Record: 42-36 (15-9 for the month)
2nd place AL East, 1/2 game behind; 1/2 game behind third wild card
It was a good month for the Rays which saw one major trade of a franchise cornerstone of the last 6-7 years and one key player go on the IL. First, the trade:
Brandon Lowe's struggles continued into the first part of June, and I just couldn't take it any longer (3-17 in 6 games with no XBH, making him 212/296/307 for the season) so I figured I'd better move him before his value drops even more. And as much as I would have preferred not to trade him to a division rival the Yankees made the best offer with Winn, whom they had acquired the year previous from St. Louis in a deal which sent Luis Severino to the Cardinals. Winn is the anti-B.Lowe: more contact, fewer whiffs, (much) better defense but less power and patience. He's also younger and cheaper. Winn's best position is 3B but
Elly De La Cruz is there so he's taken Lowe's spot at 2B where he'll also play above-average D. The key player going on the IL is closer
Pete Fairbanks, who has a terrible history of staying healthy and this time he has a rotator cuff strain which will sideline him through mid-late August.
Jason Adam will ascend to the closer role with
Camilo Doval (who had a remarkable 10.2 1 1 0 3 17 line for June) and
Hayden Juenger setting him up.
On the field it was a very good month which saw the pitching continue to excel and the bats got going to some extent. De La Cruz continues to hit, although for more doubles and a higher average than the HRs I expected from him and
Miguel Vargas remained our most consistent hitter with a good month (340/379/567 with 5 HR & 19 RBI).
Austin Wells bounced back to have a breakout month of his own (328/386/639). And as mentioned at the top, we climbed back into the thick of the division and wild card races:
The YTD offensive numbers remain mediocre, but we did score 5 runs/game in June (119 in 24 games, we had 6(!) off-days in the month which is going to catch up to us in the second half).
As we're just about at the halfway mark of the season, I'll go with the YTD instead of monthly stats for more perspective:
Winn has looked good since coming over around the 10th.
Christian Bethancourt has started to take more playing time from
Patrick Bailey as the former has hit while the latter hasn't, and also has handled the staff better. Still can't get Arozarena, J.Lowe or Jung untracked as I rotate them in and out of the lineup along with Manzardo, who has shown better than the other three. Still think we're due for more positive regression from the bats as a whole.
No complaints about the pitching staff as they continue to get it done (only 78 runs allowed in June, or 3.25/game).
Zach Eflin remains a lost cause (and a sunk cost of $18M) as he's also struggled in long relief/mop-up duty.
Our top advanced hitting prospects (Caminero and C.Williams) continue to have great seasons and could be factors next year and
Brock Jones keeps moving up the charts. Thankfully we're fairly deep in pitching at the big-league level as we don't have any sure-fire arms in the system.