- Nick Anderson threw his second bullpen session for the Rays, and he appears on track for an August return. per Adam Berry of MLB.com (via Twitter). Anderson’s value as a bullpen ace is well-known after last year’s breakout campaign — 0.55 ERA in 16 1/3 regular-season innings. The Rays leaned hard on Anderson to get them to the World Series: he appeared in both games of the Wild Card sweep of the Blue Jays, two of the five games in their ALDS win over the Yankees, and three more apiece in the ALCS and World Series.
Rays Rumors
Rays Place Josh Fleming On 10-Day Injured List
The Rays announced that left-hander Josh Fleming has been placed on the 10-day injured list due to a right calf strain. Right-hander Louis Head has been called up from Triple-A to take Fleming’s roster spot.
Fleming has worked as both a traditional starter and as a bulk pitcher this season, such as last night’s 4-3 Tampa win over the Angels —- after opener Andrew Kittredge handled the first two innings, Fleming allowed one unearned run over 3 2/3 innings of work. If Fleming misses only the 10-day minimum, the Rays might not need a replacement for his spot in the rotation whatsoever, as the club has off-days on both Monday and Thursday of next week.
A fifth-round pick for the Rays in the 2017 draft, Fleming made his MLB debut last season and has posted a 3.19 ERA over 98 2/3 career innings in the bigs. Fleming is an extreme groundball pitcher with a 60.7% grounder rate during his brief time in the Show, as he doesn’t miss many bats (16.4% strikeout rate) or possess a big fastball, preferring to throw his changeup and cutter over half the time. While Fleming has benefited from a .239 BABIP and the Rays’ strong defense behind him, his 3.98 SIERA indicates that he is still providing solid overall performance.
Rays Place Taylor Walls On 10-Day Injured List
- The Rays placed shortstop Taylor Walls on the 10-day IL (retroactive to June 23) due to right wrist tendinitis, and right-hander Drew Rasmussen has been called up to take Walls’ spot on the active roster. Walls told Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times and other reporters that he received a cortisone shot after trying to play through the injury for around two weeks, and he doesn’t expect to miss time beyond the minimum 10 days. Walls made his MLB debut just over a month ago, and he has posted a respectable 95 OPS+ while hitting .222/.337/.333 over his first 95 big league plate appearances. The Rays have used Walls as their starting shortstop since his promotion, though now that star prospect Wander Franco is on the roster, Franco is likely to get the bulk of time at the position while Walls is out. Given how the Rays mix and match players around the diamond, Walls probably isn’t in danger of getting Wally Pipp’d by Franco, who made his own debut on Tuesday as Tampa’s starting third baseman.
Rays Trade Wyatt Mathisen To Mariners
The Mariners announced Thursday that they have acquired infielder/outfielder Wyatt Mathisen from the Rays in exchange for cash. Left-hander Daniel Zamora was designated for assignment in order to open a spot on the 40-man roster. Tampa Bay had designated Mathisen for assignment earlier in the week as a corresponding roster move when promoting top prospect Wander Franco.
Seattle also announced that righty reliever Keynan Middleton has been recalled from Triple-A Tacoma. Fellow right-hander Vinny Nittoli was optioned back to Tacoma in his place.
Mathisen, 27, will give the Mariners additional depth at second base and both corner infield and corner outfield positions. He never appeared in a big league game with the Rays, who acquired him in a cash deal with the the Diamondbacks earlier this season.
While he’s posted just a .159/.298/.290 hitter in a small sample of 84 MLB plate appearances — all coming with Arizona — Mathisen has a productive career track record in Triple-A. He’s hitting .288/.344/.525 there in 2021 and, in parts of three seasons of Triple-A ball (183 games), Mathisen owns a .269/.368/.515 batting line with 35 homers, 37 doubles and a triple. He also not only has an option for the 2021 season remaining but can be optioned in 2022, making him a nice bit of depth for the Mariners as they began to transition out of a rebuilding phase. For now, he’ll start his Mariners tenure in Triple-A.
The Mariners claimed Zamora, 28, off waivers from the Mets organization a month ago. He yielded four runs (three earned) in 4 1/3 innings out of the big league ’pen and pitched to nearly identical results in a brief look with Tacoma.
That Zamora made it to the big leagues at all is somewhat remarkable, given his status as a former 40th-round pick of the Pirates. He looked dominant in his 2018 MLB debut with New York, holding opponents to three runs on six hits and three walks with 16 strikeouts through his first nine MLB frames. But Zamora was hit much harder the following season in the Majors while also logging pedestrian numbers in Triple-A.
Zamora is in his final option season and has yet to have sustained success above the Double-A level, although his numbers up through Double-A are quite good. The Mariners will have a week to trade him or attempt to pass him through outright waivers. If he goes unclaimed, they’d be able to send him outright to Triple-A, keeping him in the organization without dedicating a 40-man roster spot.
Rays Designate Wyatt Mathisen For Assignment
The Rays have designated infielder/outfielder Wyatt Mathisen for assignment, per a club announcement. His spot on the roster will go to top prospect Wander Franco, whose previously announced promotion to the Major Leagues has now been made official with this move.
Tampa Bay acquired Mathisen, 27, from the D-backs earlier this year in a deal that sent cash back to Arizona. He’s yet to appear in a game for the Rays but has had a productive 18-game stint with Triple-A Durham, batting .288/.344/.525 with three homers and five doubles. Mathisen has been a solid batter in parts of three Triple-A campaigns but is a .159/.298/.290 hitter in a small sample of 84 plate appearances at the MLB level — all with the D-backs.
Mathisen began his pro career as a catcher but hasn’t played there since appearing with the Pirates’ A-ball club in 2013. He’s logged time at second base and at all four corner positions in the Diamondbacks organization over the past few seasons and still has a pair of minor league options remaining. Given his Triple-A track record, defensive versatility and the fact that he has a pair of minor league options remaining, Mathisen could well appeal to another club in need of depth. The Rays will have a week to trade him or attempt to pass him through outright waivers.
Rays Promote Wander Franco
June 22: The Rays have made it official. Franco’s contract has been selected from Triple-A Durham. He’s batting second in tonight’s lineup and playing third base in his Major League debut.
June 20: The Rays announced they’ll select the contract of top infield prospect Wander Franco prior to Tuesday’s game against the Red Sox. Tampa Bay has lost six straight, falling half a game behind Boston in the American League East. With a three-game series against the division leaders upcoming, the Rays have decided it’s time to bring up the league’s most heralded prospect.
Franco, 20, is seen by public prospect rankers as a transcendent talent. Baseball America has ranked him the game’s top prospect in each of the past two seasons, calling him an “exceptionally advanced” hitter with potential plus raw power and average defense at shortstop. In February, Eric Longenhagen of FanGraphs ranked Franco as the only 80-grade prospect around baseball, placing him in a tier of his own among non-MLB players. Longenhagen projects him as a top-of-the-scale hitter, raving about his bat control, pitch recognition and raw power, and calls him a possible “generational talent and annual MVP contender.” Keith Law of the Athletic praised Franco’s “ridiculous hand speed,” incredible plate discipline and above-average power projection, suggesting he should immediately be able to post a high batting average and on-base percentage and could be “an MVP candidate at his peak.”
Not only does Franco check all the boxes from a visual evaluation perspective, his minor league performance has been truly incredible. Despite being young for every level at which he’s played, Franco has compiled a .333/.400/.538 line in parts of three professional seasons. He reached Triple-A Durham for the first time in 2021 and showed no signs of slowing down. Through 173 plate appearances with the Bulls, Franco has hit .323/.376/.601 with seven homers despite being the league’s youngest player. Out of 102 qualified hitters in Triple-A East, the switch-hitting Franco ranks seventeenth in on-base percentage and seventh in slugging percentage.
As one might expect for someone who draws such praise for his hit tool, Franco has very rarely gone down on strikes in the minors. His 11.6% strikeout rate in Triple-A this season is the highest of his career, and that’s still less than half the MLB average mark of 23.4%. Over the course of his minor league career, Franco has punched out in just 7.9% of his plate appearances while walking a strong 10% of the time.
Franco is the most talented of a trio of very highly-regarded infield prospects in the Rays system (alongside Taylor Walls and Vidal Bruján). That glut of high minors talent no doubt played a role in Tampa Bay’s decision to trade shortstop Willy Adames to the Brewers for relievers J.P. Feyereisen and Drew Rasmussen last month. Walls got his first big league call in the immediate aftermath of that deal. He’s played quite well, hitting .237/.356/.355 over his first 90 MLB plate appearances while playing strong defense at shortstop.
Walls is generally regarded as a superior defender to Franco, so it remains to be seen precisely how manager Kevin Cash will deploy a talented infield mix that also includes Brandon Lowe, Joey Wendle, Yandy Díaz and Ji-Man Choi. Regardless of whether the Rays immediately install Franco as the primary shortstop or bounce him around the diamond (he’s seen some action at both second and third base in Durham this year in case he’s needed to play a multi-positional role), it’s safe to assume he’ll be in the lineup on a more-or-less everyday basis in some capacity.
Franco is not yet on the 40-man roster, so the Rays will need to make another move to formally accommodate the selection of his contract. We’re well past the point on the calendar at which a newly-promoted player can accumulate a full year of MLB service. Even if Franco sticks in the majors from here on out, the Rays will thus be able to control him through the end of the 2027 season.
He also seems highly unlikely to crack the Super Two threshold for early arbitration eligibility during the 2023-24 offseason. Franco will earn somewhere in the neighborhood of 105 days of MLB service this year if he remains on the big league roster. That’d put him at approximately 2.105 years at the end of the 2023 campaign. In recent seasons, the Super Two cutoff has come in at 2.115 years of service or above. In all likelihood, Franco won’t reach arbitration eligibility until the conclusion of the 2024 season.
Rays fans will be thrilled to get their first look at a player they no doubt hope will become the face of the franchise. Franco has as good a chance as anyone in the minors of emerging as a true superstar over the coming seasons, and the organization believes him capable of making an immediate impact in the 2021 pennant race. The game has seen an influx of fantastic young talents in recent years. By all accounts, Franco has a reasonable shot to become the next member of that group.
Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times (Twitter link) first reported Franco’s impending call-up.
Dylan Cozens To Pursue Football Career
Former Phillies/Rays farmhand and current Brewers minor leaguer Dylan Cozens announced on Twitter today that he plans step away from baseball in order to pursue a career in professional football. Cozens thanked the three organizations in which he’s played for all of the opportunities afforded to him since being selected by Philadelphia in the second round of the 2012 draft but says he’ll now opt to chase another dream: playing in the National Football League.
Cozens, 27, was a defensive end and two-sport star in high school. His father, Randy, was drafted by the Denver Broncos back in 1976. Listed at a hulking 6’6″ and 245 pounds presently, it should come as little surprise that a player with Cozens’ size and athleticism had a scholarship offer to play football at the University of Arizona before opting to sign with the Phillies back in 2012.
For several years after that second-round selection, Cozens ranked as one of the Phillies’ highest-ceiling prospects — but one with a good bit of risk. He garnered praise for his immense power, which he displayed with a 40-homer showing in 134 games of Double-A ball in 2016, but Cozens also came to pro ball with somewhat limited baseball experience and a notable penchant for swinging and missing. Cozens struck out in 31.7 percent of his plate appearances in Double-A that year and saw that rate spike to 35.7 percent over the next two seasons in Triple-A.
Cozens received a pair of brief calls to the Majors in 2018-19 but only tallied 45 plate appearances. His 2019 campaign was ultimately cut short when he required surgery to remove bone spurs and repair cartilage in his left foot. The Phillies released Cozens after that surgery — injured players cannot be outrighted, and the team needed a roster spot — and he opted to sign a two-year minor league deal with the Rays in Aug. 2019 rather than return to the Phils. The idea was that he’d finish up his rehab with the Rays in ’19 and play in their system in 2020, though last year’s minor league season obviously didn’t take place.
Cozens inked a minor league deal with the Brewers back in December and has appeared in 31 games this year, batting .177/.343/.329 with two homers, four doubles, a triple and four stolen bases in 100 plate appearances. The steals may surprise some, but despite his size, Cozens has swiped 110 bags in 145 tries as a minor leaguer — a testament to his athleticism.
Cozens will have a long road to walk if he ultimately realizes his dream of reaching the top level in a second major sports league, but he’s young enough that it’s certainly not implausible. Despite having played in parts of nine minor league seasons, Cozens only celebrated his 27th birthday on May 31. Best of luck to him in the next phase of his career.
Rays Recall Drew Rasmussen
The Rays have called up right-hander Drew Rasmussen, the team announced. The moves comes as the second part of yesterday’s optioning of infielder Mike Brosseau to Triple-A.
Rasmussen was one of the two arms acquired from the Brewers as part of the Willy Adames trade. Since joining Tampa’s system, Rasmussen posted 11 1/3 scoreless innings over eight outings in Triple-A. The 25-year-old put up a 4.24 ERA/3.88 FIP over 17 innings with the Brewers prior to the deal.
Rammussen has all the makings of another high-leverage, power arm capable of soaking up some high-leverage innings out of the Rays’ bullpen. In his short time with the Brewers, his 91.1 mph four-seamer registered in the 95th percentile for fastball velocity league-wide. His high-spin fastball dominates his arsenal at a 68.1 percent usage rate. He’s flashed a four-pitch arsenal at times, but the Rays have a way of simplifying a pitcher’s approach, so it will be interesting to see if he changes his approach at all after changing uniforms.
Brosseau has moved up and down between Triple-A and the Majors all season. The 27-year-old has batted just .182/.264/.326 in 148 plate appearances in the bigs. He has not yet appeared in a game at Triple-A.
Latest On Tyler Glasnow, Chaz Roe
Rays fans can allow themselves some tempered excitement after the latest check-up on Tyler Glasnow. The lanky flamethrower will be shut down for four weeks before beginning to throw again, but that said, they may have located another source of Glasnow’s discomfort, per Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times (via Twitter). The latest diagnosis theorizes that his elbow irritation could at least in part be the result of a bone issue, which Glasnow’s doctors will attempt to treat during this period of rest. Of course, much uncertainty remains for Glasnow, whose injury became a bit of a firestarter for the debate around the use of illegal substances. After his injury, Glasnow was vocal in opposition of MLB’s attempt to curtail the use of illegal substances on the mound by way of an in-season mandate.
Neither Glasnow’s injury nor the “sticky stuff” saga will be resolved in the immediate future, however, so let’s turn instead to the latest news on his Tampa teammate: reliever Chaz Roe has cut his rehab short for the time being. Roe has been out since April with a shoulder strain. The latest issue, however, is not with the shoulder, but rather a case of biceps tendinitis, per Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times (Twitter links). It will be another 7-10 days until he’s able to resume throwing.
Rays Acquire Mike Ford From Yankees
The Rays have acquired first baseman Mike Ford from the Yankees for cash considerations and a player to be named later, both clubs announced. Ford has been optioned to Triple-A Durham. To clear 40-man roster space, Tampa Bay transferred righty Tyler Glasnow from the 10-day to the 60-day injured list.
Ford has appeared in the majors in each of the past three seasons. The left-handed hitter showed plenty of offensive promise as a rookie, when he raked at a .259/.350/.559 clip with twelve home runs over his first 163 MLB plate appearances. Ford, whom the Mariners had selected in the Rule 5 draft the previous year but returned in Spring Training, looked like a potential long-term contributor in the Bronx after that strong debut. He hasn’t been able to follow up on that over the past two years, though.
In 156 plate appearances since the start of 2020, Ford has mustered just a .134/.250/.276 line with five homers. With Luke Voit tearing the cover off the ball last year en route to an MLB-best 22 homers, Ford didn’t have much of an opportunity for regular playing time. Voit’s injury issues this season opened up some recent run for Ford, but the 28-year-old didn’t take advantage. He’s hit just .133/.278/.283 in 72 plate appearances this season with a fairly significant bump in his strikeout rate. That led the Yankees to designate him for assignment last weekend.
Ford’s MLB career is still a collection of fairly small samples. He’s tallied just 319 total plate appearances at the highest level, with a resulting .199/.301/.422 line. Ford has a much bigger body of work at Triple-A, where’s hit a robust .268/.359/.501 in parts of four seasons. With a quality minor league track record, a pair of minor league option years remaining and a low acquisition cost, the Rays felt Ford was a worthwhile pick-up.
Ji-Man Choi has hit very well in limited time between a pair of injured list stints this season. He returned to the lineup this week and figures to assume much of the playing time at first base. Tampa Bay has primarily rotated Austin Meadows and Randy Arozarena between DH and the corner outfield this year. Ford’s likely being brought on as an optionable depth player, and he adds another lefty bat to a first base/DH mix that also includes righties Yandy Díaz and Mike Brosseau.
Glasnow’s move to the 60-day IL is unsurprising. The 27-year-old went on the IL this week after an MRI revealed a partial tear of his UCL. He’s hoping to rehab the injury and avoid Tommy John surgery, but he told reporters after the diagnosis his goal was to make it back for a potential playoff run. Regardless of whether he’ll be able to return at the tail end of the regular season or during the postseason, it never seemed plausible he’d be back within two months.
Brendan Kuty of NJ Advance Media reported that the Rays had acquired Ford shortly before the official announcement. Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times (Twitter link) first reported Ford would be optioned to Triple-A.
