Tampa Bay Rays: Team preview and prediction for 2020 season

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The quietest franchise in baseball has built a pitching empire and 2020 may indeed be the year the Tampa Bay Rays break through the seal.

The Tampa Bay Rays have quietly turned their small market, poorly-attended franchise into a legitimate powerhouse built upon pitching and an innovative managerial style that will surely be in the conversation this year as a favorite to win the World Series.

When we look top to bottom, it’s hard to find holes in this Rays roster, so not only do they have a solid foundation in the front office and a coaching staff that is one of the best in the game at getting the most out of its players, but now the Rays have the actual talent to fulfill the game plan.

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This team is not a particularly offensively gifted group on paper, and with the losses of both Avisail Garcia and Tommy Pham in the offseason, you would think that makes them even weaker. But look at what they’ve gained as well.

They added one of the premier Japanese players in Yoshitomo Tsutsugo who is a power left-handed bat that can also play the corner infield and outfield positions. Tsutsugo has over 200 home runs in his international career with 139 of those coming in the last four seasons.

The Rays lost two power sources at the top of their lineup, but they might have actually replaced the both of them with Tsutsugo alone and have hauled in a nice return from San Diego in the Tommy Pham trade of Hunter Renfroe (as well as Manuel Margot in a separate deal for Emilio Pagan).

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Renfroe leaves some to be desired in terms of contact hitting, speed, and overall win value in comparison to a player like Pham, but at the same time, I believe he will benefit from the fact that he could serve as the DH of this team and focus primarily on the hitting aspect of the game- much like a player such as Kyle Schwarber who has great pop in the bat but would benefit from a more focused at the plate role.

Rounding out the Tampa Bay Rays lineup is the duo of Brandon Lowe and Austin Meadows who have power bats as well as the ability to hit for average. Meadows had a huge 2019 slugging 33 home runs and hitting for an average of .291.

Lowe was on pace for a year close to that if he had stayed healthy. Both of these guys are just scratching the surface of their potential and if they stay healthy in 2020, both will take tremendous strides in their development.

Tampa Bay Rays: 2020 Preview, Predictions

The Depth and the Rotation

What the Tampa Bay Rays have this year that they didn’t last year is a lot of depth. They have a ton of guys who can play multiple positions all around the diamond. They even brought in Manuel Margot to potentially take Kevin Kiermaier‘s center field position, and Kiermaier is even a three-time Gold Glove winner.

Willy Adames is also on the bubble this year at shortstop with the number one prospect, Wander Franco, lurking in the Minors to take his spot as early as next year.

They brought in Jose Martinez from St. Louis as a great clubhouse guy who brings a lot of energy coming off the bench, and they have a slew of utility players like Michael Brosseau, Daniel Robertson, and Joey Wendle to throw around the diamond as well as a two-way player in Brendan McKay who could also be their number five starter as well as yet another big left-handed bat in the lineup on his non-starting days.

The Rays are going to be innovative on the offensive side of the ball this year as opposed to in their bullpen game like they’ve been doing the past couple of years. Their pitching is strong enough where they can throw it directly at teams as opposed to playing the trickery bullpen game they’ve mastered under Kevin Cash. Watch for them to play a bunch of different guys in various positions and for Cash to tweak the lineup on a daily.

As far as their pitching is concerned, I believe they have one of the best rotations in baseball right now and one of the best bullpens that is on the rise to becoming the best; and that’s even with them trading away their closer from last year, Emilio Pagan.

Blake Snell followed by Charlie Morton and Tyler Glasnow is about as good as you can get in the top three of your rotation. Snell is a little banged up right now, but he battled through a tough post-Cy Young season in 2019 where he got batted around a bit to the tune of an inflated 4.29 ERA. He had velocity, command, and health issues in 2019 as well, but I believe he is going to come out and rebound in 2020 with a Rays team that’s now confident they can get to a World Series.

Charlie Morton has the best curveball in the game, plus he consistently throws in the upper 90s with a multitude of different fastballs in his arsenal. Even at the age of 36, he’s developed late in his career into one of the best pitchers in baseball.

Tyler Glasnow came on big last year in April until he went down for the bulk of the season, but this is clearly a guy who has found his groove with the Rays after coming over from Pittsburgh (much like Austin Meadows). Glasnow throws even harder than Morton and Snell more consistently with even sharper breaking pitches. And he has a lot fewer innings taxed on him, so I would expect Glasnow to come out fresher and healthier than ever and take this league by storm once again. Glasnow is rapidly on the rise. I think we see Snell, Morton, and Glasnow all in contention for AL CY Young in 2020.

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After their big guns in the rotation, there is some concern about what the Rays have underneath their top three, but there is a variation of ways they can approach those starting slots. Yonny Chirinos is probably the number four starter and it looked as though Brendan Mckay is lined up for the fifth slot until he was most recently sent down.

But there also waits Ryan Yarbrough, who’s primarily a long relief/bulk guy who follows openers, as well as Anthony Banda and Brent Honeywell– two highly touted prospects who have yet to really break into the Major Leagues. That fifth slot in the rotation could be filled by anybody at this point.

The Rays’ rotation is young (with the exception of Charlie Morton), it’s fresh, and everybody throws hard and has a high ceiling that hasn’t been reached yet. Is this group primed for the postseason as is? They’ll most likely need a reliable fourth starter, but the good news is their bullpen is fantastic and has the potential to evolve into the best pen in all of baseball in 2020; very 2015 Royals-like

Tampa Bay Rays: 2020 Preview, Predictions

The Bullpen and More!

That pen starts with the trio of Nick Anderson, Diego Castillo, and Jose Alvarado. All three guys throw consistently in the upper 90s and can touch triple digits with ease. Castillo and Alvarado are novelties of their own with unbelievable stuff and spin rate as they both average 98-99 mph on their sinkers and Alvarado averages nearly 93 mph on his slider. But one of the best relief pitchers in all of baseball right now is Nick Anderson.

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Anderson pitched in 23 games for the Tampa Bay Rays in 2019 after coming over from Miami mid-year, but he managed to fan 41 of 78 batters in 21.1 innings and pitched to a 2.11 ERA. After the performance he put on at the tail end of 2019 and into the postseason, the Rays seemingly had no trouble whisking Emilio Pagan (who was hitting his own stride) away to slide Anderson into their closer’s role.

I think Nick Anderson has himself a huge year now that he’ll be under the Rays’ control from day one. He’ll get the brunt of the save opportunities, and judging by what he was able to do in 23 games with all of those strikeouts, we may very well see another Josh Hader-like performance out of Anderson where he absolutely dominates the field like Hader did two years ago.

The Ray bullpen has a trio of some of the best relievers in all of baseball at the back end, but what makes the entire pen so great is the variation in types of pitchers it’ll feature. Yes, it has the three fireballers, but we also have Oliver Drake who throws a deceptive two-seam fastball over the top that tails into righties. Chaz Roe is primarily a slider guy; what some would call a “crafty righty,” so he’ll be a great setup to the carnage lurking in Anderson, Alvarado, and Castillo. And Colin Poche is an underrated guy to watch who had a spectacular K-rate a year ago.

I really love the mix of the Rays bullpen, and combined with how dominant I believe their starting rotation will be this year, the pitching on this Rays team alone will carry them further than they were able to go last year.

I think the Tampa Bay Rays win the AL East (with a little help from the Yankees being beat up with injuries). I had them at 104-58 before the start of the season got suspended, but I still very much like them to win the division with whatever record that would take.

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Not only that, but I believe they’ll get to the World Series. They have supreme pitching and their lineup will take a step forward from last year and supply the team with a combination of contact and power that they’ll need in order to put them over the top. It’s about time this under-the-radar gold standard organization gets the payoff it deserves. Tampa is going to the World Series in 2020.

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