Tampa Bay Rays: Grading Each Player's First Half

The Tampa Bay Rays needed this All-Star break more than most teams, not because they had a poor first half (they didn't), but they have had to struggle through plenty of adversity in 2022. They have not had a fully healthy roster all season and they likely won't for the rest of the year, and as if the never-ending injuries weren't enough, they have been forced to regroup while the New York Yankees have lapped the field in the AL East.

Despite that, the battle-tested Rays went into the All-Star break with a 51-41 record, good for 2nd place in the AL East and the top Wild Card position. They couldn't shake mediocrity for the first 3 months of the year, going into July at a slightly underwhelming 5 games above .500 with a pedestrian +15 run differential. However, they caught some lightning in a bottle during the weeks before the break, with a current July record of 11-6, and that's despite getting swept by the lowly Reds on the road. They're 13 games back of the 1st-place Yankees and a game and a half ahead of the 3rd-place Blue Jays, and if the season ended today, they'd have home-field advantage in a best-of-3 series against the Seattle Mariners in the new Wild Card round.

In typical Rays fashion, there are so many intricate details in terms of individual player performance that warrant further analysis. As such, I've assigned each player a letter grade to summarize how I believe their first half went, taking into account the expectations they carried at the start of the year.
As an aside: players who either just recently recovered from injury or were acquired via trade after the quarter mark of the season were not included due to the small sample size. Neither were players who are not on the active roster at the time of writing, whether that be due to demotion to the minors or any reason other than injury.

Starting Rotation: A-

Shane McClanahan: A+
Drew Rasmussen: A
Jeffrey Springs: A
Corey Kluber: B+
Ryan Yarborough: D

In a season largely marred by inconsistency and a shorthanded roster, the rotation has been even more dependable than advertised, but not in the way many people expected. Its pride and joy is Shane McClanahan, who would be the rightful Cy Young Award winner if the season ended today without question. He leads the entire sport in just about every category possible, with an exemplary 1.71 ERA, 2.11 RA/9, 0.80 WHIP, and 147 strikeouts in 110.2 innings. He has pitched at least 6 innings in 14 of his 18 starts this season, and he has walked more than 2 batters in a start just once. The 25-year-old has blossomed into a surefire ace, and he was deservedly picked to be the starting pitcher for the AL at the All-Star game.

With injuries to Tyler Glasnow and Shane Baz, the Rays have had to transform many of their relievers into starters, and it's a project that has worked beautifully with Drew Rasmussen.

That transition started last year, and this year, he has been exclusively part of the rotation. He has averaged just under 5 innings per start, which is a pretty impressive swing for someone who was a mid-leverage reliever just over a year ago. He had a brilliant stretch in May, going at least 5 innings and allowing no more than 1 run for 4 consecutive starts.

He missed the second half of June with a hamstring strain, but has since returned to the rotation, and he has a 3.22 ERA and a 3.75 FIP in his 15 starts so far. One red flag is that his Statcast xERA sits at 4.22, nearly 60 points higher than last year's and a full run over his actual ERA, which indicates that he's giving up too much quality contact. Hopefully he can fight the regression that some of the numbers would argue is coming his way.

The team embarked on a similar change with Jeffrey Springs. He was just placed on the IL with right leg tightness but he was having quite a season before then. He transitioned to a starter's role over the course of May after beginning in the bullpen, and he has put up a 2.53 ERA in 19 appearances (11 of those were starts). He allowed just 7 earned runs in his first 8 starts of the season despite being less effective lately. The Rays hope to get Springs back right after the All-Star break.

Meanwhile, Corey Kluber has held up quite well for his age. He has provided some much-needed durability, leading the team in starts alongside McClanahan with 18. With an ERA of 3.73 and a FIP of 3.45, as well as a walk rate of 3.9% (97th percentile), he has been the epitome of "very slightly above average" this year. His glory days in Cleveland are long gone, but at age 36, it's impressive that his stuff is still as effective as it is, and he has been on the mound every 5 days when the Rays have needed him.

Unfortunately for Ryan Yarborough, he has been the one letdown in this rotation. He has bounced back and forth between AAA and MLB, and the recent injuries to Springs and Baz (the latter of whom was around for just a month before getting sent right back to the 60-day IL with an elbow sprain) have necessitated that he fill a roster spot on the big-league club for the foreseeable future. He made encouraging strides when the Rays started to get competitive in the late 2010s and peaked in 2020, but fell out of favor last season and he has slipped up even further since.

He simply does not have the swing-and-miss in his arsenal to get by (his 5.5 K/9 would be a career-low), and his ERA has ballooned to 5.49 in 39 innings this season. It's a tough and competitive business to stay in the big leagues as a pitcher, but if the pitching staff was healthy, he probably wouldn't be there.

Bullpen: B+

Jason Adam, A+
Brooks Raley, A+
J.P. Feyereisen, A+
Jalen Beeks, A-
Shawn Armstrong, B+
Colin Poche, B+
Matt Wisler, B-
Ryan Thompson, C

The Rays have a reputation for acquiring pitchers and turning them from afterthoughts to key relievers, and this season has been no different.

Jason Adam and Brooks Raley have been the best that this year's edition of the bullpen has had to offer, and given the team's track record, it's no surprise that reclamation projects from the Cubs and Astros respectively have ended up leading the relief corps. Adam (1.41 ERA, 2.33 FIP, 46 K, 4 SV, 38.1 IP) and Raley (2.79 ERA, 2.01 FIP, 40 K, 6 SV, 29 IP) have taken over much of the high-leverage duty with former closer Andrew Kittredge out with Tommy John surgery.

J.P. Feyereisen was handling a lot of that as well early on, but he's still not throwing as a result of a shoulder injury that put him on the 60-day IL. He hasn't seen, and won't see, action for a while but 24 innings pitched is a substantial enough amount for half a season that he qualifies for a grade, and an A+ at that since he hadn't allowed a run all season before he went down.

Shawn Armstrong might be the most Rays-y acquisition of them all. After being picked up mid-season by the Rays off waivers in 2021, he was DFA'd in early September and picked up by the Marlins. He started off 2022 quite poorly for Miami, who outrighted him to AAA, causing him to elect free agency.

The Rays then re-acquired him for nothing, and since coming up to the big-league roster on May 31, he has pitched 19.2 innings with a 3.20 ERA and over a strikeout per inning, which is outstanding compared to the 10.80 ERA he had through 7 appearances with Miami.

The other two pitchers who have been tag-teaming late-inning responsibilities are Colin Poche and Matt Wisler. Poche and his famous wipeout slider are finally back from an elbow injury that sidelined him starting after his rookie season in 2019, and the early returns are encouraging. He has 6 saves and a 2.35 ERA, but he has given up a concerning amount of home runs, leading to a FIP of closer to 5.00.

However, he's still limiting quality contact overall as evidenced by his xERA of 2.99, so with some increased command and control, he should have a better second half. Wisler, known for only throwing a slider, is effective when he's on but his cold stretches are extremely ugly, so he has fallen out of favor with some fans this year. He does a great job generating harmless contact, which mostly explains his 2.36 ERA, but his predictability has led to poor strikeout and walk rates, indicating that he might not be performing as well as that ERA would say.

Final Grade: B+

The Tampa Bay Rays have pitched well this season, as they have during this now-lengthy window of contention. That has come with an overall disappointing (and quite injured) lineup, but despite all of the health issues, they still sit 10 games over .500 and are currently the best team in the AL that isn't leading their division. With the context of this season taken into account, that's pretty good.

They have shown resilience and enough fight to stick around up until this point, and their depth will be tested further. However, Jeffrey Springs and Jalen Beeks should return to the pitching staff after the all-star break, and Brandon Lowe has rejoined the lineup. Reinforcements are coming, possibly via trade as the Rays have put themselves in a position to be buyers again at the deadline.

Many Rays fans probably did not expect that they'd win the division in 2022; in fact, being in a top wild card spot by the all-star break was essentially what many people were predicting. It becomes more impressive, however, that this is when considering the adversity they have faced. While they might not make a deep run into the postseason, they have proved even further that they should stick around in the playoff race until the very end, regardless of where they end up.