Rays To Place Ryan Pepiot On Injured List; Carson Williams To Break Camp At Shortstop
The Rays will place right-hander Ryan Pepiot on the 15-day injured list due to inflammation in his right hip, per Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times. He’s not expected to be out long. With Pepiot sidelined, fellow righty Joe Boyle will be brought back after previously being optioned to Triple-A Durham. Boyle will begin the year in the rotation. Topkin adds that top shortstop prospect Carson Williams, who’d previously been optioned, will now open the season as the Rays’ shortstop after Taylor Walls hit the injured list. That was the expected outcome, though the Rays were at least open to the idea of bringing in some outside help.
Pepiot, 28, has been a solid mid-rotation arm for Tampa Bay for the past two seasons after coming to the Rays in the trade that sent Tyler Glasnow to Los Angeles. He’s pitched a total of 297 2/3 innings with a 3.75 ERA, a 25.4% strikeout rate and an 8.9% walk rate. Pepiot missed time in 2024 after taking a comebacker off his leg and later developing an infection in his right knee — the two weren’t related — but tossed a career-high 167 2/3 innings in a career-high 31 starts in 2025. Since all IL stints can be backdated up to three days (if the player hasn’t been in a game in those three days), Pepiot is only guaranteed to miss the first 12 days of the season.
Boyle, 26, is one of the game’s tallest and hardest-throwing pitchers. Listed at a massive 6’8″ and 250 pounds, he averaged 98.5 mph on his heater last season even while working primarily as a starter. He joined the Rays as part of the return in the trade sending Jeffrey Springs to the Athletics. In 52 innings last year, Boyle logged a 4.67 ERA, 25.7% strikeout rate and 12.4% walk rate. He was dominant in the minors, yielding only a 1.88 ERA in 86 Triple-A frames. This spring, Boyle turned in a solid 3.72 ERA with a huge 34% strikeout rate but a troublesome 17% walk rate. Boyle will now start the second game of the Rays’ season, Topkin notes; righty Nick Martinez, who signed a one-year deal worth $13MM this winter, will be pushed back a couple games to a minor hamstring issue.
As for Williams, he’ll hope to take this unexpected opportunity and run with it. There’s little doubt about the former first-round pick’s defensive acumen or raw power. Scouts laud him as a plus defender at shortstop, and he belted 28 home runs in 557 plate appearances between Triple-A and a brief major league debut last year. He’s generally considered one of the sport’s top 100 prospects, due in no small part to the relatively high floor created by his glove and plus power.
The question regarding Williams is whether he’ll make enough contact to emerge as an above-average starter or be more of a low-end regular or even a power-and-defense utility option. He fanned in a massive 41.5% of his 106 major league plate appearances last year. That alone wouldn’t be terribly alarming for a small-sample set of plate appearances by a 22-year-old, but Williams also went down on strikes in 34% of his Triple-A plate appearances. He punched out at a 28.5% clip in Double-A in 2024 and a 31.4% clip across three levels in 2023.
Williams has taken a total of 2217 professional plate appearances since being drafted 28th overall in 2021 and has struck out in 32% of them. He’s highly unlikely to ever hit for a high average, but Williams has also walked in 11.4% of his professional plate appearances. If he can continue to walk in more than 10% of his plate appearances, hit for power and play defense, than a batting average in the .210 to .230 range won’t necessarily be a dealbreaker. With Walls down for several weeks due to an oblique strain, Williams will get the chance to solidify himself in manager Kevin Cash‘s infield.
Tampa Bay also finalized its bullpen, per Topkin. Right-hander Hunter Bigge was optioned to Triple-A, leaving lefty Ian Seymour and righties Mason Englert, Yoendrys Gómez, Kevin Kelly and Cole Sulser to claim the final five spots behind veterans Griffin Jax, Bryan Baker and Garrett Cleavinger. Righty Edwin Uceta is already known to be starting the season on the injured list due to shoulder troubles.
Meanwhile, righty Jake Woodford triggered the upward mobility clause in his minor league deal with Tampa Bay. It’s not yet clear whether he’ll be added by another club or if the Rays will keep him as depth to keep on hand in Durham. Woodford had a strong spring (one run, 5-to-2 K/BB ratio, 45.5% grounder rate in 7 1/3 innings) and has pitched in each of the past six big league seasons. He has a 5.10 ERA inn 256 big league frames and has worked as both a starter and long reliever in his career.
Rays Promote Ian Seymour
The Rays have called left-hander Ian Seymour up from Triple-A Durham, with right-hander Cole Sulser optioned to Triple-A in the corresponding move. No 40-man move was required, as Tampa already added Seymour to its 40-man roster last November in advance of the Rule 5 Draft.
The 26-year-old Seymour will be making his Major League debut whenever he makes his first appearance for the Rays. A second-round pick for Tampa Bay in the 2020 draft, Seymour’s pro career hit some immediate roadblocks when flexor soreness and then a Tommy John surgery limited him to just 114 innings over the 2021-23 seasons. If it wasn’t for these health issues, Seymour might well have been in the bigs years ago, as he had already been promoted up to the Triple-A level before the 2021 campaign was over.
Seymour kept the momentum going after his return from TJ rehab. He posted a 2.35 ERA over 145 1/3 combined Double-A and Triple-A innings in 2024, and this season has a 2.95 ERA, 32.7% strikeout rate, and 5.8% walk rate over 61 frames with Durham (starting 11 of 12 games). Baseball America ranks Seymour 15th on their list of the Rays’ top 30 prospects, while MLB Pipeline has him 19th in their ranking of the Tampa Bay farm system.
If these rankings seem a little modest for a starter with Seymour’s numbers, it could be because Seymour’s average fastball velocity only sits in the low-90s. That said, the pitch is still effective, and acts as a nice secondary offering to Seymour’s plus changeup. As Baseball America’s scouting report puts it, Seymour relies on a “combination of command and deception” more than pure stuff, and his results in the minors “will be hard to fully replicate” against big league hitters. Seymour has started 69 of his 71 career games, though evaluators feel he might be more suited to a swingman or bulk pitcher role at the MLB level.
Given their long history of pitcher development and creative usage of their arms, the Rays are ideally suited to manage Seymour’s entry into the Show. Seymour looks to be working as a reliever at first, since Tampa Bay could use a fresh arm after using seven different pitchers in yesterday’s 11-10 extra-innings loss to the Marlins. The steady Drew Rasmussen is starting today but hasn’t gone beyond six innings in any of his 12 starts this season, and the Rays’ next off-day isn’t until Thursday. Seymour joins Garrett Cleavinger and Mason Montgomery as the left-handed options in Tampa’s pen.
Could The Rays Still Move A Starting Pitcher?
The Rays entered the offseason with at least seven rotation-caliber arms on the roster. Each of Shane McClanahan, Taj Bradley, Drew Rasmussen, Zack Littell, Shane Baz, Jeffrey Springs and Ryan Pepiot has had success in a big league rotation, though injuries have hobbled several of that group in recent years. Tampa Bay already thinned out that stock of arms (and, naturally, trimmed payroll) by shipping Springs and lefty Jacob Lopez to the A’s in a deal netting them righty Joe Boyle, minor leaguers Will Simpson and Jacob Watters, and a Competitive Balance (Round A) draft pick in 2025.
The Rays now have “only” six starters with proven (to varying levels) track records in the majors. Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times writes that they’re still planning on a five-man rotation, however, adding that trading a starter in the late stages of spring training is “not out of the question.” At best, that very lightly leaves the door for a trade propped open. There’s nothing to strongly suggest the Rays are planning to deal from the rotation. Still, it’s nonetheless worth examining the team’s options if it comes to that point.
The veteran Littell would be the most obvious candidate to change hands. Tampa Bay moved the now-29-year-old righty from the bullpen to the rotation midway through the 2023 season, and the results have been better than anyone could’ve reasonably predicted. Littell solidified the staff in the second half of ’23 and pitched a career-high 156 1/3 innings with a 3.63 ERA over 29 starts last season. Since moving to a starting role after the Rays claimed him from the Red Sox, Littell has started 40 games and logged a combined 3.65 ERA with a lower-than-average 20.4% strikeout rate but a sensational 4.1% walk rate.
Each of the Rays’ other starting pitchers is signed or controlled via arbitration through at least the 2027 season. Littell is a free agent following the 2025 campaign. He’s being paid a reasonable $5.72MM. He’s not an ace by any stretch of the imagination, but based on how he’s fared since July 2023, the right-hander could step into the third, fourth or fifth spot in most big league rotations.
Trading anyone from the rest of the group is tougher to envision. McClanahan has pitched at a Cy Young level when healthy but missed all of 2024 recovering from Tommy John surgery. He’s controlled through 2027. Moving him right now would mean moving their most talented starter at a time when they’d be selling low. Rasmussen signed a two-year deal with a club option earlier this offseason. That bought out his remaining arbitration seasons and gave Tampa Bay control over his first free-agent year by way of that 2027 club option. Flipping him so soon after signing him to that deal is extremely difficult to envision; MLB teams simply don’t sign a player to extension and then trade him prior to ever appearing in their jersey under the terms of that new contract.
Baz and Pepiot are under club control through 2028. The former is earning $1.45MM in 2025, while the latter has yet to reach arbitration. (Baz did so as a Super Two player.) Bradley can’t become a free agent until the 2029-30 offseason. We’re talking about the Rays, so the “never say never” caveat always applies to some extent, but acquiring four or five seasons of anyone from that bucket would very likely come at a steep price and require a team to part with MLB-ready bats that are both high-upside and controllable for a similar or even lengthier window.
Any team even contemplating a trade from the rotation at this stage of the calendar will be wary, of course. As we’ve seen throughout the league — most prominently up in the Bronx — perceived starting pitching “surpluses” can turn into deficits quickly this time of year. The Rays won’t move someone just to trim payroll, but they have depth even beyond the six arms mentioned here.
The previously mentioned Boyle, for instance, is having a nice spring and has experience in a big league rotation already. Following his acquisition in the Springs trade, president of baseball operations Erik Neander called the 6’7″ righty someone who has “the physicality and the stuff to fit at the front of the rotation.” Boyle averages nearly 98 mph on his heater but has severe command issues that need to be ironed out. Righty Jacob Waguespack might be Triple-A bound but has 105 2/3 big league innings under his belt. Prospects Joe Rock and Ian Seymour both had some success in Triple-A last year (the latter in particular). There’s no such thing as “too much” rotation depth, but that group could further embolden the Rays to listen on Littell or another big league starter if a team makes a compelling offer.
Rays Designate Austin Shenton For Assignment
The Rays have added left-handers Joe Rock and Ian Seymour to their 40-man roster, reports Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times (X links), protecting them from being selected in the upcoming Rule 5 draft. Tomorrow at 5pm Central is the deadline for players eligible for that draft to be protected by being selected to a club’s roster. The Rays had one 40-man vacancy and opened another by designating infielder Austin Shenton for assignment. The club also avoided arbitration with right-hander Cole Sulser by signing him to a deal for 2025, though the terms of his deal haven’t yet been publicly reported.
Rock, 24, was a competitive balance round pick of the Rockies in 2021 but came to the Rays as part of the March 2024 trade that sent infielder/outfielder Greg Jones to Colorado. Rock’s first season in his new organization went fairly well, as he tossed 139 2/3 Triple-A innings with a 4.58 earned run average, 21.6% strikeout rate, 5.7% walk rate and 45.3% ground ball rate.
Seymour, 26 next month, was a second-round pick of the Rays in 2020 with generally strong results since then. He has a 2.50 ERA in 259 1/3 innings over the past four years, pairing a 31% strikeout rate with an 8.6% walk rate. That includes 145 1/3 innings split between Double-A and Triple-A in 2024, with Seymour posting a 2.35 ERA this year while striking out 28.1% of opponents and only giving out free passes at a 7.1% clip.
Given the strong results from both pitchers, the Rays decided they didn’t want any rival clubs plucking them away, so both southpaws get roster spots today. While that’s surely exciting for both of them, the flip side is that it’s bad news for Shenton.
Turning 27 in January, Shenton was drafted by the Mariners in 2019 but came to the Rays in the July 2021 trade that sent Diego Castillo the other way. In the upper minors and the majors, Shenton has generally shown a “three true outcomes” approach. He has taken 1,168 plate appearances in the minors over the past three years with 57 home runs, a 14.6% walk rate and a 28.6% strikeout rate. All that has led to a .276/.387/.522 line and 135 wRC+. In a small sample of 50 big league plate appearances, he has a 16% walk rate, 28% strikeout rate, .214/.340/.405 line and 120 wRC+.
There are some intriguing numbers in there but Shenton also has some flags. For one, health has been an issue, with 2023 being the only year of his career in which he played more than 102 games. His defense is also not a standout tool. While he can play both infield corners, his work at third isn’t well regarded. If he’s more of a first base only guy in the long term, that will put more pressure on his bat. While he has often been able to perform offensively, it will be challenging to keep it up in the majors with his strikeout tendencies.
Those flags have nudged him off the Rays’ roster but his positive qualities could get him a chance somewhere else. He still has a couple of option seasons and just a few days of service time, meaning he could be a cheap depth option for some other club willing to give him a roster spot, either via a trade or a waiver claim. DFA limbo can last a week but the waiver process lasts 48 hours, meaning the Rays will have five days to explore trades.
As mentioned, all clubs will be adding players to their rosters between now and tomorrow evening for Rule 5 protection, so perhaps roster spots will be at a premium and make it harder for one of the 29 other teams to take a shot on Shenton.
As for Sulser, 35 in March, he was acquired from the Mets in a July cash deal. He went on to toss 11 2/3 scoreless innings for the Rays after that deal despite subpar strikeout and walk rates of 18.6% and 14% respectively. He now has 149 career innings with a 3.74 ERA, 25.3% strikeout rate and 11.4% walk rate.
MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz projected him for a $1MM salary next year, not much above the $760K league minimum. It’s unclear how much he will make in 2025 but more information will likely be forthcoming as the offseason progresses.