Archive for Rays

I generally find discussions of the most underrated player in baseball to be tedious. Whose rating are we using? Relative to what? Does being the most underrated player in the game two years in a row imply something uncomfortable about our own ability to update our priors? Heck, does repeatedly earning the mantel of “most underrated” render you ineligible for the title? How underrated can José Ramírez be when every single FanGraphs reader knows how underrated he is? Anyway, today’s article is a case of “do what I say, not what I do.” Because I’ll just say it: Drew Rasmussen is the most underrated player in baseball.

I know, I know! That whole intro paragraph tells you how silly this formulation is. But I was moved to look more closely at Rasmussen for two reasons. First, there was this tweet from Tom Tango:

Since 2021, among pitchers with 500+ IP, there are 10 pitchers in the top 15 in each of ERA, FIP and Statcast ERA (xERA)

From highest to lowest career WAR:

Kershaw
Sale
Cole
Wheeler
Fried
Skubal
Burnes
Woodruff
Ohtani
Rasmussen

Sale + Ohtani are only ones in top 5 in all 3 pic.twitter.com/jF7ZVUWmDs

— Tangotiger ? (@tangotiger) August 9, 2026

Not a list I expected to find him on. Second, this interview he did with our own David Laurila fascinated me. Rasmussen doesn’t look much like he did when the Brewers traded him to the Rays for Willy Adames back in 2021. This guy has remade his entire arsenal and approach, and he’s become one of the best pitchers in baseball by doing so. Read the rest of this entry »

With apologies to Tarik Skubal and the Dodgers, for my money the most eye-catching deal ahead of Monday’s trade deadline was the Red Sox acquiring Adley Rutschman in a six-player blockbuster with the Orioles. Not only did a switch-hitting All-Star catcher move from one Wild Card contender to another, but he did so within the same division — and he’s more than a rental, with one more year of arbitration eligibility before he reaches free agency. Though he’s currently on the injured list due to inflammation in his left wrist, Rutschman is reportedly nearing a rehab assignment, and once he returns, he should provide a substantial upgrade for a team whose catchers landed on my Replacement-Level Killers list a few weeks ago.

Rustchman wasn’t the only prominent catcher on the move to a contender on Monday, as the Marlins traded Liam Hicks to the Rays, but he’s a part-time backstop whose hitting makes him a useful DH and first base option as well. While the concurrence of his being dealt illustrates that trading for a catcher on the fly in the midst of a playoff race isn’t unheard of, such moves do stand out. They’re not to be undertaken lightly because of the weighty responsibility that falls on a catcher’s shoulders in terms of quickly having to build relationships with a new pitching staff to understand repertoires, situational preferences, and interpersonal dynamics. Odds are that those newcomers are also expected to provide more offense than the catchers they replaced, because offensive slumps often spur teams to make such changes. Read the rest of this entry »

I know, I know. I, too, wish the Tampa Bay Rays had traded for Tarik Skubal. But they didn’t, and it’s not in their nature if we’re being honest. The Rays aren’t the type to trade for one big hammer. They prefer to one-red-paperclip it, and that’s exactly what they’ve done this deadline. First, they traded for Freddy Peralta. Now, they’ve added some sorely needed offensive help by acquiring Liam Hicks from the Marlins in exchange for prospects Jacob Kisting, Adrian Santana, and Brayden Taylor, as Jeff Passan first reported.

The Tampa Bay side of this equation is pretty simple. Their catching duo of Hunter Feduccia and Nick Fortes hasn’t been good enough. Fortes has been reasonable as the righty half of a platoon, but Feduccia has scuffled to an 82 wRC+ even getting good platoon matchups. Catcher probably wasn’t the weakest part of their lineup – frankly, there are a lot of holes to patch here – but it was definitely an area of need. If the Rays are going to keep a hold on the AL East, they’ll have to score more runs in addition to continuing to pitch well, and playing a good hitter at catcher is a good way to start.

Hicks was a late bloomer who didn’t debut until last year at age 26, but he has a long track record of plus offense from behind the plate. He hit throughout his minor league tenure but never received a call-up because of questions about his defense. The Marlins took him in the Rule 5 draft in December 2024, plugged him in as the big half of a platoon, and let him cook. His defense was predictably weak – so weak that he ended up rotating between catcher, first base, and DH – but the bat played right away. Read the rest of this entry »

You and I might never know if the Rays could have outbid the Dodgers for Tarik Skubal, but with the no. 1 player on the trading block off the board, Tampa Bay swept into action within hours. For the cost of outfielder Aidan Smith, second baseman Émilien Pitre, and pitcher Gary Gill Hill, the Rays have acquired right-hander Freddy Peralta from the New York Mets. The Rays, in a departure from their habitual cheapskatitude, are assuming the remaining $2.47 million left on Peralta’s contract.

At the time of the trade, the Rays had a sizable-but-not-completely secure 3.5-game lead over the Yankees, both for first place in the AL East and the no. 1 overall seed in the American League. With the deepest farm system in the league to trade from, the Rays were wise to shore up their rotation, both for the stretch run and for the postseason itself.

The Rays have a pretty good staff already; they’re seventh in baseball in team ERA- and eighth in K-BB%. Their starters are fourth in ERA-. Tampa Bay sent not one but three pitchers — Drew Rasmussen, Nick Martinez, and closer Bryan Baker — to the All-Star Game last month. Read the rest of this entry »

On Wednesday afternoon, Tarik Skubal threw what looked for all the world to be his last pitch as a member of the Detroit Tigers.

Skubal fanned six Orioles — including his 1,000th career strikeout — and held the Orioles scoreless into the seventh inning. Tigers manager A.J. Hinch, wanting his ace to finish on a valedictory note, let Skubal pitch himself into some trouble in the seventh, but lifted him once Leody Taveras singled in Baltimore’s first run. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve written before about one of my favorite baseball traditions: The Rays make a run to the playoffs, and because they’re not the Yankees or Red Sox, and they turn over their entire 40-man roster every 24 months, they show up on TV with a bunch of guys the average sports fan has never heard of.

Come October, America is introduced to a weird reliever when he throws three perfect innings in the ALDS. “Who the frick is this guy?” America asks. “And how does anyone hit him?” Read the rest of this entry »

Three interviews — two with pitchers, another with a hitter — were published here at FanGraphs over the past week. All were the result of lengthy conversations, and in each case, worthwhile snippets landed on the cutting-room floor. This week’s column will lead with those leftovers, which come courtesy of Drew Rasmussen, Cole Sulser, and Pete Alonso.

We’ll start with Rasmussen, who addressed his ability to command his offerings, particularly his four-seam/two-seam/cutter combination.

“Command is kind of a sliding scale,” said the Tampa Bay Rays right-hander, whose 4.3% walked rate ranks lowest among qualified hurlers. “Some days it’s really good and some days it’s not so good. The job is to figure out what you have as quickly as possible. On days when my command is really good… I would say that is situation-driven. If I need a ball on the ground, I can throw it with a little more tail and a little less carry. If I’m just trying to steal strike one, maybe I don’t want the [movement] profile to be as big; that way it has a better chance of staying in the zone.

“Conversely, on days that I’m not overly confident with my command, I simplify to the absolute max,” he continued. “We’re going to try to just throw the same one over and over again. Then, hopefully at some point over the course of the outing, something clicks and I start to get more and more confident, and comfortable, with the command I have that day.” Read the rest of this entry »

Cole Sulser has a future as a pitching coach — or coordinator — if he chooses to go that route. A graduate of Dartmouth College with a degree in Engineering Sciences, the 36-year-old right-hander has not only toed the rubber for five major league teams, but also his current club is the ever-progressive Tampa Bay Rays. As much as any hurler in the game, Sulser is well-versed in his craft.

His pitching education predates his July 2024 arrival in St. Petersburg. Ditto his providing insights here at FanGraphs. Then a Baltimore Oriole, Sulser shared thoughts on changeup development, and later on pitch design, in pieces that ran in August 2021. In want of further perspectives from the analytically savvy hurler, I caught up with him when the Rays visited Fenway Park this past weekend.

———

David Laurila: How much has pitch design grown since we spoke five years ago?”

Cole Sulser: “I think it has grown a ton. Our understanding is a lot more comprehensive than it was five years ago. Certain teams were maybe ahead of it more than others, but it was definitely a little more surface level. We were looking at some of the more generic aspects in terms of overall spin rate, and maybe just a little bit of efficiency. Now it seems like teams have gotten a lot more in depth in terms of the gyro degree, what your body naturally does, and which pitches may complement that. Instead of searching for specific pitches, they are more looking at what you do naturally, and try to complement that with pitches that would come easier to you.”

Laurila: Has that impacted you specifically? Read the rest of this entry »

Arsenals that include three variations of a fastball — four-seamer, two-seamer, cutter — are increasingly common in today’s game, and Drew Rasmussen is among the trend’s success stories. Relying heavily on a triad of heaters, the 30-year-old Tampa Bay Rays right-hander boasts a 2.96 ERA and a 3.65 FIP over 249 1/3 innings across the 2025-2026 campaigns. Moreover, he just represented the Rays on the American League All-Star team for a second year running.

How Rasmussen became three-heater reliant (just over 80% combined usage) isn’t itself atypical. The way he tells the story of how it happened is atypical… if not a bit curious. In explaining the advent of his most recent — and most impactful — fastball addition, he pinpointed a hitter against whom he’d struggled far less than his telling would suggest.

Rasmussen sat down to talk fastballs when the Rays visited Fenway Park over the weekend. As his responses were expansive — followup questions were few and far between — what he shared is being presented in monologue form.

———

Drew Rasmussen: “When I got traded here [in May 2021], I was four-seam and gyro slider — that’s basically what I was throwing in Milwaukee — and then I had a curveball that was very low usage, as well as a bad, bad changeup. Over here, when they transitioned me from the bullpen into the rotation, we learned that I can manipulate the gyro slider a little bit to create a little more lift and give it more of a true cutter profile. I can also manipulate it to get some depth and keep a true slider profile, which gives me the opportunity to pick and choose shapes depending on what I’m looking for. Situationally, what do I want to throw?

“They saw the movement profile of my changeup, so we scrapped that pretty quick. From there we started developing a sweeper — I have the ability to supinate through everything — and that worked pretty well for me in 2021. Then, in 2022, I kept running into Bo Bichette. I had nothing to get him out with. Nothing. I mean, he’s good at hitting balls the other way, and staying on everything. But if you missed in with a breaking ball, he could do pull-side damage. I would be out there frustrated, because the only thing I had to go in on him with was a four-seamer. And at the time, I was cutting it anyway.

“We started playing around with things. Because I had nothing that would work [inside] to him, we would take a shot with a four-seam up and away and he would hit a double into the gap. We would take a shot with a gyro slider down and away, and he would hit it through the four hole. We’d go sweeper and he’d shoot something down the line. I’d try to bounce a curveball and he would hit a line drive up the middle. Everything I threw worked right into his comfort zone, basically. Read the rest of this entry »

Today, it’s another Killers two-fer, covering the left side of the infield. While still focusing on teams that meet the loose definition of a contender (Playoff Odds of at least 10%, a criterion that 22 of the 30 teams meet) and that have gotten about 0.6 WAR or less out of a position thus far (which prorates to 1.0 WAR over a full season), I have also incorporated our Depth Charts’ rest-of-season WAR projections into the equation for an additional perspective. That may suggest that some of these teams will clear the bar by a significant margin, but even so, I’ve included them here because their performance at that spot merits a closer a look. All statistics are through July 12.

Read the rest of this entry »