Before I get into the 2020-21 offseason, here's how 2020 ended up around MLB:
In the AL, through early August the toughest competitors for the Rays in the AL East were actually the Blue Jays, who dominated the season series with the Rays to keep them within striking distance for most of the year. The Yankees spent most of the first four months mired around .500 after Gerrit Cole suffered an injury that knocked him out for about 3 months (which is why Glasnow won the strikeout crown). But once Cole came back, the Yanks got blisteringly hot down the stretch and took one of the wild card spots. Over in the NL, the Braves and Dodgers were dominant as expected, and the Reds ended up eking out the Central. The NL wild card race was wild, with 5 teams in it going into the last weekend, but all of them except the Mets fell flat on the last few days.
So in the playoffs, Jake Odorizzi and the Twins beat Cole and the Yanks in the wild card game, while the Padres came back late to beat the Mets in the NL wild card. I mentioned the Astros' 3-1 series win over the Rays in the last post, but in the other matchup Cleveland took a 2-0 lead at home against Minnesota only to see the Twins take 3 straight to complete the comeback. In the NL, after a scare in losing Game 1, the Braves beat the Reds in 5 while the Dodgers did likewise with San Diego.
In the LCSs, the Astros beat the Twins in 6 with little drama, but the mighty Dodgers found themselves down 3-2 to Atlanta before coming back to win Games 6 and 7 in LA to set up a rematch of the 2017 WS. The Dodgers this time got their revenge, going up 3-1 in the series before losing Game 5 but then taking Game 6. Dodgers catcher Will Smith became the fourth player in MLB history to hit 8 HR in a postseason. McKay was jobbed out of ROTY by Luis Robert as the only Ray up for postseason hardware.
So with 2020 in the rear-view window, it was time to see what I could do to get the Rays in position for 2021. First off, despite Stu Sternberg's various entreaties to me during the season, I did not sign Charlie Morton to an extension. In fact I was so spooked by his bad 2019 that I didn't even make a qualifying offer, fearing it might be accepted and I didn't want to waste $17M of a limited payroll on him. With Richards and Watson gone to free agency, I felt like I needed another starter to go with the core 3 of Snell/Glasnow/McKay since I couldn't count on Chirinos or Yarbrough and I wasn't quite ready to give a rotation spot to Joe Ryan or Riley O'Brien yet. While I also had Banda, I knew I couldn't count on him either to duplicate his fluky 2020 success and while Trevor Richards pitched well during a few stints with the big club, his AAA numbers were kind of lousy so I didn't view him as a real option either.
My other goal was to give Wander Franco the regular SS job. The way he hit in Durham and with the Rays (albeit in small sample sizes) reaffirmed my belief in him. This meant it was time to deal Willy Adames. So I killed two birds with one stone, dealing Adames to the Braves (who needed an upgrade at SS) for lefty Max Fried, who seems like the ideal #4 starter. Fried followed up his fine real-life 2019 with an nearly equal 2020 (3.9 WAR) and was a reasonable $3.9M in arbitration. In order to have something a safety net in case Wander struggled, I signed Freddie Galvis to a minor-league deal.
My other concerns revolved around not losing anybody too good in the Rule 5 draft and with a lot of depth in the Rays system, this was a real concern. So first I shipped Lucious Fox, who was doing well at AA but we have a real glut of singles-hitting speedy middle infielders coming through the system (Brujan, Xavier Edwards, Greg Jones) and was able to send him along with rookie-league flyer Franklin Dacosta to the Twins for Trevor Larnach, an excellent prospect with power who didn't have to be protected. I also dealt James Haley, whom I wasn't going to protect, to the Padres for Owen Miller, a SS who Keith Law had ranked as their #9 prospect going into 2020 and hit .308-6-47 in AAA but also didn't have to be protected. Finally and most significantly, with no ABs on the horizon for him in 2021 and stagnating in AAA, I dealt Nate Lowe to the Phillies who were willing to give me elite hitting prospect Alex Bohm who wasn't exactly a disappointment going .297-30-116 at AA. Bohm makes a potential upgrade at 3B for Yandy, and even though he's much better defensively at 1B (a 75 in fact!), he's a 45 to Yandy's 40.
I made sure to keep Josh Lowe (coming off an injury-riddled 2020 at AA but still a potentially excellent prospect) and Taylor Walls on the 40-man, but said goodbye to Sam McWilliams, Ryan LaMarre, Aaron Slegers and Brian O'Grady (who IRL is being touted as a sleeper for the Rays but was more in a coma at AAA for me). I then lost Ryan Boldt to the Astros and Paul Campbell to the Nationals in the Rule 5 draft. Not only did the Astros keep Boldt on their opening day 2021 roster, they started him at leadoff in LF and he hit .320 over the first couple of weeks before getting hurt (then they just traded him to St. Louis a day before where I currently am in late May 2021).
Of course after the bullpen nightmares of the 2020 postseason, I set out to upgrade things there and made free agent Brad Hand, the erstwhile Cleveland closer coming off another fine season, a priority since he was willing to take a one-year deal. He claimed at the outset he was looking for $6M which seemed very reasonable to me (especially after Ken Giles signed an outrageous deal to be the Yankees' setup man for Chapman). So I met this demand, and then he yanked me around from mid-December into mid-January claiming better offers before he finally had me cough up a little over $9M to bring him onboard, making him the team's biggest closer acquisition since Rafael Soriano in 2010 (and hey that worked out). This makes the pen quite deep, allowing me to move Anderson back into the setup role where I think he's better suited, and with Castillo, Alvarado, Roe & Co. it's deep.
Arbitration came around and I ended up settling a few, winning a few, and losing a few, with the big pay bumps going to Jose Martinez ($2M to $8M), Renfoe got 5.8, Choi got 6.1, and Roe got a bump to 3.2. Oh and in the big news we worked out an extension with Tyler Glasnow, 6 years for $81M (3.1 in 21, 8.3 in 22, then 13.9/18.8/18.8/18.8). Here's hoping he doesn't get hurt again like he did in 2019! Going to try to extend Meadows as well.
Anyway after signing Hand in late January, I had to make room on the 40-man roster so it was bye bye Jalen Beeks (another guy who pitched OK in his 25 innings or so with the big club in 2020 but I've never really liked). Rather than DFA him I dealt him to the Dodgers for IF Kody Hoese, a halfway-decent B- prospect somewhere around #15-20 in their system.
Meanwhile now that we were well into February it was time to start picking off decent vets who were left standing in free agency's musical chairs. Among the big names, Mookie Betts went for 9/360 to the Braves (who also signed Robbie Ray to replace Fried in their rotation), JT Realmuto & DJ LeMahieu went to Washington, Anthony Rizzo & James Paxton to the Angels, Trevor Bauer & Cory Kluber to the Yankees, Jake Odorizzi and Marcus Semien to the Phillies, Didi Gregorious to the Reds and for some reason the Dodgers signed every closer on the market (Liam Hendriks, Alex Colome, Trevor Rosenthal) *after* they re-signed Kenley Jansen. Also JD Martinez went back to Houston and Marcell Ozuna took his place in Boston. As for the ex-Rays, Morton signed with the Cardinals (where he's already had a DL stint and has a 4+ ERA so far) where he got 3/35, and Garrett Richards went to Washington for 2/34.
Anyway those passed-over vets I was talking about. One of them was Jason Castro, who I figured as an upgrade over Perez as Zunino's platoon partner, he got a minor league contract at $1.6M. In other vet minor league deals, I grabbed the aforementioned Galvis as Wander insurance, brought back old friend Drew Smyly (who had a nice 2020 comeback season) and added Michael Brantley in mid-March when he was still sitting there and willing to play for peanuts.
Next up: Spring training and the opening day roster. Any thoughts on my offseason?