Welcome back to the Evan Angle! Today we will be going over the World Series runner up Tampa Bay Rays. The Rays have been incredible over the past few seasons building a roster that has proven fit for playoff contention with one of the leagues lowest payrolls. Their outlook coming into this year is more grim than years past. The team has lost two of their best starting pitchers to free agency and trade. The lineup has remained similar to last year so the Rays are not out of contention by any means. The team is known for developing surprise contributors that show up out of nowhere and will be counting on this entering 2021.
Let's get down to talking about the lineup. The starters you see here will almost certainly change during the season as the Rays are known for throwing out many different lineup combinations. The starters i have listed are simply my opinion of the players that I think will have the bulk of the starts at each position. Let's talk about the main stays in the lineup first. These guys will get the majority of plate appearances at their position and will be in the lineup everyday. The Rays have a solid top three of Austin Meadows, Brandon Lowe, and Randy Arozarena. Meadows struggled last year for Tampa Bay in the shortened season as he hit just 205 with 4 homers and a sub 300 OBP. The team will expect that over a full season in 2021 that Meadows looks more like his 2019 self when he hit .291 with 33 Homers and 89 RBIs. Meadows was a breakout star in 2019 for the Rays after being acquired from the Pirates in the infamous Chris Archer deal along with Tyler Glasnow who we will talk about later. Brandon Lowe is coming into his 4th year as the Rays starting 2nd baseman. Lowe placed 3rd in the rookie of the year race in 2019 after hitting .270 with 17 homers and 51 RBIs helping power the Rays to a post-season appearance in which they took the Houston Astros to 5 games and lost. Now let's talk about 2020 postseason hero Randy Arozarena; he was acquired by the Rays from the Cardinals late in the 2020 season. He was originally platooned in Tampa's lineup only out to face lefties. Once he started to mash baseballs the Rays started playing him every day. This really paid off for the team in the postseason. He now owns the record for hits (29) and home runs (10) in a single postseason. He hit .358 while getting on base at an incredible .429 clip during October. While this pace of hitting is unsustainable, the Rays will be hoping they have found a diamond in the rough as they see what he can do in the ensuing season. The rest of the lineup is filled with guys who were solid for the Rays last year both in the postseason and regular season. If these players can support the big three that we just talked about in-depth, then the Rays should have a solid lineup in 2021. However, the Rays ranked 14th in runs scored in 2020 while their team ERA ranked 4th. The team has lost some pitching over this offseason and that could cause problems if the offense can't pick up the slack.
While Tampa Bay has lost some key pitchers, they still have a solid bullpen that should rank near the top of the league as well as other competent starting pitching. Tyler Glasnow seems ready to step into the spotlight as the Ray's ace. His stats for 2020 were mediocre but the season was such a small sample size that its hard to look into them too closely. He looked dominant in the postseason pitching in huge games and bouncing back nicely from adversity in these games. The Rays have a ton of options to fill out their rotation and may be able to stray away from the concept of an "opener" which they created years ago. They acquired top pitching prospect Luis Patino from the Padres in a deal that sent their ace Blake Snell over to San Diego. He will be looking to break out in a big way for the Rays while becoming the #2 to Glasnow. They also signed three veteran starters in Rich Hill, Michael Wacha, and familiar face Chris Archer who played with Tampa for his entire career from 2012 until his trade to the Pirates in 2018. These three will compete with the younger options of Brendan McKay, Ryan Yarbrough, and Trevor Richards for the last three spots in the rotation. This will make for an entertaining battle during spring games. My predictions on who will start the year in the Rays rotation will be posted with this blog. The bullpen looks just as solid as last year. They ranked in the top 5 in bullpen ERA and it looks as if that's where they will stay this year. The group is led by closer Nick Anderson who gave up just 1 run in 2020 in his 16.1 innings pitched. Anderson also only let up 5 total hits during this span. The Rays always seem to bring up guys that come out of nowhere and perform well especially on the pitching side. I wouldn't be surprised to see a few more young arms show up in the bullpen and help contribute
this year.
The Rays have an overall solid roster coming in to 2021 and most people will be expecting contention after last year's near-miss. I predict the team will finish in 3rd place given their recent losses of Blake Snell and Charlie Morton. They have the potential to finish in 2nd or even 1st depending on how their players perform. They have the talent to be a top team in the AL once again but in my opinion, the Blue Jays and Yankees have stronger rosters. It will be interesting to keep an eye on Tampa Bay and see how this year shakes out. One other footnote is that the Rays own top prospect Wander Franco who is approaching big league readiness. If shortstop Willy Adames struggles or takes steps back this year; I think Franco will get his shot in the show.
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