2021 Roster Review: Tampa Bay Rays
100-62 (1st in Division; 3rd in MLB)
SP Wins: 42 (16th)
RP Wins: 58 (1st)
Saves: 42 (10th)
1+ Save: 14 (Diego Castillo 14 [total: 16], Andrew Kittredge 8, Pete Fairbanks 5, J.P. Feyereisen 3, Jeffrey Springs, Dietrich Enns 2, Collin McHugh, Josh Fleming, Matt Wisler, Chris Mazza, Ryan Sherriff, Nick Anderson, Trevor Richards, Evan Phillips 1)
100+ Ks: 4 (Shane McClanahan 141, Tyler Glasnow 123, Michael Wacha 121, Ryan Yarbrough 117)
.260+ AVG (min. 350 PA): 2 (Randy Arozarena .274, Joey Wendle .265)
65+ Runs: 4 (Brandon Lowe 97, Arozarena 94, Austin Meadows 79, Wendle 73)
65+ RBI: 3 (Meadows 106, Lowe 99, Arozarena 69)
10+ HRs: 10 (Lowe 39, Mike Zunino 33, Meadows 27, Arozarena 20, Yandy Díaz, Brett Phillips, Nelson Cruz 13, Wendle, Ji-Man Choi 11, Manuel Margot 10)
5+ SBs: 6 (Arozarena 20, Phillips 14, Margot 13, Kevin Kiermaier 9, Wendle 8, Lowe 7)
BEST BUY: Brandon Lowe
Lowe fronted the league a couple months, hitting just .189/.307/.372 through May, though he was still pacing for a 30 HR/10 SB season. He exploded from June on, posting a .276/.357/.600 with 30 HR and 4 SB (50/7 full season pace). All told, he wound up with 39 HR, 99 RBIs, 97 R, and 7 SB in 615 PA. The AVG was light at .247, but he still wound up at the 35th best hitter in the game. He is being drafted 82nd overall and 50th among hitters. While he might not fully repeat 2021, he is a solid bet for 30 HR, 85-90 RBIs, and a handful of SBs.
ON THE RISE: Shane McClanahan
McClanahan enjoyed a wonderful debut campaign as the Rays allowed him to make 25 starts during which he posted a 3.43 ERA, 1.27 WHIP, and 20% K-BB rate over 123.3 IP. The 25-year-old lefty is now primed for a full season and the Rays could realistically push him to 180 innings. I see him remaining a stud and he could even improve upon the WHIP if his hit suppression improves (8.8 H9, .328 BABIP). He is 25th in my SP rankings.
OFF THE RADAR: Josh Lowe
If you blinked, you might have missed Lowe’s MLB debut. He logged a pair of plate appearances in two games, nabbing a single, walk, and stolen base during his sip of coffee. His minor league season was great, though, as the 24-year-old outfielder dominated in Triple-A, posting a 142 wRC+ with 22 HR and 26 SB in 470 PA. His power/speed profile landed him 56th among prospects to start last year and he finished 37th after graduations and a promotion of his own for a strong season. The swing-and-miss (27% in 2165 minor league PA) will stifle his AVG, but he takes walks (11%) and the aforementioned power and speed could pay immediate dividends. He doesn’t have an obvious spot to start the season, but the Rays might move Kevin Kiermaier once the lockout is over and that would open centerfield for Lowe.
HOT TAKE: With an ADP in the 50s, Wander Franco is a disappointment in 2022.
He has a 19 HR/10 SB projection with a .289/.346/.472 line which is perfectly solid for a 21-year-old’s first season, but not enough to deliver a profit or even a neutral return on his draft price. He is just 27-for-48 in stolen bases during his minor league career (56%) with 17 HR per 600 PA and his 2021 MLB pace over 600 PA was 14 HR/4 SB so I’m not entirely sure he will be a top-60 player in his first full season. Obviously, he is remarkably skilled and could make the leap, but at this ADP (54th overall in 16 drafts since January 1st) he has to make the leap and I’m likely looking elsewhere in that pick range with more established shortstops going around him: Xander Bogaerts at 46, Francisco Lindor at 47, and Javier Báez at 62.
I wanted to do something about Brooks Raley 레일리, but I don’t really think he becomes their primary closer or anything so I couldn’t think of a fantasy-relevant Hot Take related to him. If you are in a deeper league that rewards rostering middle relievers, he could be a stud. His 24% K-BB rate deserved better than his 4.78 ERA/1.20 WHIP combo, but a 1.1 HR/9 and .322 BABIP hurt him. With similar skills in 2022, he could post a sub-3.00 ERA and low-1.00s WHIP with a 30%+ K rate.
ICYMI: Despite just 9 RBIs in April, Austin Meadows wound up with 106 RBIs on the season, good for 11th in the league. Meadows had a substantial platoon issue this year (.563 OPS in 189 PA) and still reached that RBI mark. He is the 34th OF off the board at pick 136 on average which I think is a fair price for the 27-year-old headed into just his third full season (came up in May of 2019 and then 2020 was obviously shortened).
Didn’t you also have a save for the Rays last year?
Yeah, I went for 1-for-2 in my tries, but I got jobbed on the blown save
Drew Rasmussen is someone to keep an eye on. In deeper leagues of 16 or 20 teams Yandy Diaz found something power wise the last 220 ABs last year. With a pretty solid lineup health is the only reason he shouldn’t produce at a 120w/Rc. Arozarena I think many people forget was a rookie last year he’s got great max EV he could easily find another gear. Really solid team …would be al favorites with a true Ace. Finally, I still like Patino. 21 last year only and the Rays do good things with pitchers. Upside.
Aroz is a weird one. I don’t think you can entirely throw out what he has done in the postseason in his career….I mean those were actual at bats too. With that said, in the fantasy community most “sharps” are off on him. They cite things like xba of .220, or something like the widest launch angle discrepancy in the mlb. Don’t understand it fully, but I think it is a quality of contact measure showing he had a very wide range in outcomes off the bat, and made a lot of bad contact. That matches with the eye test as well….but I don’t think it is as important as they make it out to be. He is a second year player! Usually those are guys who I like to target, guys who “struggled’ in their first year when people were expecting a lot from them. This year Kelenic, Vaughn, etc would somewhat fall into that category. Whereas Aroz was quite good in fantasy, but I think he somewhat underperformed expectations. He could certainly take a step forward. But current ADP (55) in NFBC doesn’t really give much of a discount over last year, so I don’t really know what to think about him. At his max pick (75) I’d be all over him, but at 55 cannot really take him over Buxton, or Castellanos, or Springer.
Agree 55 seems high and banks on 20+ SBs again which I don’t know…that seems high. He could improve contact and contact type but with 10sb end up around 60-70 anyway.
So if you take wOBA*PA for all players with at least 300 PA last year, the correlation between that and R+RBI is nearly 0.95, which is to be expected, since that’s the whole point of wOBA. The quick and dirty equation is xR+RBI = 0.834*wOBA*PA – 11.5. Based on that equation, Meadows had 35.4 more R+RBI than expected, third highest among those with 300 or more PA (#1 and #2 were Adam Duvall and Teoscar Hernandez, fwiw). I would not hold my breath on him repeating 100+ RBI, especially considering his injury history.
For those interested, the top three in the other direction are Cedric Mullins, Adam Frazier, and Yoan Moncada.
Waitttt what Mullins could of been better?
From a run production standpoint, yes. The three players right above him (Jose Ramirez, Devers, and Goldschmidt) and the three right below him (Stanton, Yordan, and Nimmo) on the wOBA leaderboard (with min 300 PA) range from .205 R+RBI/PA (Nimmo) to .336 R+RBI/PA (Jose Ramirez) with an average of .301 R+RBI/PA. Mullins had a .222 R+RBI/PA, only Nimmo was lower and the next lowest was Stanton at .278 R+RBI/PA.
There is a team context to it, and a batting order context as well, since you can have multiple RBI/PA but can only have a maximum of one R/PA by definition. Players who hit near the top of the order come up with runners on less often, so they are skewed more toward runs than RBI.
Even with those adjustments, I still think Mullins was a little light in his totals. If you do the same calculation for leadoff hitters only (minimum 100 PA, correlation still 0.97), you can project R+RBI using 0.705*wOBA*PA + 3.6. Using this equation and adjusting Mullins down by the ratio of Baltimore’s R/G compared to league average, you still get an expected R+RBI of ~160 for Mullins, compared to his 147 actual.
Does anyone else here think that Franco should have been the Rookie of the Year over Arozarena? Arozarena struck out over 170 times.
Awards mean nothing. It is pointless to make subjective into objectives. It’s a stupid title to drown out the accomplishments of other players by attempting to make a fact out of a bunch of echoing opinions.
No, I’m unmoved by the Ks. The production matters and Arozarena edged Wander by a pt in wRC+, 128 to 127, despite the Ks and did so in 2x the playing time. Franco was great to be sure, but so was Arozarena, and between those 2, it’s easily Arozarena for me.