline fictional.

So just how good was Pratt in the Brewers’ five-game triumph over the Rays? His 0.62 Win Probability Added was not only the highest of all position players who saw the field in this year’s Fall Classic, it was the third-highest ever for a position player 22 or younger in the World Series. He was a rounding error away from equaling Tim McCarver — who logged a 0.63 WPA while batting .478 and catching, not a typo, 27 innings from Bob Gibson — in the 1964 World Series as the Cardinals beat the Yankees in seven. The top spot on that leaderboard, however, belongs to Charlie Keller, a Yankee outfielder who ran up a 1.02 WPA and hit three home runs in New York’s 1939 sweep of the Reds, each with the score tied or within one run. For pitchers, 1921 Waite Hoyt was the best in that age range with 1.55 WPA, while 2001 Byung-Hyun Kim and his -1.11 was the worst. (Matt Martell just wrote about Hoyt’s 1921 World Series in last week’s mailbag column, when answering a question on the best World Series performances from players on the losing team, so you should check out that for more.) Read the rest of this entry »

On Wednesday night, for the second time in two days, the pitcher’s mound at Tropicana Field became the star of the World Series. Jacob Misiorowski, he of the 6-foot-7 frame and 7-foot-6 extension, was having trouble finding purchase with his front foot when he finished his absurdly long stride. On Tuesday night, Cam Booser, whose extension is not far from average, had suffered similar difficulties in the 11th inning of Game 4, so on back-to-back nights, we the baseball viewing public were treated to the sight of emergency mound repairs, replete with tamps and buckets of clay.

After Tuesday night’s difficulties, the broadcast made sure to be prepared to talk about the mound during Game 5, which the Brewers won, 4-1, to secure their first World Series in franchise history. One mound story came ready-made: Some players believe the pitching mound to be higher at Tropicana Field than at other ballparks. This is an easy thing to check. I’m going to run the numbers, but let’s start at the beginning.

You might have heard that assertion before. Alex Speier wrote about it in the Boston Globe in 2021. He noted that certain pitchers were credited with more extension at the Trop than in other ballparks, though he also raised the possibility that the difference was the result of some sort of calibration error, as 2021 was the first full season after Statcast switched tracking systems from Trackman to Hawk-Eye. Just last year, Chris Bassitt told The Athletic that Tampa Bay’s higher mound somehow increases his spin rate. Clearly, this narrative has taken hold around the league. None of us knows how often Major League Baseball is sending somebody out to measure each mound with a ruler, a protractor, and a plumb bob to make sure that each mound adheres perfectly to the rulebook specifications.

Moreover, it’s a fact that major league mounds can vary. In 2023, Eno Sarris had players vote on their favorite mounds. Tampa Bay’s came in first, partly because, said Paul Blackburn, “It’s definitely taller.” The rulebook is very specific about the layout of the mound, but the mound is created by people, and a different group of people at each ballpark. They do plenty of measuring, but the tolerances involved surely leave some wiggle room. The mound is built out of clay that is tamped down by hand, then covered with a thin layer of soil conditioner. There are different brands of clay and soil conditioner. There’s no rule about how compacted the clay of the mound has to be. Yankee Stadium’s “mound feel” graded out well in Eno’s poll. On the other end of the spectrum, you might recall that multiple players have complained that the mound in Sacramento is too hard.

The mounds also change. The pitching rubbers wear out from time to time, necessitating reconstruction. When a ballpark has other events going on, the grounds crew has to take the whole thing apart and build it back up again, by hand, with more tamping. For Tampa Bay, of course, the whole stadium got rebuilt after it was destroyed by a hurricane. Regardless of the complaints in previous seasons, this year’s mound isn’t even the same by Ship of Theseus rules. It’s brand new.

At this point, we should acknowledge that the Rays aren’t hiding anything about the way they build their mound. In fact, here’s a whole video from 2015 in which they show you how they go about replacing the pitching rubber. Not only do they check the height of the mound, they check it with a laser level.

I mentioned the rulebook specifications earlier. Most of those rules are laid out twice. The second time comes on page 160, in Appendix 3, in a diagram that is, at the top, titled “Layout of the Pitching Mound,” but down below labeled “Suggested Layout of the Pitching Mound.” Read into that what you will.

The text below the diagram reads:

Pitching Mound: An 18′ diameter circle, center of which is 59′ from back of home plate.

Locate front edge of rubber 18″ behind center of mound.

Front edge of rubber to back point of home plate, 60’6″.

Slope starts 6″ from front edge of rubber.

The degree of slope from a starting point 6″ in front of the pitcher’s plate to a point 6′ toward home plate shall be 1″ to 1′, and such degree of slope shall be uniform.

Level area surrounding rubber should be 6″ in front of rubber, 18″ to each side and 22″ to rear of rubber. Total level area 5′ x 34″.

You might notice a few things here. It’s weird that it doesn’t say so in this section, but the rubber must be 10 inches above ground level. It says so on page two. The slope down toward the ground begins six inches in front of the rubber, it must be uniform, and it drops one inch per foot, which works out to a slope of 4.764 degrees. Then comes the even weirder part: The rulebook only says that this uniform slope needs to extend for five-and-a-half feet (or six feet from the front of the rubber). From that point on, the angle of the slope is presumably up to the discretion of the grounds crew. Here I would remind you that lots of pitchers have long enough strides that their front foot lands beyond that point.

I cannot imagine why the rulebook stops dictating the angle of the slope six feet from the rubber, leaving four-and-a-half feet of mound with no direction whatsoever. In theory, if one grounds crew sculpted a mound so that, after the point where the rulebook leaves off, the slope was a bit steeper, then pitchers would be able to stride farther and drop farther. That might make it feel like the mound – or at least the tabletop – is a little bit taller. The same effect could be achieved by not tamping the landing area as firmly, which would allow the pitcher’s front foot to plant deeper into the clay, again causing them to fall a bit farther and making the tabletop feel higher.

We also have to acknowledge that other factors can affect the perceived height of the mound. The backdrop is an important piece of the puzzle. When you’re standing on the mound, a home plate area that’s pressed right up against the back wall makes it feel like you’re 10 feet tall and standing right on top of the batter. When the back wall is farther back, it feels like home plate is 70 feet away. The height and slope of the stands behind home plate can also affect the perceived distance to home. Steep stands can make you feel like you’re at the bottom of a well, like you’re pitching uphill. This one is pure speculation on my part, but I wonder if turf fields make the mound seem taller, because they don’t have blades of grass sticking up a little bit above the level of the dirt, making the ground feel a bit closer.

You might also recall earlier this month, when the Yankees surprised many of us by starting Gerrit Cole in Game 1 of the ALDS. They eventually revealed that they did so because his four-seamer plays up in the Trop. It gets more induced vertical break in the still air of a dome than it does outdoors, where a crosswind can foul things up. That’s particularly notable because in the same article where Bassitt told The Athletic that the high mound increased his spin rate, Jeff Hoffman said that the high mound increased the vert on his fastball. He may have been right about the effect but wrong about the cause, and that may be the key to the whole puzzle. Maybe the way the ball moves in Tampa Bay’s park is part of what makes pitchers feel like the mound is taller.

As I mentioned earlier, Statcast lets us check this pretty easily. This year, 10 Rays pitchers threw at least 100 four-seam fastballs both at home in Tropicana Field and on the road. I pulled their average release height (measured from the ground) and their extension for all of those four-seamers. Then I put all those numbers into a table so that I could share them with you, the fine people of FanGraphs.

As you can see, there’s almost no difference whatsoever. The average difference in extension was zero. Four pitchers had lower release points at home and six had higher release points. No player had a home-road split larger than 0.6 inches. The average difference was 0.008 feet, which works out to 0.096 inches. The average pitcher’s release point was a bit less than a tenth of an inch higher at home, and I’d remind you that release point can move around a bit. For example, during Game 5, Misiorowski’s four-seamer had an average release height of 5.16 feet, but he released balls as low as 4.96 feet and as high as 5.46 feet. That’s a spread of more than six inches.

The Statcast numbers indicate that pitchers are releasing the ball at the exact same height and with the exact same extension whether they’re in the Trop or elsewhere. If you really want to argue that Tampa Bay’s mound is taller, then I guess you can hang your hat on those 0.096 inches, but I think that’s well below the point of statistical significance. The mound is the same height.

Just for the sake of thoroughness, I also went back and checked the 2021 numbers that Speier cited. Once again, I wanted to compare apples to apples, so I only looked at four-seamers from pitchers who threw at least 100 in the Trop and 100 elsewhere. As Speier noted, there was a real measured difference in extension. The 11 players in that sample (congratulations to Rasmussen on being in both groups!) saw their extension increase by an average of 3.16 inches. Here’s the really interesting thing. Those players saw their release height drop at home, by an average of 1.01 inches. Maybe this was just a calibration issue. Or maybe the mound was slightly steeper, which caused players to stride slightly farther and release the ball slightly lower. We may never know the whole truth. But this issue no longer exists.

Mounds are definitely different around the league. I am on board with the idea that big league pitchers know the mound so well that they have a “The Princess and the Pea”-level ability to notice even the slightest differences. I also recognize that once a narrative takes hold, it’s hard to shake. We know that the air currents in the Trop make the ball move differently, and that at least one player attributed that difference to the height of the mound. I’m sure something about the background also makes the mound feel different, and probably something about the way the mound is sculpted. If there is a difference in the height of the mound, though, it’s less than a tenth of an inch, and I do not think even major league pitchers are sensitive enough to notice that, especially when there are so many other factors at play.

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — The past nine years were the best run in Milwaukee Brewers history: eight postseason appearances, six division titles, 869 regular-season wins, for a 93-win-per-season pace over almost a full decade. An MVP, a Cy Young — probably two, by this time next month — and plenty of turnover: two front office bosses, two field managers, 193 players.

But 11 teams had been to the World Series since 2018; six had won. Not the Brewers. Until this year.

The nervous 12-inning staring contest of Game 4 delayed Milwaukee’s coronation by just one day. Cooper Pratt put the Brewers ahead with an RBI single in the second. Jacob Misiorowski pitched the best game of his postseason career — 5 2/3 scoreless innings with just two singles and a walk allowed — before leaving with a cramp after 86 pitches.

The Brewers’ relentless offense tacked on some insurance runs in the middle innings and their indomitable bullpen held the line. The 4-1 final score reflected the Brewers’ most normal game so far this postseason, after a string of nail-biters and comebacks, punctuated by a massive blowout in Game 3. The most routine win of Milwaukee’s postseason didn’t feel it; the first championship in franchise history can’t be taken for granted until it’s in the bag. Read the rest of this entry »

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — It didn’t always feel like a Rays home game. Multitudes of Brewers fans, unable to procure or afford tickets to Wisconsin’s first World Series games in 44 years, had flown to Florida to see their team clinch. But home field advantage played a part in the Rays’ improbable, dramatic 12-inning 4-3 win in Game 4 to extend the World Series at least one more night.

The Tropicana Field turf is one of the fastest playing surfaces in the league, and the Rays are able to derive an advantage from it that no other team can extract from its own home field. So while the Brewers took the lead in the top of the 12th by hitting the ball in the usual direction — up, in the form of Cooper Pratt’s solo home run — the Rays struck back with four grounders and a liner in the bottom of the inning.

The decisive hit, by Ben Williamson, went straight into the turf, bounced over Milwaukee’s drawn-in five-man infield, and landed… who cares where. The Rays are still alive. Read the rest of this entry »

In a different universe – perhaps one in which Junior Caminero fielded William Contreras’ two-out bouncer in the top of the fifth inning and fired to first base rather than second – Chandler Simpson’s stunning, self-obliterating catch in the second inning would have been the lasting memory of Game 3, and maybe the entire 2026 World Series. In service of the sublime, Simpson hurled himself into the left-field wall with such furor that he may have literally altered the stadium. And somehow, just before impact, he hauled in a baseball and, and just after impact, he kept hold of it. The catch saved a run, but not the game. It will go down as a footnote, a highlight that we’re at first delighted by and eventually accustomed to. But it deserves its own life and its own lore. I have made notes about the various small pieces of this play that can and should delight us for years to come.

Everybody Froze
For just a moment, everybody froze. The umpire and the catcher followed the ball as they always do. Sal Frelick finished his backswing and, as if caught halfway into doing the splits, held his bat out in front of him like a lightsaber while he tried to decide whether the ball would stay fair or slice foul. Freddy Peralta has never allowed a home run down the left-field line at Tropicana Field, but he clearly knows all about the short corner, which specializes in allowing 90-mph pokes like Frelick’s to leak out of the field of play. Peralta kept his head down, facing toward first base for just a split-second before curiosity got the best of him. Frelick finally decided the ball would stay fair and started running.

The Looming Wall
It’s hard to even see, but this is my favorite part of the play. This is Simpson, already at full speed by the time the broadcast cuts to the high home camera, gauging his distance to the wall. It’s his one and only chance to take his eye off the ball, to consider his own safety, to run the numbers. He has to figure out whether he can make the catch, whether he should pull up and play the ball off the wall. He does it so far from the wall, and you have to imagine that he did not like any of the answers he got. But he made the catch anyway. He didn’t slow down at all. He leapt for the ball and he crashed into the wall face first and he held onto the ball and he got it into the infield. He checked the wall, saw that the only way to catch the ball was to crash into it at full speed, and just went ahead and did it anyway.

This catch was no miracle. It was many, many flavors of wonderful, but it happened because Simpson quite simply looked at the wall and decided that he was willing to crash into it. Read the rest of this entry »

Throughout the playoffs, the Brewers have blitzed past their opposition so quickly that their bullpen management has felt like an afterthought. The Rays, meanwhile, have subsisted on having their starters work deep while keeping their bullpen relatively fresh. Those two trends haven’t played much of a role in the World Series yet, and they might not; the Brewers are on the verge of a sweep, after all, and a 10-1 rout yesterday left the leverage arms in both ‘pens fresh. But with tonight’s Game 4 pitting Griffin Jax against a yet-to-be-announced Brewers opener, relievers are squarely on the menu, so let’s review how each ‘pen stacks up in terms of rest and familiarity.

Brewers Bullpen

The Brewers went to the same pattern twice to open the World Series: Abner Uribe for the top of the lineup, then Aaron Ashby afterwards for a longer stint. I don’t know the exact size of the reliever familiarity effect, but it definitely isn’t zero, and with a full bullpen game, the Brewers will have to think through their matchups carefully to minimize how many looks at the same guy they’re giving the opposition. Read the rest of this entry »

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Pat Murphy, face stern and wide as ever, stepped forward and cupped his hands to his ears to signal a replay challenge.

With runners on first and second and two out in the top of the fifth inning of Game 3 of the World Series, William Contreras had just topped a ball to third. Instead of making a throw across the diamond, Junior Caminero went the short way for the force at second.

Caminero’s got a big arm, and Contreras is a catcher, but still — the Rays third baseman was on the move and off-balance after spinning to grab the ball. With two outs, Christian Yelich was running on contact, but the 34-year-old doesn’t run like he used to. Might as well go next door. It was a bang-bang play, but second base umpire Dan Bellino called Yelich out. Read the rest of this entry »