You can't really blame the Rays for what happened to them. ..okay, maybe you can a little.
From mid-May til the end of June, the Rays were one of the best teams in baseball, were very close to lapping the Yankees, and had enough of a solidified team of young stars that they're close to outrunning their own gimmick. Then, as the Rays calmed down a bit in July, both the Blue Jays and Red Sox went streaking, the Jays took 1st, the Sox leaped forward, and now the Rays are in fourth again.
Ultimately, you can see why. You're seeing more mediocre starts from the guys this team is really relying on, people like Ryan Pepiot and Zack Littell and Shane Baz. And that really is the issue with dealing Zach Eflin or Jeffrey Springs, or losing Shane McClanahan. You need an ace. Pepiot is nice but he's not an ace. Drew Rasmussen is efficient, but he's not an ace. With Snell, McClanahan, even Archer and Price, I could see where this rotation was starting from. Here it's just a bunch of decent pitchers in search of an anchor. And they haven't really found it yet. Littell is still having a decent season, but he leads the league in homers allowed with 24, and his ERA is inching towards 4. And the bullpen just has far less crafty, unhittable guys left. It's just Fairbanks and Cleavinger left, and a lot of people just filling spots. Edwin Uceta is nowhere near his 2024 self. I guess Eric Orze has some promise but we're far from the arsenal of guys like Kittredge, Castillo, Alvarado, Stanek and the others.
Plus, as he's prone to, Brandon Lowe's gotten injured and sent the lineup into a tailspin. Jose Caballero is taking his innings at 2nd, which is still a good thing, but aside from his league-leading 32 steals he's not much of a plate threat. The cabal of late-20s fringe guys, like Kameron Misner and Jake Mangum, have calmed down, perhaps knowing that Toronto has a far better cabal of late-20s fringe guys. What doesn't completely dissuade me from thinking the Rays can compete is that the Aranda-Caminero duo has been rock solid, and continues to be. Caminero already has 25 homers, and his Home Run Derby performance proves how underrated his power game is. Yandy Diaz is also having a terrific power season, with 15 homers and 57 RBIs. And as trustworthy as Cabby is on the base paths, Chandler Simpson is catching up to him in 2/3rds of the games, and is a .300 hitter. The Rays may have the latest in a long line of base-stealing legends in Simpson.
I can't really say how this Rays team will end up because they've ebbed and flowed as much as the Jays and Sox have. I honestly think they have more of a 'team' than the Jays, but they also have more inexperience. The Kevin Cash carousel of opportunity is still unrivaled, and will be churning out above.-500 teams til the wheels truly fall off, but unless there's a real injury issue I see this Rays team, at the very least, improving on last year's and setting the rest of the decade into motion.
Coming Tomorrow- A former Angels prospect who was mostly a minor league fixture in the past year. Then the strangest thing happened.
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