Record: 41-34 (12-13 for the month)
3rd place AL East, 5 1/2 behind Baltimore; 3rd wild card, up 2 1/2 on Chicago
As the record would indicate it was a month of mediocrity for the Rays as they spun their wheels in 3rd place in the AL East and are fortunate to have a lead in the wild card thanks to uninspiring play from their pursuers. The primary culprit for the inconsistency was the pitching, which was consistently poor from the McClanahan-less rotation once again. Only
Jose Ramirez (3.69) managed an ERA below 4.50 among the starters, including a game in which he took a no-hitter into the 9th before losing it. And in an attempt to do something about it, we swung a mid-month trade to try an improve the rotation:
Alcantara just hasn't flashed any sustained success since the beginning of 2028 outside of last year's playoffs and the emergence of
Jeffry Rosa and his 70 power at Durham (who was only slugging .725 there on 28 HR in 207 AB in 56 games) made Alcantara expendable. And in return we get a proven veteran starter in Kirby, who has elite 70 control and decent 50 stuff. Although he was worth 1.6 WAR last year Kirby is only two years removed from a 4.7 WAR season. Kirby is making $18.8M this year and next but the Padres are picking up all but $7.5M/year of that. Unfortunately his first few starts with the Rays have been disastrous with a 12.10 ERA and 23 hits allowed in 9.2 IP over 3 starts thanks to a ludicrous .550 BABIP. He has a 2/11 BB/K ratio and only 1 homer allowed so I'm calling it bad luck for now. Rosa meanwhile has picked up where he left off with the Bulls, slugging .533 with 6 HR in 15 games for the big club.
We also made a couple of waiver claims to try and beef up the bullpen, which suffered more injuries including a minor one to
Hayden Juenger which forced him to miss the second half of the month. They say you can't go home again but that isn't true for
Jovani Moran as we claimed the lefty who spent the previous 5 years with us from Philly. He missed most of last year with injuries but his stuff remains intact and he's looked good since joining us. Also claimed was righty hard-thrower
Juan Nunez from Oakland (65/70/50-rated) but after a couple of outings with the Rays he suffered an elbow strain and will be out until August. To make room for Nunez we pulled the plug on DL Hall, who has been dreadful this year with 29 walks in 31 IP, a 6.39 ERA and -0.4 WAR. He was a pending free agent anyway and was released after clearing waivers and refusing a demotion to Durham.
How things look around MLB as we're just about to the midway point of the season:
We'll get into more detail after the hitting stats but
Elly De La Cruz is having an MVP-type season as you can see and we wouldn't be in a playoff position without him.
As you can see the offense has picked up considerably but the starting pitching (5.08 ERA) is just dreadful. Of course it's hard to untwine that from the god-awful defense we're playing behind them. One move that was made was to switch
Jackson Chourio from CF to LF as he already had a -4.8 ZR in 56 games this year after being -5.2 for the full 2028 season. He's been positive in LF but it's a bit of robbing Peter to pay Paul as we had to move
Mason Auer, a gold glove-caliber RF, to CF. And Auer already has a -2.6 ZR in only 20 games there so that many not be a solution as he was +3.6 in only 43 games in RF. We actually have a good defensive CF in the organization in 33-year-old veteran
Cody Bellinger at Durham where he has a 6.7 ZR in 71 games but he's only hitting 269/341/416 there so we'd have to sacrifice Rosa's massive power to play him there. It may yet come to that.
Since we're roughly at the halfway point I'm going with the YTD stats in this post which shows we're being carried by the two superstars, De La Cruz (who had 10 HR and hit 311/348/642 in June) and Tatis. But for one night we were carried by this guy, who did something I've never had happen in the tens of thousands of Rays games I've managed across this save and the three others:
Yep, never had a 4-homer game from anybody and of all people Williams, who has moderate power, ended up doubling his season's dinger total in one memorable night. Williams now joins several others tied for the MLB single-game record.
Look at all those inflated BABIPs. Making matters worse is that Teodo came crashing back to Earth in June (0-2, 6.56 in 5 starts) after being lights-out in April and May and we lost two games when Peguero blew leads in the 9th inning after he was untouchable in the first two months.
Holliday has hit very well as you can see from the big club batting stats earlier in this post and has held his own at 2B (a netural ZR, which practically makes him Brooks Robinson on this team). Surprisingly not shown here, ranking #31 and #41 respectively in the org, are a couple of big bats at AA Montgomery 3B
Owen Paino and OF
Brailer Guerrero. I'm not sure why since Paino was our top pick in 2024, has good current and potential ratings, and is hitting 325/396/549 with 16 HR and is on pace for 5.7 WAR there. Guerrero meanwhile was our prize IFA in 2023, is already rated 50 contact/55 power at the MLB level, and is hitting 331/401/607 with 19 HR. Right now both are blocked at the big league level (Paino can play 2B and SS as well but is blocked there too) but could help right now if needed and seem like much better prospects than most of those ranked above them.
I'll be back with a draft recap as that will happen early in the month as well with an All-Star roundup.