The Rays announced a number of roster moves before tonight’s series opener against the Dodgers (relayed by Marc Topkin of The Tampa Bay Times). Most notably, first baseman Jonathan Aranda is headed to the 10-day injured list with a left wrist fracture.
Tampa Bay reinstated Ha-Seong Kim from his own IL stint and recalled infielder Tristan Gray from Triple-A Durham. Deadline acquisitions Griffin Jax and Hunter Feduccia have reported to the team and will be active tonight as well. The Rays designated previous backup catcher Matt Thaiss for assignment and optioned lefty Joe Rock and recently acquired outfielder Everson Pereira to Triple-A.
Aranda was injured in yesterday’s game against the Yankees. He was playing first base when Giancarlo Stanton hit a chopper to third base. Junior Caminero double clutched, then threw wildly to first. Aranda reached the ball and collided with Stanton. He went down in pain. Aranda told reporters (including Mark Skol Jr. of Fox 13) that he won’t be able to do any kind of activity for three weeks. The All-Star said he hopes to return this year.
It interrupts a fantastic year for the lefty-swinging Aranda. He’s hitting .316/.394/.478 with 22 doubles and 12 home runs. Aranda has somewhat quietly emerged as one of the best hitters in MLB. It’s a major blow for a Tampa Bay team that has fallen two games under .500 and sits four games out of the last Wild Card spot. Yandy Díaz moved from his usual designated hitter spot to play first base tonight. Christopher Morel is in the lineup as the DH with an outfield of Jake Mangum, Jonny DeLuca and Josh Lowe.
Kim makes his return at shortstop. He’s back from a minimal IL stay due to a lower back strain. Kim had missed the first few months of the season rehabbing last year’s elbow surgery. Tonight’s game is his 11th of the season. The defensive stalwart is in the first season of a two-year contract. He can opt out in the fall, making his final couple months significant for the upcoming free agent market.
Jax and Feduccia are in line for their team debuts. The Rays acquired the hard-throwing Jax in a one-for-one swap for former top pitching prospect Taj Bradley. He’ll anchor the back of the bullpen. Feducca, meanwhile, was the key piece of Tampa Bay’s return in the three-team trade that sent Zack Littell to Cincinnati. He’d been in Triple-A with the Dodgers but jumps right onto the big league roster with the Rays. Feduccia will back up another deadline pickup, Nick Fortes, in a completely revamped catching group.
That pushed Thaiss off the roster. Tampa Bay had acquired him from the White Sox in May. The 30-year-old Thaiss had carried a .382 on-base percentage with Chicago but hit .225/.304/.282 in 25 games for Tampa Bay. The Rays clearly prefer Feduccia and are willing to risk losing Thaiss, who is out of minor league options. They’ll need to place him on waivers in the next few days.
A wrist fracture can take months, if the wrong bone is broken.
Stanton was running in fair territory. That’s out of the baseline. Deliberate.
To even say Stanton was running makes this the stupidest comment of the day.
Okay.
He’s a demented lunatic with an irrational hatred for the Yankees. Best to just let him be
Lmao. As dumb as his comment is, I feel like there’s always been an easy solution to these collisions at first. Safety orange bag.
I suppose he also “deliberately” made caminero make a bad rushed throw that was coming straight at him which he had no way of seeing and made Aranda lose situational awareness to come straight into his path with esp lol? Dumbest comment of the day over here.
Are you crazy? Stanton wasn’t trying to hurt him at all. What an epic fail on the Ray’s part to let that play be close enough there was a collision.
I rewatched the play on slow motion from a first baseline camera. I’m also proficient in reading lips.
After Stanton makes contact you can clearly see he says to himself, “I’m going to purposefully try and injure Jonathan Aranda because I am just a shell of my former self after I stopped taking PED”.
Clear as day. And if anyone says otherwise they are just homers and have a Yankees-branded butt plug controlled by Brian Cashman.
If your foot is in fair territory, you are out of the baseline. That’s why there a freaking box for you to run in. Players who run in fair territory outside of the box are doing so deliberately. The box is there to avoid injuring the first baseman. Honestly, it’s that freaking simple.
(It is baked into the Yankees DNA to cheat. Just another of the countless examples over the decades of their miserable behavior and pathetic sense of entitlement.)
Big G is big. If you are small, then you should move. Big things break small things. If the Yankees are cheating, then they are bad at it. Cheaters have rings, like the GD Astros. Cheating and not winning is dumber than the “he ran into him on purpose” crap you are spewing. I can tell that you are super jealous, and I get it. the Yankees wear high heels and you wear sneakers. The Yankees are cheer captain and your in the bleachers
How did tonight go?
Big G hit another home run.
Why Bob Seymour isn’t getting a shot here’s confusing.
Only 10 days for a wrist fracture? And “bait” headline , read broken wrist.
So you don’t understand the IL rules for MLB. Congratulations.
I can’t decide if you or @
whyhayzee made the dumber comment.
How is that a “bait” headline? Granted Its been a few hours but the headline I’m reading is ” Rays Place Jonathan Aranda On IL With Broken Wrist.”
Probably done for the season which is too bad because he was having a good season
Lesson learned for the league, Don’t bump into Stanton.
This is just typical with a brain dead robot team. The lack of awareness just shows a lack of intelligence. Maybe if you see that the throw is offline and the runner is coming at you, the smart move would be not to stick your hand into the runner. This is on aranda, he broke his own wrist. It’s just failure after failure with this rays team. But of course they will make the excuse that it’s just bad luck.
To unceremoniously dump every veteran catcher and go with young (cheap) prospects is so Tampa Bay. Last year they suffered greatly trying to milk anything out of Jackson & ronstedt combo; this year they made an effort to surround their pitching staff with competent backstops, only to switch course at the TDL. Not to knock these prospects, but it’s really sending acrough signal to catchers &?pitchers; don’t expect Rays to respect you & your experience
Bit of a dirty play but what do you do.
“Meanwhile” has to START the sentence, not come in its middle, between commas.