Tampa Bay Rays: Kevin Cash announces opening week rotation

The Tampa Bay Rays have announced their opening week rotation ahead of the regular season

The Tampa Bay Rays open their season on March 28th, with a four game set against the Houston Astros. Blake Snell will get the ball to start that series, and the Tampa Bay Rays season on opening day at the Trop.

From there, Kevin Cash will hand it over to newly signed Charlie Morton, followed by last season trade deadline pick up Tyler Glasnow. From there, Kevin Cash will return to his strategical opener well.

We know Ryne Stanek will be deployed as one of the two openers. The second opener is where Cash can get crazy.

the first option would be Ryne Stanek. No that is not a typo. Use Stanek on both days for the first two or three innings max.

Another option would be newly acquired, Emillio Pagan who got some use as an opener already this spring. I do not think this is a likely outcome, but with Kevin Cash anything is possible.

Wilmer Font has four career starts to his name, and could be in line to get a shot as an opener.

Diego Castillo is another name thrown around as a possible opener, and I think he will serve as a late inning high leverage reliever instead of an opener. Though as we have said, anything is possible with Kevin Cash.

If you look at the Rays schedule to start the year, they play a four game set with the Astros to start, so Tampa Bay will need to run through all three traditional starters and one opener. Monday against the Rockies they will deploy their second opener.

Against the San Franchise Giants, a team that has been critical of the Rays pitching staff and use of an opener, they will get a dose of the Tampa Bay Rays opener twice in that series if everything goes as planned. Poetic justice would be Madison Bumgardner and an opener facing off, and the opener winning.

Both the Astros and Giants have had players on their teams take issue with the opener, and now, both teams will see at least one opener in the first week of the year.

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