Yankees should fear ‘We’re stacked’ Rays
PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla. – The music is always loud and the mood perpetually light in the land of the underdog, and on this spring training morning, Blake Snell eases through the Rays clubhouse like Peter Pan with a $50 million contract.
In one moment, he is singing along to Post Malone, daring observers to join in with him. In the next, he is reaching into a drawer in his locker and removing his ping-pong paddle – the house models won’t do – and hammering the ball at a teammate with ferocity.
Hours later, the 2018 American League Cy Young winner is more reflective. He’s 27 now – “Twenty-sev-en,” he says disbelievingly, as if it were 50 – and coming off an injury-plagued season that forced the Fortnite aficionado to reconsider his sleep habits, his arm care, even his diet.
“I eat a lot of veggies, and I hate veggies,” he says somberly. “And I gave up candy, and I love candy.”
Perhaps Snell swapping his beloved Baby Ruths for spinach isn’t the perfect metaphor for his team’s hopeful pivot to consistent domination, but it’s close. Their startling 90-win season after a winter dismantling in 2018 was backed up by last year’s 96-win tour de force, which was followed by a wild-card conquest of the Athletics and an elimination-game loss to the Astros in the AL division series, a series that looked like an overmatch but nearly resulted in the toppling of a mini-dynasty.
Now, the famously low-revenue and tight-budget team is wondering how to close the gap on a 103-win Yankees squad that shrugged its shoulders and lavished $326 million on Gerrit Cole, who beat them in that decisive ALDS Game 5 and now will face them up to a half-dozen times in the AL East.
“Oh, I was thrilled,” majority owner Stuart Sternberg chuckles when asked about Cole’s move to his divisional neighborhood. “There’s certain guys who tend to follow you around. Look, you saw what he did to us in the playoffs and loved pitching against us. But by the same token, it will be that much sweeter when we beat him.”
Is that merely the hubris of an owner who’s also audacious enough to try to convince MLB, the Tampa Bay area and Montreal that his franchise should be carved up like Solomon’s Baby and shared with two markets willing to build him a stadium?
Not necessarily. Since resetting their minor league system in 2014, the Rays have been building to this moment, a point in time when their 40-man roster is bursting with matchup-capturing versatility, and their minor league system stocked with elite talent ready to bubble up to the majors, led by consensus No. 1 prospect Wander Franco.
In an ironic twist, the team chastised for employing the “opener” strategy in 2018 can potentially overwhelm opponents with a traditional rotation.
Charlie Morton struck out 240 in 2019. Tyler Glasnow punched out 11 batters per nine innings in his dozen regular-season starts. Yonny Chirinos and Ryan Yarbrough don’t break the radar gun like the other three but sported WHIPs of 1.05 and 0.99, respectively.
And these are the Rays, whose strength always lie in depth, a factor Sternberg is all too giddy to promote in 2020. “This group, top to bottom – 20, say – through and through is the greatest group we’ve had since we’ve been here,” the owner says.
1-2 punch
For all of the love the Astros – in that era before they were known as cheaters – received for their 1-2 Cy Young punch of Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole, it was the Rays who sported the finest ERA, 3.65, in the AL. That number was produced despite just 23 starts and 107 innings from Snell, who suffered toe and elbow injuries, and 602⁄3 innings from Glasnow, out from May to September with a forearm strain.
He returned in time to start and lose Game 1 and Game 5 of the ALDS, admittedly tipping his pitches in the first loss to the Astros. Yet Glasnow has been slowly unlocking his potential since a July 2019 trade from Pittsburgh and has come to embrace all it means to be a Ray – from the looser atmosphere to the club’s considerable ability to turn players into the best versions of themselves.
“I’ve never not had love for baseball,” says Glasnow, 26. “But I’ve never loved baseball more, getting traded over here, and how relaxing it is. I just think the culture and the atmosphere is like backyard baseball – just go and have fun. So coming from a more strict atmosphere to here helped me out a bunch.”
Glasnow’s calling card is a 98-mph fastball with a devastating cutting action, and coming downhill from his 6-8, 230-pound frame, it can overwhelm opposing batters.
Snell has seen enough physical tools from Glasnow to know where his rotation mate will realize his upside. “The only thing he’s going to be battling is himself and how he understands himself as time goes on,” he says. “He’s already really good . ... If he finds that, he might be one of the best ever.”
No second-guessing
Despite the high hopes, these are the
Rays, and it’s never as simple as plugand-play. In the service of sustainability and versatility, general manager Erik Neander sent packing a group of productive and respected veterans: Powerful and fiery outfielder Tommy Pham, and reliever Emilio Pagan were traded and catcher Travis d’Arnaud and outfielder Avisail Garcia were not retained.
Unlike the late-winter purge of 2018, this churn comes after two 90-win seasons. Neander does not have to explain himself to the clubhouse as he did then.
“A lot of our glue guys did leave,” says Snell. “It’s every year. But you gotta trust Erik; he’s really good at what he does, and every time it works out. I’m not going to second-guess that man.”
Not when another off-the-radar acquisition, Yandy Diaz, became a reliable source of power last year, hitting two homers to vault the Rays out of the wildcard game. This year Neander is quietly confident he can unlock some greatness out of Manny Margot, acquired with fellow outfielder Hunter Renfroe from San Diego in the Pham deal.
Renfroe clubbed a career-high 33 home runs last season and he, too, sees more there with Margot. At the least, Margot and three-time Gold Glove winner Kevin Kiermaier will give the Rays an elite defensive outfield and along with shortstop Willy Adames and their pitching staff allows them to lean heavily on run prevention.
The Rays are always ready to rock. But like Snell trading his empty calories for something more substantive, this club feels foundationally strong, in what Sternberg calls just the “second inning” of what he sees as a significant window of potential greatness.
Perhaps Snell will even get his wish and avoid the fate of the aces who preceded him and stick around a perennial winner rather than get traded to avoid unsustainability.
It’s a fate he’s hoping to embrace. “We’re stacked,” he says. “I feel great about the next three to five years.”
The next six months could be pretty remarkable, too.