The Tampa Bay Rays Keep Finding New Ways To Fill Innings

The common refrain thrown at the Tampa Bay Rays after their 23-6 start to the 2023 MLB season is to say that they have not “played anybody” yet.

Perhaps some who say this will not be satisfied until they start beating some teams with better records than their own, in some kind of logical fallacy. Yet it is definitely true to say that the Rays have, to date, beaten up on some of baseball’s worst teams.

Nevertheless, this schedule imbalance will equal out, and soon. After closing out their latest series against the Chicago White Sox on Sunday with an uncharacterisric blow-up loss, Tampa Bay will now play 39 consecutive games against teams who, as of today, have .500 records or better. And despite the blistering start to the season, not everything is set in stone yet.

Heading into this more difficult stretch of schedule, the Rays have a couple of pitching questions to answer. Where once they were projected to have a starting rotation of Shane McClanahan, Tyler Glasnow, Drew Rasmussen, Jeffrey Springs and Zach Eflin – one of the best rotations in the game, even if many pundits do not see it that way – they have yet to have a full turn of those five, and are suffering their usual annual myriad injuries to important arms.

Springs, one of the best starters in the game despite an almost-complete absence of fanfare, is reported to be facing Tommy John surgery and is to miss the remainder of the season. Shane Baz will, too, still recovering from his own such operation. Glasnow has yet to pitch this season due to an oblique strain, and although Glasnow’s return is imminent, Eflin has also had a trip to the IL already.

Out of the pen, high-leverage reliever Andrew Kittredge is still not close to returning from his own Tommy John surgery, performed last June, and as dominant as closer Pete Fairbanks has been (going 29 consecutive scoreless innings, dating back to last July), Raynaud’s syndrome makes it difficult for him to perform in colder weather.

Having lost J.P. Feyereisen, Brooks Raley and J.T. Chargois to various deals in the offseason, the Rays have less in the way of experienced high-leverage arms to use in relief this season, something further compounded by injuries to the back end of the bullpen. Stalwart Ryan Thompson has just returned from an absence, but Shawn Armstrong has gone the other way, being moved to the 60-day disabled list with a neck injury that will keep him out until June.

The bullpen already projected to be lighter in experience this season than last, and with a fresh round of injuries incoming, that depth is being tested already. Never more was this evident than in Sunday night’s game versus the White Sox – up four runs going into the bottom of the ninth, Jalen Beeks got into trouble, and with Fairbanks unavailable due to the weather, the Rays had no one reassuring left to turn to. They lost, 12-9.

Nevertheless, whenever the Rays find themselves light on established major-league talents, they do not buy them. They make them. Or, to use better baseball parlance, perhaps it would be better to say they manufacture them, by working the margins and finessing the limits of the provisions of the Collective Bargaining Agreement.

It would be too easy to hit up the retread markets and enquire about names such as the recently-cut Madison Bumgarner. But that is not the Rays way. Instead, more than any other team in the majors, they finagle their 25th and 26th spots on the active roster – along with the 40th spot on the wider roster – to fill innings with arms called up for sometimes as little as one night at a time.

By and large, these are veteran arms, and therefore players without minors options. Rather than calling up younger players on the extended roster, the Rays have made a habit of calling up the veterans, using them for a game or two, and then designating them for assignment in lieu of calling up another.

In this way, they are able to eat innings and save on non-essential workload for their main bullpen arms, with the only real cost being potentially losing those players via waiver claims (or, in the case of Heath Hembree this week, electing free agency) after they are cut. Along with Hembree, the Rays have been able to get innings out of Zack Burdi, Braden Bristo, Kevin Herget, Trevor Kelley, Cristofer Ogando, Cooper Criswell, Louis Head (famously), Dusten Knight, Robert Dugger, Ralph Garza Jr, Jimmy Yacabonis, David McKay, Ben Bowden, Luke Bard, Sean Poppen, Adam Conley and Javy Guerra (twice) by employing this strategy over the past couple of seasons, as well as pick up the occasional position player such as Yu Chang.

A residual effect of having this 40th spot open so often is the ability to make waiver claims midseason so as to be able to acquire new players potentially for the future, as well as rewarding good but not elite Triple-A players with some big league team. Criswell, for example, was acquired in this way, and should anyone of a more secure calibre become available, the 40-man spot of Vidal Brujan – rendered surplus to requirements by the breakout of the similar Taylor Walls, and with a plethora of infield prospects behind him soon to be ready for the majors too – can also be made available.

Ultimately, filling out the non-essential innings in this way is not going to be the deciding factor in the final success of the 2023 Tampa Bay Rays. What might be will be whether they can create enough high-leverage arms for the meaningful innings, and how they cover for the absence of their quality starters.

The second of these questions has meant returning to a former friend, the opener. Lefty Josh Fleming and righty Yonny Chirinos have been deemed the right candidates for what is essentially a premeditated long relief role, yet the Rays’ trust in their statistical research leads them to believe that the pair are better served coming into the game after someone else has gone the first time through the line-up.

To that end, Calvin Faucher – who has one good pitch, one great pitch, and no consistent control over either – has been tested out as an opener, but with no results as yet. Still raw in his craft despite being 27 years of age, Faucher has in fact been demoted back to Triple-A Durham, as has upstart rookie Taj Bradley, the team’s best prospect, who showed why he earned that title in his three fill-in starts so far this season. He will be back, and may be the answer to the Springs problem.

As for the first question, the highly deceptive Garrett Cleavinger seems to be next in line to get the Pete Fairbanks/Jason Adam treatment, and go from another team’s cast-off to a Rays game-winner just by changing his pitch selection a bit. Any further additions, however, may have to come by trade.

Come the playoffs, Calvin Faucher will not be a starter. Come the playoffs, Jalen Beeks will likely not be a starter or a closer. Come the playoffs, the Rays will want to have acquired or developed one or two more established arms to flank their dynamic offensive unit and win themselves a World Series. Until then, they will keep stockpiling the candidates.