Tampa Bay Rays are constructed to conquer a condensed season

We take a look at how a condensed schedule could benefit the Tampa Bay Rays in 2020.

The Tampa Bay Rays and the rest of the baseball world eagerly await Opening Day 2020.

A glimmer of hope has satisfyingly protruded through the vast surface of sadness that has blanketed the baseball world, allowing a little bit of optimism to ooze like puss out of the giant zit that has been 2020 thus far.

ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported rumblings of an idea to play games in Arizona with seven-inning doubleheaders in an attempt to get the total as close to 162 games as possible.

Now, whether or not that’s how it plays out remains to be seen. This has not been confirmed and it really just seems like preliminary discussions were leaked prematurely.

However, one part that stuck out to me was the idea of running double-headers to squeeze in as many games as possible while expanding the rosters to accommodate the lack of recovery time.

Once the season finally begins (assuming it does) then things are going to look different. Both the players and the league have a financial incentive to play as many games as possible. If they do stack multiple games into one day, then the very makeup of the game will be fundamentally changed.

So, all things considered, here are a few reasons this could play right into the Rays hands.

Pitching

Starting pitchers will not be rolled out every fifth day in a condensed season. Every five days could have them pitching every seven or ten games, depending on how they layout such a hypothetical format.

If that is the case, the Rays will be one of the few teams with a severe advantage. Not only do they have three potential Cy Young candidates at the top of the rotation, but they have soft-contact artists Yonny Chirinos and Ryan Yarbrough at the back end of the rotation. If they need more than five starters, well there’s a guy named Brendan McKay in Durham…I hear he’s pretty good.

Trevor Richards has logged time a solid big-league starter, and the innovators of the Opener could put that plan back into action as the Rays possess one of the most deadly bullpens in the league, in fact, they had the lowest bullpen ERA in all of baseball last year. 

Advantage: Rays

Outfield

Depth of bats will be important in a condensed schedule due to the workload put on players. If they are cramming that many games into a short amount of time, then guys are going to need games off. The Rays may be the most adequately equipped team to share the workload.

Center Field

Manuel Margot and Kevin Kiermaier would take care of center. With the expanded rosters we may even could even get a fair dosage of Randy Arozarena. Margot and Kiermaier are two of the rangiest outfielders in the game today. According to Statcast, Margot ranks in the 95th percentile in the outfielder jump, while Kiermaier is in the 100th percentile.

Outfield

Austin Meadows would get the majority of reps in left and presumably, Hunter Renfroe would see plenty of action in right. Renfroe’s power (33 HRS) and stellar defensive work (22 rDRS in 2019) are enough to keep him in the lineup on most days.

We haven’t seen much of Yoshitomo Tsutsugo‘s defense, but he was primarily an outfielder in Japan. And once more, don’t sleep on Brian O’Grady, especially in a slammed schedule like has been discussed.

Why even have all of this outfield depth when Margot and Kiermaier could cover the whole thing by themselves.

Infield

First Base

Ji-Man Choi looks to consume the majority of the at-bats at first, but we saw last season that Yandy Diaz can contribute from the right side. With the expanded rosters, Nate Lowe would likely find a spot on the team. Brian O’Grady looks like a monster just waiting for the right opportunity and he can play anywhere from first base to centerfield. Don’t forget about Jose Martinez, his glove has some questions but his bat has answers.

Third Base

Yandy Diaz should have the majority of reps locked down at third, but Nate Lowe came to camp 20 pounds lighter than last year and was getting substantial reps at the hot corner. A platoon between those two powerhouses could make things terrifying for opposing pitchers. Don’t forget about Tsutsugo, who had been working out at third base in Japan to improve his stock with major league teams. Keep in mind that Mike Brosseau also slugged .462 in 50 games last season.

More Options than a Golden Corrall…the difference is that these are actually good options.