Late last night, the Padres and Rays consummated a blockbuster trade that is a microcosm of the two orgs’ approaches to contention. Tampa Bay sent electric lefty Blake Snell to the pitching-hungry Padres for a collection of four young players: Luis Patiño, Blake Hunt, Cole Wilcox, and Francisco Mejía. The move bolsters a San Diego rotation that was beset by injuries so late and so severe in 2020 that the club’s rotation depth and quality for next season was clearly still lacking despite their trade deadline efforts to improve it. The Padres have spent most of the last several years building one of the most impressive collections of minor league talent in the sport and, now that they’ve closed much of the gap between themselves and the Dodgers, have begun cashing in their prospect chips for elite big leaguers, while the Rays continue to bet on their ability to scout minor leaguers who can turn into long-term pieces for their club given its limited payroll. Below are my thoughts on the prospects headed back to the Rays in the trade; Ben Clemens will assess the Snell side of the deal later today.

The obvious headliner here is Patiño, who turned 21 in October. He’s coming off a rocky rookie year during which the Padres promoted him to work in a multi-inning relief role. In mostly two-ish-inning outings, Patiño threw 17.1 innings, struck out 21, walked 14, and amassed a 5.19 ERA. Despite the poor surface-level performance in a small sample, Patiño’s stuff was strong. His fastball sat 95-99 all year, his mid-80s slider was often plus, and his power changeup, which is often 87-91 mph, also has the look of a bat-missing pitch.

Despite his velocity, Patiño’s fastball wasn’t generating frequent swings and misses, perhaps because it sometimes has a little bit of natural cut, especially when Patiño is locating it to his glove side. Fastballs with cutting action tend to run into more bats than ones with a combination of tail and rise. The Rays altered Pete Fairbanks’ heater in such a way that they were able to correct this for 2020 and got an extra gear out of him. It’s possible they’ll do the same with Patiño. Read the rest of this entry »

A week ago, the Rays’ 40-man roster had a single catcher on it: Ronaldo Hernández, a 23-year-old prospect who had never played above High-A. Fast forward to Friday, and Tampa has doubled its collection of backstops after re-signing Mike Zunino, who has been with the team the past two seasons. That was not the only move the club made, though, as the Rays also signed free-agent pitcher Michael Wacha. Both deals came in at $3 million, with Zunino’s total figure including a buyout on a 2022 option. The deals make sense, though it is worth noting that the two players combined for 0.1 WAR last season, so the Rays must see something beyond their recent performances to justify even a modest investment.

The Rays need a bunch of innings behind the plate, and Zunino, who turns 30 in March, should supply some of them; just don’t expect much out of them. The last two seasons, he’s been one of the worst hitters in baseball, with his 49 wRC+ ranking 337th out of 342 players with at least 300 plate appearances. Zunino does have some power, with a career ISO around .200, and he bested that number in 84 plate appearances last season, but he just doesn’t get to it enough to make himself anywhere near a decent hitter. Even his walk rates, which were double-digit levels back in his good offensive years with the Mariners in 2016 and ’17, have dropped below league average the last three years. Zunino has always swung and missed a lot, with a 35% career strikeout rate, and he whiffed 37 times last year while putting the ball in fair territory on just 38 occasions. He’s average to maybe slightly above average at throwing out runners, but last season, he was below average in framing for the first time in his career. There are reasons the Rays declined Zunino’s $4.5 million option at the end of last season, and it isn’t because they’re cheap.

Read the rest of this entry »

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for nine years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Tampa Bay Rays.

Batters

Whatever else you want to say about the Tampa Bay Rays, you can’t deny that there’s a consistent underlying structure to their rosters. They rarely have hitters ticketed for outright superstar seasons, but they always boast a stupendous amount of depth, with a horde of players every year projected to be worth between one and four wins. From 2014-2020 (the original, pre-pandemic version), ZiPS projected 185 player-seasons at four wins or greater, 69 of which started at five wins. Just five of those player-seasons belonged to Rays, and only one of those five was projected for more than 5 WAR (Evan Longoria’s 5.2 in 2014). A few teams did worse, but with the exception of the Minnesota Twins, they were all near the bottom of baseball in WAR over those seasons, while the Rays were a solid 11th.

To the Rays’ credit, this team construction reflects an understanding of their win condition. The front office doesn’t get to choose its budgets, so to win consistently on the resources it’s given, the team’s rosters practically have to be designed this way. The Rays need to hit on their young pitchers and keep the flow of Joey Wendles and Brandon Lowes and Yandy Díazi moving because they’re simply not going to go out and sign a Gerrit Cole or an Anthony Rendon. Read the rest of this entry »

Like most baseball fans ranging from prospect-curious to prospect-obsessed, I too have been awaiting Nate Lowe’s first extended big league opportunity. It appears he’ll finally get one, as the Rangers acquired him on Thursday as part of a five- or six-player trade with Tampa Bay that involves Top 100 prospect Heriberto Hernandez. Read the rest of this entry »

Position: Research and Development Intern

Job Description:
The Tampa Bay Rays are in search of their next Research and Development Intern. Their R&D group helps shape their Baseball Operations decision-making processes through the analysis and interpretation of data. They are seeking those with a passion for baseball and a desire to contribute through mathematics, data analysis and computation. Their next intern will be an intellectual contributor that can work both individually and collaboratively, coming up with interesting research questions to explore, find ways to answer those questions with the data at their disposal, communicate the results of their research, and work to apply their research outcomes to improve how the Rays organization operates. The Rays want to work with people who care about being good teammate, want to make a positive impact on their organization, have an innovative spirit, and will explore new ways to make them better. Does this describe you?

Responsibilities:

• Develop strong skills in statistical modeling and quantitative analysis of a variety of data sources, for the purpose of player evaluation, player development and strategic decision-making
• Learn methods for communicating complex research findings to a variety of Baseball Operations audiences
• Design research inquiries with the potential to yield immediately actionable findings within the Rays organization
• Work collaboratively with and assisting other members of the department with your areas of expertise
• Collect in-game data to support operational needs of the department
• Ad hoc research and analysis in support of general Baseball Operations tasks

Read the rest of this entry »

Let me give you an interesting blind resume. Well, not blind really, because you’ve presumably read the title of this article already, but humor me. Our “anonymous” starter has been one of the best pitchers in baseball of late. Over the last four years, he’s compiled a 3.34 ERA, 3.27 FIP, and 3.46 xFIP. He’s done it with strikeouts — 28.4% and 10.6 per nine innings — and with grounders — his 1.61 GB/FB ratio helps him suppress home runs to the tune of 0.73 per nine innings.

Looking at seasonal production is confusing with 2020, so we’ll use a slightly different benchmark: WAR produced per 30 starts. On that list, our “mystery” pitcher places 20th in baseball over the last four years. Depending on how you define an ace, he might be one; at the very least, he’s been one of the best pitchers in the game.

This isn’t a true blind resume, of course. It’s Charlie Morton. The former Pirates prospect turned his career around in Houston, and he’s done more of the same in Tampa Bay. He’s also developed a reputation as a playoff monster, and while I’m not here to debate whether playoff aces exist, he was excellent this postseason; 20 innings of 2.7 ERA, 2.59 FIP excellence.

Why is this resume relevant? On Friday, the Rays declined Morton’s 2021 club option. Morton was due to earn $15 million in 2021, the result of a complicated contract that could deflate based on Morton’s health. The Rays are, to put it charitably, frugal — Morton was their highest-paid player by far last year, and they’ve had one of the five lowest payrolls in baseball in each of the last 10 years.

That said, let’s delve into Morton to figure out what the team declining his option means. Is it a referendum on Tampa Bay’s voluntary extreme penury? Is it a sign of a cold free agent market to come? Or are the Rays simply unconvinced that Morton will deliver the top-end starter performance he’s shown over the last four years? Read the rest of this entry »

A number of you reading this will share the same opinion: A.J. Hinch was suspended for his role in the Houston Astros cheating scandal, and for that reason he has no business managing a major league baseball team. It’s a reasonable stance. The integrity of the game matters, and while Hinch wasn’t fully on board with the shenanigans — he twice smashed the monitor used to steal signs — he nonetheless shares in the blame. That he didn’t put a stop to the outlawed actions is an indelible stain on his reputation.

On Friday — freshly freed from MLB’s sanctions — Hinch was named the new manager of the Detroit Tigers. Speaking at his introductory press conference, the club’s one-time catcher was understandably contrite.

“I’ve reflected back… from something that was very wrong,” Hinch expressed to a bevy of reporters. “As I told Mr. Ilich, and Al, that’s part of my story. It’s not the Tigers’ story… it’s not a part of the players I’m going to be managing. I’m sorry that they’re going to have to deal with it, [but] that’s our reality. Wrong is wrong, and I feel responsible, because I was the manager. It was on my watch.”

Mr. Ilich is Christopher Ilich, the Tigers’ Chairman and CEO. Al is Al Avila, the club’s Executive VP, Baseball Operations/General Manager. The latter, who’d phoned Hinch 30 minutes after the conclusion of the World Series to request he get on a plane to Detroit, was already well-acquainted with the now-free-to-negotiate candidate. Based on his history with Hinch, Avila wasn’t overburdened by what had happened in Houston. Read the rest of this entry »

Maybe you’ve heard — Blake Snell pitched a nifty five-plus innings two nights ago. The decision to pull him or leave him in has been hashed, rehashed, diced, A-Rod’ed, and generally poked and prodded like a murder victim in an episode of CSI. If you want my opinion on it, I would have kept Snell in, though I don’t think that was in any way the determining factor in the game.

That’s not why I’m writing today, though. Any honest analysis of that decision is going to come down to a minuscule edge. Use one good pitcher, or use another good pitcher? It doesn’t matter much — the players on the field determine the game, not the manager, even if you think the decision was clearly one way or the other. Instead, let’s appreciate not what Blake Snell could have done if he stayed in, but what he did do when he was in the game.

Snell threw 73 pitches on Tuesday night. He generated a whopping 16 swinging strikes, a 21.9% swinging strike rate. That was his second-highest mark of the year, behind a September 29 start against the Blue Jays. That might not sound impressive, but the Dodgers are, well, the Dodgers. No other starter this year topped a 20% swinging strike rate against them; they simply aren’t the kind of team that swings and misses. Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes we allow hindsight to cloud our judgment and fall into a trap of second-guessing when assessing managerial decisions. That wasn’t much of an issue last night when discussing whether Kevin Cash should have removed Blake Snell in the sixth inning. That’s because the decision was universally derided as it was happening, just before the Rays blew their lead and the Dodgers won the World Series. As Rachael McDaniel noted:

The Dodgers’ powerful lineup, so productive in this World Series — the Dodgers, you may recall, had held a lead at some point in 27 consecutive innings prior to tonight — seemed utterly useless against Snell. Their fearsome top-of-the-lineup trio of Betts, Seager, and Turner were all 0-for-2 with two strikeouts against him through the first five innings; he was at a very reasonable 73 pitches on the night. Snell’s CSW% on all his pitches was an eye-popping 40%. In short, he looked fantastic. It’s hard to imagine a pitcher looking much better than Snell did for most of Game 6; it’s hard to imagine how the outcome might have differed had he stayed in the game.

Snell was pitching incredibly well up that point in the game, and there was considerable criticism of Cash’s decision as it seemed to be based on numbers, particularly the third time through the order (TTO) penalty, rather than actually paying attention to the feel of the game and just how good Snell was pitching. Cash specifically mentioned the TTO penalty in his postgame comments:

“The only motive was that the lineup the Dodgers feature is as potent as any team in the league,” Cash said. “I felt Blake had done his job and then some. Mookie [Betts] coming around the third time through, I value that. I totally respect and understand the questions that come with [the decision]. Blake gave us every opportunity to win. He was outstanding. These are not easy decisions. … I felt it was best after the guy got on base — Barnes hit the single — I didn’t want Mookie or [Corey] Seager seeing Blake a third time through.

If Cash’s decision had come purely from relying on Snell’s prior history the third time through the order and had ignored what was happening in the game, then the criticism would be justified. Cash did address this somewhat after the game: Read the rest of this entry »

Facing elimination in Game 6 of the World Series on Tuesday, the Tampa Bay Rays were in desperate need of some offense. As he has so many times, rookie outfielder Randy Arozarena delivered. With one out in the top of the first inning, Los Angeles starter Tony Gonsolin threw a slider running off the plate outside that wasn’t able to evade the bat of Arozarena, who launched it over the right field fence to give the Rays a 1-0 lead. It was his record-setting 10th homer of the postseason; no other player in history has more than eight in any playoff run.

But in a game that would see the Dodgers tally three runs, one solo homer wasn’t going to cut it for the Rays. And in spite of Los Angeles using seven pitchers in a bullpenning effort, one solo home run was all Tampa Bay was going to get. After Gonsolin exited just five outs into the game, Tampa Bay totaled just two hits and zero walks over the final 7.1 innings. It was the third game of the series in which they scored two runs or fewer, and the second time they totaled five or fewer hits. Given those numbers, it’s hardly a surprise the team in the other dugout was the one celebrating a championship on Tuesday.

During and after the loss, much of the discussion surrounding the Rays had to do with the pitching staff — both the way it performed and the way it was managed. There was the controversial decision to lift Blake Snell in the midst of a shutout in the sixth inning, the sudden struggles of Nick Anderson, the disappointing pair of starts made by Tyler Glasnow in this series, and plenty of other points to dissect. The focus on the pitching side makes sense. The Rays are a team known not only for the lights-out arms they boast, but also for the unconventional-yet-typically-successful ways those arms are utilized. Tampa Bay’s pitching staff was the reason the team had made it this far, and if the team won the title, the pitching staff would probably be the reason for that too. It isn’t, however, the reason it lost. Read the rest of this entry »