Revenge of the Openers

 

After a few years at bay, aided by genuinely sharp starting pitching and a 1st place mentality, FOLKS...THE OPENER IS BACK IN TAMPA.

Believe me, with the lack of Ryne Stanek in Tampa, one would assume that any inclination towards beginning a game with a 1-inning opening spot by a relief pitcher had died off, but no. We have plenty of relievers ready to start games and then give it to the rest of the pen. J.P. Feyereisen, Jeffrey Springs, Matt Wisler, Tommy Romero. The all hands on deck mentality of Kevin Cash's earlier Rays teams has come aboard in the pitching staff, and it's for one of two reasons:

1. The Rays are no longer a guaranteed first place team so they can go back to sneaky, lower-tier seed tactics like they did in 2018.

2. The Rays only have three active starting pitchers.

It's probably the second one.

The Tampa Bay Rays are working with only 3 starters right now- Shane McClanahan, Drew Rasmussen and Corey Kluber. None of them were starting games for this team a year ago. And now here they all are. McClanahan is the best of the bunch, and is the closest to ace material. Rasmussen is a bit lower key but still has a 3.50 ERA and 18 Ks. Kluber still has some decent stuff to deliver, despite not being as k-based as he used to be. 

Right now, though, the Rays are without Ryan Yarbrough, Yonny Chirinos, Tyler Glasnow, Shane Baz, Luis Patino and Brendan McKay. That's six guys that could be starting games, all injured. It also makes me wonder why Josh Fleming isn't an immediate solution to start games, as he did pretty well as a starter a few years ago, but hey, Kevin Cash seems to know what he's doing. I think he knows that Baz and Yarbrough could be back soon so he's trying not to fully fill these holes, and I sort of get that. But it's still very awkward to see only 3 real starters on this team. Even if they are doing pretty well.

The Rays overall are...doing alright, I guess. This is Wander Franco's team right now, pretty much everybody else is following suit behind him. There's decent stuff from people like Ji-Man Choi, Taylor Walls, Harold Ramirez and Yandy Diaz, but right now it's really just Franco leading the charge. Which is fine for the moment, as they still have a leg up on Boston, but if they want legitimacy this year, the rest of the lineup's gonna need to heat up.

And hopefully the other starters will be activated soon enough so that the return of the openers will be a bit more of a short-lived project for the Rays.

Coming Tomorrow- Probably the best catcher in the NL now that Posey's retired.