Archive for Rays

The American League Championship Series between the Rays and Guardians was a study in contrasts when it came to starting pitching, particularly as the series extended. Tampa Bay’s starters lasted five or more innings in all but one of the six games, with Drew Rasmussen and Freddy Peralta combining for three starts of at least six innings; the former went seven innings and the latter 5 1/3 in the the final two games. Cleveland’s starters reached the five-inning mark just twice and never went deeper than that; over the final three games, the team’s starters — ace Parker Messick and reliever Shawn Armstrong, who was deputized to open Games 4 and 6 — totaled just four innings. Given that imbalance, it was hardly a surprise that the Rays rallied from a 2-1 deficit to win those three and take the series.

The World Series might present a similar contrast. The Rays and the Yankees are the only teams whose starters have averaged at least five innings per turn during this postseason, and Tampa Bay knocked off New York in a Division Series sweep earlier this month. Meanwhile, the Brewers are one of five teams whose starters have averaged less than four innings per turn; only twice did a Milwaukee starter even last five innings, with Logan Henderson reaching that mark in Game 2 of the NLDS against the Padres and Robert Gasser doing so in Game 3 of the NLCS against the Dodgers. Jacob Misiorowski — the likely NL Cy Young winner, who even before the playoffs had already exceeded his total workload from last year by more than 30 innings — burned through 88 pitches to complete four innings in his NLDS start and 94 to go 4 1/3 in his NLCS start. For the Brewers and Rays, those divergent approaches have worked. Tampa Bay went a combined 7-2 in the ALDS and ALCS; Milwaukee, 7-1 in the NLDS and NLCS.

After a season in which he ranked third in the AL in FIP (2.81) and WAR (5.0) and fourth in ERA (2.67), Rasmussen began his postseason by no-hitting the Yankees for 7 2/3 innings in the Division Series opener. In three starts totaling 21 innings, he’s delivered a 1.29 ERA and a 2.58 FIP. Peralta, who struggled during his four months as a Met before righting himself somewhat as a Ray following a deadline deal, has put up a 1.13 ERA and a 3.72 FIP in 16 innings as a starter, on top of which he added two-thirds of an inning out of the bullpen in ALCS Game 4; that cherry on top of his two strong starts helped him win series MVP honors. While their third and fourth starters, Nick Martinez and Griffin Jax, haven’t been as effective, the Rays’ postseason rotation ERA is good enough to crack the top 10 dating back to the start of division play in 1969:

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Tomorrow night, the Milwaukee Brewers and the Tampa Bay Rays will kick off the 2026 World Series. They’ll both deploy unhittable aces to open the series, and they’ll both back them with a squad made up of speedsters, platoonable hitters, a young superstar, and relievers as far as the eye can see. To a first approximation, these teams might as well be a mirror image of each other. They’re small-budget operations that rely heavily on pitching, speed, and defense. They put the ball in play. They wreak havoc on the basepaths. They play indoors – at least some of the time, in Milwaukee’s case. But while the Rays and Brewers are superficially similar, key differences will have a lot to say about how this series turns out. So let’s take a look at where the equivalence ends, and how each team will try to use that to their advantage.

Pair of Aces

The Brewers and Rays each have an obvious leader in their respective rotations. Jacob Misiorowski and Drew Rasmussen are two of the best pitchers in baseball, and they’re both having career years. Misiorowski is a shoo-in for the National League Cy Young, and while Rasmussen probably won’t win the American League version, he just put up his sixth (!) straight season with a sub-3.00 ERA, posted over a career-high 172 innings. He’s found another gear in the playoffs — three starts, 21 innings pitched, and just three runs allowed. The Miz hasn’t looked quite so steady – two starts, 8 1/3 innings, three runs – but his 1.80 ERA and 2.17 FIP in the regular season were downright ludicrous. Read the rest of this entry »

The way people talk about Jacob Misiorowski bothers me a little. Yeah, he’s taller than almost any other starting pitcher and throws harder than literally any starting pitcher in history. He led all major league pitchers in WAR this year, and if he wins the NL Cy Young Award next month — as he’s almost universally expected to do — it will be a deserved victory.

But Miz didn’t lap the field or post paradigm-altering results. I can’t make a defensible case for Chris Sale or Cristopher Sánchez to win the Cy Young over Misiorowski, but I suspect the eventual vote total will not reflect how close the statistical margin was between Miz and his rivals.

In other words, this is an outstanding pitcher — maybe the best in the world at the moment, perhaps even a future Hall of Famer — but he’s not 1999 Pedro Martínez, or Victor Wembanyama with a curveball. This is a fairly inexperienced 24-year-old with real flaws in his game.

He can be got at. Read the rest of this entry »

The World Series — our annual signifier of another season smoked to its filter — is always a culmination of the sport’s beauty. Teams get rewarded for playing a winning brand of baseball all throughout October, managers are vindicated in all of the micro-decisions that got them there, and front offices can comfortably rest their heads at night knowing their systems and philosophies weren’t totally off base.

But more visible than all that — and the thing that gives the sport its humanity among so many numbers, figures, and entropy beyond the players’ control — is the heartwarming sight of a veteran finally getting a chance for his Ray Bourque moment. For the Tampa Bay Rays, who stand just four wins away from the franchise’s first title, that man is quite literally impossible to overlook. The circumference of his arms threatens a solar eclipse every time he raises them. His physical composition is probably best described in terms used to measure quartzite. He is Yandy Díaz, the 35-year-old igneous rock at the top of the Tampa Bay lineup, who, despite having all the hulking characteristics of a home run-mashing slugger, is also the best pure hitter in this World Series.

Díaz, who has hit safely in all but one of the Rays’ nine postseason games, is above average at nearly every element of hitting. He rarely swings and misses, which leads to very few strikeouts. In turn, he squares the ball at an 85th-percentile clip, and can do that while peppering it to right field. When he puts the ball in play, 29.9% of the time it’s going to the opposite field, a skill he shares with teammates Chandler Simpson and Jonathan Aranda, who are also among the five most frequent opposite-field hitters in the American League. Díaz is not going to take many walks — 8.2 BB%, good for the 37th percentile — but hitting .293 still helps him post a .359 on-base percentage, placing him in the top 20 of qualified AL batters. Read the rest of this entry »

A couple years ago, I wrote an article about Amed Rosario. Rosario was just coming off the best season of his career, a 3.1-WAR 2022 campaign in which he’d posted a 104 wRC+ and manned shortstop for the Guardians. He’d led the majors with nine triples, but I was interested in another category where he’d not only led the league but also left everyone else in his dust. Statcast credited Rosario with 369 competitive runs. That was nearly 70 more than any other player in 2022, and it’s still the highest single-season total ever recorded.

As there’s no reason for you to remember what a competitive run is, let’s start with a refresher. In order for Statcast to do a good job of measuring a player’s average sprint speed, it needs to pick the right plays, when they’ll be running hard and reaching their maximum speed. If you hit a routine groundout to the shortstop and run down the baseline at a businesslike 80%, that’s not really a reflection of your top speed. You’re not running competitively. Statcast only assesses sprint speed on plays where a batter is running to first after a “topped” or “weakly hit” ball, or plays where they run two or more bases (except when they score from second on an extra-base hit). Those are competitive runs, and I’m going to quote from my old article to explain why I think they’re worth writing about:

I don’t know about you, but I think this is incredibly fun. Competitive runs is an incidental statistic. It’s just scaffolding for another stat, but there’s one person who plays baseball like competitive runs is his own personal pinball machine. The other reason I love it is that even though competitive runs exists only to serve a higher master, it’s still a descriptive stat in its own right. A player’s competitive runs total tells you plenty about the way they play the game.

In order to lead the league in competitive runs, you need to put the ball in play a lot, which means no striking out and, to a lesser extent, limited walking. You need to hit the ball weakly and on the ground, but you also need to reach base a lot so that you can make all those first-to-thirds and second-to-homes. Your offensive game needs to revolve around speed and ground-based contact. I’ve left out one other prerequisite, but already, it’s starting to sound like I’m describing one player in particular, right?

Read the rest of this entry »

After a dominant run through the American League East this year, the Tampa Bay Rays have punched their ticket to the World Series. Down 2-1 in the ALCS, they reeled off two straight wins in Cleveland over the weekend to take a 3-2 lead back home. And with a chance to put the series away, following a wild weekend of rain, rescheduling, and bullpen games as far as the eye could see, the Rays rose to the occasion, jumping all over the Guardians early and tacking on late to cruise to a 7-3 Game 6 win on Monday night. It was a comprehensive victory for the top seed in the American League, and it showed off their ability to do whatever is needed to win, whether it’s one-upping the opposition at their own game or putting a contest to bed with late-inning power.

Cleveland is a club that needs to make the most out of every opportunity to outscore its opponents. The team’s much-ballyhooed “Guards Ball” style depends a lot on a dominant pitching staff and a little on turning balls in play into baserunners, pressure, and eventually runs. But time and again on Monday, the Rays were the Guardians’ match when it came to the small plays that can flip the game – and they showed off an extra gear when push came to shove. Time and time again, they turned the Guardians away in big moments and extended the lead when they got their own chances.

One sequence was emblematic of the night: In the top of the fourth inning, the Guardians staged an all-too-rare rally against Freddy Peralta. Jo Adell led off the inning with a roped line drive double. Nathaniel Lowe battled back from 0-2 to draw a walk. After a fly out, Patrick Bailey came up and chopped a grounder over Peralta’s head. It was the kind of ball that could rattle around and lead to chaos. But Taylor Walls was having absolutely none of it. He rampaged across second, waved Richie Palacios out of the way, and snared the ball at a full sprint, headed directly toward Lowe, who panicked and slammed on the brakes, but to no avail. Walls ran him down, brushed a tag as Lowe fell out of the basepath, and fired to first to complete a double play. What might have been a big inning instead ended without a run scoring. Read the rest of this entry »

The Tampa Bay Rays are one win away from their third trip to the World Series. After pulling away from the Cleveland Guardians late in Game 4 for a 7-3 victory, the Rays scored a run in each of the first three innings of Game 5. While they left six men on base over that span, they forced Guardians ace Parker Messick to work so hard that he lasted just two innings, and because the game remained within reach, Cleveland manager Stephen Vogt called upon four of his best relievers to record four outs or more. Meanwhile, Drew Rasmussen stifled the Guardians, holding them to one run on four hits over seven innings, and a trio of relievers shut the door for a 3-1 victory and a three-games-to-two series lead. The series now heads back to St. Petersburg, and because the travel day was erased by Friday night’s rainout, the Rays will have the opportunity to clinch the pennant at home on Monday night.

For as great a rookie season as Messick had, the 25-year-old lefty has been anything but dominant during the postseason. He lasted five innings in just one of his three previous starts while putting up a 4.13 FIP and 5.25 xERA to go with a comparatively tidy 3.09 ERA in 11.2 innings. If a 15.1% walk rate, more than double his regular season mark of 6.6%, has been the primary culprit, his previous workload may be a contributing factor as well. Messick ranked fourth in the American League with 186.1 innings — the most of any rookie since 2012 — and with his postseason work prior to Sunday, he had pushed his odometer to 198 frames, up from a combined 138.1 innings between Triple-A and the majors in 2025.

After pairing Messick with backup catcher Austin Hedges for all but one of his starts in 2026 — David Fry caught the first three innings of his September 27 outing — Vogt called upon Patrick Bailey instead… on the basis of his offense. That’s an odd thing to say about a catcher with a career 75 wRC+, and an anemic .146/.213/.183 line when he was traded from the Giants in May, but the 27-year-old backstop has been a credible threat at the plate since joining the Guardians, and he entered Sunday having hit .333/.379/.556 (163 wRC+) during the postseason, with a homer and a single off Rasmussen in Game 1. Said Vogt before the game, “With the way Patty is swinging the bat, [I] just wanted to keep his bat in the lineup, and you know, obviously there is some risk. There’s some concern with Patty never having caught Parker. But you know what? If I’m going to trust two human beings to go out and navigate a game, it’s Parker and Patty.” Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re keeping score at home, the ALCS has now gone back and forth twice. On a frigid Saturday night in Cleveland, Tampa Bay’s big bats finally woke up. The Rays beat the Guardians, 7-3, to win Game 4 and even the series at 2-2. The game was originally scheduled for Friday night, but pouring rain destroyed that plan. The low temperature and a light west-southwest breeze kept multiple would-be homers in the ballpark, and the rain-soaked grass slowed down balls in the outfield. However, it didn’t stop the Rays from scoring more than three runs for the first time in the series. The Rays were more aggressive than the Guardians in terms of asking their best arms to get big outs. They countered a Cleveland bullpen game with a surprising amount of starting pitching, and they got big performances from Yandy Díaz, Junior Caminero, and Jonathan Aranda. The series is now guaranteed to end in St. Petersburg.

Both teams had the option to adjust their pitching plans after the rain banged Friday night’s game. The Rays could have thrown their ace, Drew Rasmussen on regular rest, rather than scheduled starter Nick Martinez. However, they knew they still would have needed Martinez later in the series, and it made sense for manager Kevin Cash to stick with his plan. Things were more complicated for Guardians manager Stephen Vogt.

With none of his most trusted starters available on normal rest on Friday, Vogt had no choice but to plan on a bullpen game, even though his bullpen was overworked. The postponement gave his relievers a much-needed game of rest. It also gave him the opportunity to hand the ball back to Game 1 starter Foster Griffin. Getting some length from Griffin would have been huge, because the postponement meant that if the series went seven games, the teams would play four games in a row, once again taxing the bullpen. However, Vogt stuck with opener Shawn Armstrong, and was cagey with reporters before the game when asked whether Griffin would pitch. It seemed like his plan for cobbling together nine innings was very contingent on how the game unfolded. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the great underrated joys of baseball is a competitive best-of-seven series that ends in five games. Think the 2024 World Series, when the only game the Dodgers lost was also the only game that was decided by more than three runs. The series scoreboard suggests that it was lopsided, but the individual games were absolutely riveting.

Even more overlooked is the enthralling four-game sweep, which is so rare that we are morally obligated to appreciate it when we see one. For that reason, it is my duty as a baseball writer to marvel at the NLCS that just transpired, when the Brewers came from behind in each of the four games to topple the dynastic Dodgers. Michael Baumann covered the series in Milwaukee and Los Angeles, and you should definitely check out his writing on the action if you haven’t already.

In this week’s mailbag, we’re putting together the best all-time roster of players who’ve never played in the World Series, and considering whether they’d beat an All-Star team from the clubs in this year’s Championship Series. We’re also answering your questions on what would happen if hit-by-pitches were treated as regular balls, and 1-0 games that feature a first-pitch home run. But first, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com. Read the rest of this entry »

Direct link to application (please see job details below):

Amateur Data Technician

Amateur Data Technician

Department: Amateur Scouting
Reports to: Senior Analyst, Baseball R&D
Location: St. Petersburg, FL

Overview
The Amateur Data Technician will sit at the intersection of Amateur Scouting and Data Engineering, ensuring the completeness, accuracy, and accessibility of college/high school data to maximize its impact on the player evaluation process for the annual MLB Draft. This person will develop a thorough understanding of available data sources and the full data pipeline, from ingestion into the database through integration into the amateur model. The technician will work alongside analysts and engineers to support and maintain data pipelines, ensure reliable and complete data delivery, develop quality-control processes, identify and reduce query bottlenecks, and explore opportunities to incorporate underutilized information. The technician will also gain an understanding of the amateur model, assist with its day-to-day operation and maintenance, and support various ad hoc statistical and draft-related tasks.

Responsibilities:

(65%) Amateur Data Oversight

• Develop and maintain processes to track data delivery and ensure completeness
• Implement quality checks to identify recurring issues, including erroneous or duplicate data
• Develop a working understanding of existing data pipeline frameworks and historical considerations
• Partner with Amateur Scouting staff to improve the accuracy and efficiency of data mapping processes
• Optimize existing queries and develop new ones to reduce data-access bottlenecks
• Maintain a thorough understanding of amateur data sources and their characteristics

(35%) Amateur Analytical Support

• Understand the amateur model framework and impact of underlying data sources
• Assist with the execution and maintenance of the amateur model pipeline
• Conduct ad hoc analytical explorations and support other draft-related tasks

Qualifications:

• Applied experience with SQL and relational databases
• Fluency in R
• Experience working with large or complex datasets and troubleshooting data-quality issues
• Working knowledge of statistical modeling and machine learning
• Experience in amateur baseball or with TrackMan data a plus
• Fluency in Python a plus

All offers are contingent on a satisfactory background check.

We are an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, disability, gender identity, marital or veteran status, or any other protected class.

To Apply
To apply, please follow this link.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the Tampa Bay Rays.