I was just 15-20 minutes into writing this when the Rays placed Richie Palacios back on the injured list and selected the contract of prospect Chandler Simpson, widely regarded as the fastest player in the sport. Simpson swiped 104 bags in 110 minor league games last year. He was caught only 13 times. He's 8-for-11 in steals to begin the current season. He's struck out in fewer than 10% of his professional plate appearances. Simpson has virtually no power, but he's an oddity in today's game and a throwback to the leadoff hitters of yesteryear. If he can carry those wheels and that preternatural contact ability over to the majors, he's going to garner a lot of national attention, simply because he's a departure from the MLB archetype in an era of baseball that's increasingly focused on power, elevating the ball, exit velocity, etc.
Maybe Simpson will be a star for the Rays. Maybe he'll follow the Billy Hamilton career path. We can't know yet. He hasn't played a single big league game. But even without the promotion of a notable prospect, the Rays' future was already starting to look quite bright.
We're early in the 2025 season, of course, so lots of things can be chalked up to small sample sizes. And the Rays do have plenty of early small-sample success stories. It hasn't yet translated into winning ball, evidenced by their 8-11 record, but Tampa Bay has a +11 run differential and has spent a good portion (in some cases all) of the season playing without some key stars. Shane McClanahan is wrapping up his rehab from Tommy John surgery. Josh Lowe has been out almost all year with a strained oblique. Ha-Seong Kim was signed knowing that he'd be out into at least May following shoulder surgery. The version of the Rays that president of baseball operations Erik Neander and manager Kevin Cash trot out in June and July should be expected to look quite a bit different than the April version.
There are still some intriguing names on the roster right now, however, many of whom are flying too far under the radar. It's easy to get too caught up in early-season data, as it tends to balance out over a larger sample. But with many of the Rays' young and/or returning contributors, the breakout campaigns they're teasing date back to the second half of the 2024 season. Tampa Bay operated as a seller last summer, trading away veterans Zach Eflin, Jason Adam, Isaac Paredes, Randy Arozarena, Aaron Civale and Phil Maton, among others.
That opened the door for a wave of younger players to begin receiving more playing time, and if you trace things back to that point, some of these eye-opening March/April stats start to look a little more legitimate. It's still only about 40% of a season -- less than that in some cases -- but as is always the case with a Rays team that ebbs and flows through periods of contending and rebuilding on the fly, there are some very intriguing components of a core taking shape.
Let's run through a few particular standouts.
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Explain your evidence, Johnny Superscout.
Montes is 28 years-old and doesn’t look particularly good. Doubt he’ll be with the Rays very long.
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Miser: .400 / .442 / .733 / 1.176
Mangum: .345 / .379 / .400 / .779
Both are good defensive players as well as baserunners.
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The Rays don’t dilly around with players. The players help the team win games or they’re moved. The FO doesn’t plan out a core and stick with them.
Depth Charts in MLB are not a thing to contending smaller market teams like the Rays, Brewers, Guardians, DBacks, Royals, and now Reds. They’re not building for 2 years from now. This is it. 2025 is what they care about. They’ll concern themselves with the 2026 season after the 2025 season….and on and on.
It’s a good formula for those clubs. Substance over industry groupthink prospect hype based on raw skills more than being well-rounded players with high baseball IQ.
104 bags, Billy stole 155, but was caught 37 times in a minor league season. This guy Simpson only got caught 4 times, that’s insane. Hamilton speed only translated to 50 bases a year in his prime. But he also didn’t have the benefit of a disengagement rule
Billy Hamilton didn’t get on base enough to set stolen base records.
Depends on which Billy Hamilton we are referring to.
A++++++++ comment.
Those guys are doing pretty well…
Misner is looking like the real deal, but he’s sitting against tough LHP. Mangum has a lot of soft hits, but could stick as a 4th OF.
Aranda is the guy.
Simpson’s OBP across his college and MiLB seasons is around .400. Hamilton’s OBP was pedestrian in comparison during his non-MLB seasons – in the lowish .300’s.
No way to know in advance if Simson will escape Hamilton’s big league troubles, but his track record would suggest that he’s more likely to to get on base at a decent clip than Billy was. Looks like we’re gonna find out.
You’re one for three. Misner was a potential 5 tool player as a prospect who had one major deficiency, that being a very high K rate. That K rate is currently in the 15% range after he spent the entire offseason revamping his swing at some training facility in Atlanta. He looks like a legit player for the Rays now. Mangum is a 29 year old, high-contact, low-power, switch hitting, all-effort guy who I suspect will have a pretty good 2-3 year run with the Rays as a 4th or 5th outfielder. Montes is a AAAA player though.
Simpson stole 104 bases in only 110 games last year, so he’s a real threat to steal 100 bases in the Majors over a 162 game season. He will never hit for HR power, but if half his singles turn into doubles or triples via steals, he’s going to be pretty great for the Rays… at least until his speed goes away.
Not sure why I’m paying for an article that reads like a much less sophisticated version of Fangraphs, which is free. A lot of these numbers are from Fangraphs anyway, and not necessarily even their interesting ones.
Based on Pythagorean winning percentage and Base Runs, the Rays are significantly underperforming and we should see them improving in the coming months. They should at least have 11 to 12 wins not 9. Their team in general is doing well. The pitching has an ERA (3.66) close to their SIERA (3.24) and a team wRC+ of 116.
There shouldn’t be a comma before “too.” This is an archaic rule.