Tampa Bay Rays vs. New York Yankees: Who Has the Best No. 3 Starter?

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Tyler Glasnow (Photo by Adam Glanzman/Getty Images) /

The Tampa Bay Rays have one of the best sets of top-three starting pitchers in the league. We compare them to the revamped Yankees top-three starters.

The Tampa Bay Rays biggest obstacle to a division title in 2020 is the New York Yankees. The Yankees committed $324 on Gerrit Cole and will begin the season as heavy favorites to win the World Series.

The Rays are listed at +450 odds of winning the AL East while the Yankees are +350 to win the World Series.

The Rays have focused some of their offseason efforts on reinforcing the offensive firepower because they have great confidence in their starting pitching depth.

They wield a rotation that features three of the best the game has to offer. Today we run a side by side comparison with the New York Yankees to see how they compare.

Tampa Bay Rays Top Three

Now, the Yankees top three is not so clear with news breaking yesterday that their big left-hander James Paxton will be out for three to four months after having back surgery.

Paxton is a big loss for the Yankees as he will be replaced with Jordan Montgomery. For the sake of this comparison, Montgomery will be inserted on the back end of the rotation.

New York Yankees

Just skimming through the names, it looks like this should be a pretty tight race. The comparisons will be intriguing.

Do the Tampa Bay Rays have a better Opening Day rotation than the mighty New York Yankees? If the Rays can out-duel the Yankees on the mound then it will go a long way to out-dueling them in the standings.

They certainly have a strong case to be made. Let’s dig in and take a look at a side-by-side breakdown of each team’s number three pitchers in the following slides.

Masahiro Tanaka (Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images) /

Yankees – Masahiro Tanaka

2019 Stats

4.45 ERA // 1.24 WHIP // 182.0 IP // 149 Ks // 2.0 BB9 // 7.4 K9

Masahiro Tanaka has been with the Yankees since 2014 when he arrived from Japan to much hoopla. He lived up to the hype with a 2.77 ERA and an All-Star appearance. Over his six years in pinstripes, he’s posted a career 3.75 ERA with two seasons with an ERA+ above 125 (2014 and 2016).

Tanaka made his second All-Star appearance last season for the Yankees. His K-rate was over nine per nine innings in his first major league season. Last year it was 7.4 per nine. Tanaka seems a lot older than 31 and has dealt with a lot of nagging injuries over his career.

2020 Outlook

Tanaka has battled throughout his career and gained a reputation as a good postseason pitcher. The Yankees are no longer asking him to be an ace, but I’m sure they’d like to see the ERA head in the other direction.

Tanaka still possesses a very good command of the strike zone. Tanaka’s sinker induced 47.5% groundballs. He is set to become a free agent after this season.

Steamer Projections

2.5 fWAR // 4.54 ERA // 1.29 // 183.0 IP // 160 Ks // 2.1 BB9 // 7.9 K9

Steamer is projecting Tanaka to continue with his command, but his velocity diminishing over the past few seasons* he will continue to pitch to contact with a low walk rate.

In 2017 his four-seam fastball averaged 92.9 miles per hour, last season it was down to 91.7 miles per hour.

According to Fangraphs he only had one pitch (slider) rated with a positive value in 2019.

Tyler Glasnow (Photo by Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images) /

Rays – Tyler Glasnow

2019 Stats

1.78 ERA // 0.89 WHIP // 60.2 IP // 76 Ks // 2.1 BB9 // 11.3 K9

Last season, Tyler Glasnow only pitched in 60.2 innings and was still worth nearly one entire Win Above Replacement over Tanaka.

rWAR 2019

Tyler Glasnow (60.2 IP): 2.6
Masahiro Tanaka (182.0 IP): 1.7

His four-seamer can reach 100-mph, which makes his 90-mph changeup look ridiculously hard to hit coming out of his hand. Between 2016-2018 Glasnow struggled with his command, averaging 5.0 walks per nine.

Glasnow was traded from the Pirates midway through 2018. When he first arrived in St. Pete he brought a hefty 5.5 walks per nine with him. The Ray’s worked their magic and he posted a 3.1 the rest of the way in 2018 with Tampa Bay.

Last season he found even better control, reducing his walks per nine all the way down to 2.1. On top of getting his walks under control, Glasnow’s strikeouts per nine reached an all-time high of 11.3 per nine frames.

All of the arrows are pointing up for the young righty. Despite being known as a power pitcher with high strikeout totals, Glasnow still induced a higher groundball rate than Tanaka’s last season.

In the previous slide, we discussed how Tanaka only had one pitch rated as “above average.” All three of Glasnow’s pitches were rated “above average.”

2020 Outlook

His 2.3 WAR over 60.2 innings averages out to a 7.6 WAR over 200 innings. That would have been good for number one in the league, 0.2 points better than Yankees’ ace, Gerrit Cole.

Glasnow is a phenom who looks like he has figured out how to harness his raw potential. We discussed how the Yankees aren’t asking Tanaka to be an ace. They’d be happy with a 3.50 ERA and eating 180 innings. The Yankees just need him to be good as their third starter.

Glasnow is bringing Cy Young potential to the number three spot in Tampa Bay.

Steamer Projections

3.3 fWAR // 3.70 ERA // 1.23 WHIP // 163.0 IP // 202 Ks // 3.6 BB9 // 11.17 K9

Steamer is baking his previous struggles with command into these numbers. That’s fair, past performance is a huge factor in the Steamer Projections. I think Rays’ fans are expecting a lot more than Steamer does out of the big righty this year.

Even with past struggles baked in, Steamer projects Glasnow as a 3.3 WAR and Tanaka as only a 2.5 WAR.

Clear Winner: Tyler Glasnow

An easy way to resolve this is to ask if Tanaka was on the Rays, where would he fit in the rotation? Behind Glasnow.

Next. 2015 Rays' Top 10 Prospects: Where Are They Now?. dark

*Stats and projections were pulled from Baseball-Reference and Fangraphs.

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The Tampa Bay Rays have one of the best sets of top-three starting pitchers in the league. We compare them to the revamped Yankees top-three starters.

Tampa Bay Rays Top Three

New York Yankees

Yankees – Masahiro Tanaka

Rays – Tyler Glasnow

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