- Before deciding on A.J. Hinch, the Tigers interviewed Rays bench coach Matt Quatraro in their managerial search, reports Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times. Quatraro also drew some consideration from the Pirates and Giants for their respective vacancies last offseason. The 46-year-old has been on Kevin Cash’s coaching staff since the start of the 2018 season.
Rays Rumors
Morton, Zunino Open To Re-Signing With Rays
Charlie Morton “wasn’t surprised” that the Rays declined to exercise their $15MM club option on his services, but the veteran right-hander told Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times that the team’s decision “doesn’t mean we won’t try to work something out. If there’s mutual interest, the next step is gauging what that looks like.” Rays GM Erik Neander indicated yesterday that the team indeed hoped to bring Morton back for a third season. If an acceptable deal can’t be worked out with the Rays or another club, Morton reiterated to Topkin that he’ll gauge whether he wants to keep playing, weighing such “typical factors” as his health, playing for a contender, and “does it make sense financially and geographically?”
The Rays declined options on both Morton and (at $4.5MM) catcher Mike Zunino yesterday. Jet Sports Management represents both players, and agent B.B. Abbott told Topkin in a separate piece that there aren’t any hard feelings about the contractual decisions. “Their first choice was to be in Tampa, and it probably still is their first choice,” Abbott said, but now that Morton and Zunino are on the open market, “they owe it to themselves to see what’s out there.”
Pirates Claim Michael Perez Off Waivers From Rays
The Pirates have claimed catcher Michael Pérez off waivers from the Rays, reports Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times (via Twitter). Fellow catcher Kevan Smith and right-handers Andrew Kittredge and Chaz Roe each cleared waivers and elected free agency.
Pérez has hit .221/.286/.314 in 228 plate appearances over parts of three seasons in Tampa Bay. The 28-year-old has a pair of option seasons remaining and isn’t yet eligible for arbitration, so he’s an affordable piece to either back up Jacob Stallings or perhaps get the lion’s share of playing time behind the plate if Stallings is dealt this winter.
Between the declination of Mike Zunino’s club option and the losses of Pérez and Smith, the Rays are set to completely revamp their catching mix this offseason.
Rays To Decline Options On Charlie Morton, Mike Zunino
The Rays are not going to exercise their club options on right-hander Charlie Morton or catcher Mike Zunino, vice president of baseball operations Erik Neander told reporters (including Juan Toribio of MLB.com and Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times). Morton’s option was valued at $15MM, while Zunino stood to make $4.5MM if his option were exercised. Neither player will receive a buyout and both are now free agents.
Tampa Bay is leaving the door open to bringing either player back, Neander adds (via Toribio). They’re particularly interested in retaining Morton, it seems, with Neander noting the parties will look for a “creative” way to keep him in the fold (Topkin link).
Both players had important roles on the Rays’ pennant-winning 2020 club, but Morton is the more notable of the two. The 36-year-old (37 next month) was a Cy Young finalist just a year ago, when he tossed 194.2 innings of 3.05 ERA ball. He took a bit of a step back over nine regular-season starts this season but he still looks like a strong mid-rotation starter at the very least. He reaffirmed that with four stellar postseason starts.
Morton immediately becomes one of the best pitchers on the free agent market, but it remains to be seen how much interest he’ll have in exploring deals with other teams. The veteran makes his home in Florida, a key point in his decision to sign with the Rays as a free agent after the 2018 season. Earlier this month, Morton said he’d seriously discuss the possibility of retirement with his family if the Rays declined his option. At the moment, though, he “is believed to want to continue his career,” hears Jon Heyman of MLB Network (Twitter link).
As for Zunino, the call was probably a bit easier for the front office. The former third overall pick has started just over half the Rays’ games behind the plate the past two years but hasn’t hit much. Since Tampa Bay acquired him from the Mariners, Zunino has hit just .161/.233/.323 over 373 plate appearances. He struck out in 64 of his 140 plate appearances between the regular season and playoffs in 2020. The well-regarded defender hits the market at just 29 years of age, though.
Brett Phillips, The Rays’ Thrice-Traded Hero
Despite the new August 31 date and all the uncertainty about how player movement would be impacted by the circumstances of the pandemic-shortened season, the lead-up to the 2020 trade deadline went more or less the same as deadlines past. Some big names switched uniforms, non-contenders looked to dump salary and add prospects, and just about as always, one unheralded trade ended up paying big dividends in October.
On August 27, the Rays made a move to shore up their bench depth by acquiring Brett Phillips from the Royals in exchange for infield prospect Lucius Fox. It was one of several seemingly minor swaps Tampa Bay made prior to the August 31 deadline, and while the Rays were already coasting towards a postseason spot by that point, the argument could have been made that a bigger move was necessary to boost their chances at a championship.
Little did we know, the Phillips trade was that move. Phillips’ ninth-inning RBI single last night started a wild, game-deciding sequence and an 8-7 comeback victory for Tampa in Game 4 of the World Series. After entering the game as a pinch-runner in the previous inning, Phillips’ first plate appearance since October 7 resulted in his entry into instant legend status in Rays history.
Not bad for a player who was primarily seen as a defensive and pinch-running specialist at the time of his acquisition. In fact, it’s not bad for a 26-year-old player playing for his fourth different organization, which is perhaps why Phillips was such an unlikely candidate to deliver the Rays’ biggest hit.
Originally a sixth-round pick for the Astros in the 2012 draft, Phillips began to turn heads after a very impressive 2014 season at the A-ball and high-A levels. He continued to produce into 2015, and while this breakout might have made him into a building block for the rebuilding Astros if it had happened a bit earlier in Phillips’ career, by 2015 the Astros were looking to win. As such, Houston made a major trade deadline swap with the Brewers that sent Phillips, Josh Hader, Domingo Santana, and Adrian Houser to Milwaukee in exchange for Carlos Gomez, Mike Fiers, and $287,500 in international bonus pool money.
The Astros went on to reach the postseason that year, falling to the Royals in the ALDS, yet the aftershocks of this trade continue to reverberate around baseball. Gomez ended up being something of a disappointment for Houston that year, though Fiers went on to become a solid member of the Astros’ rotation through their 2017 World Series-winning season and then…well, you know the rest. On Milwaukee’s end of the deal, Hader developed into one of the game’s best relief aces, Hauser has emerged as an intriguing starter, and Santana delivered some solid production over 351 games for the Brew Crew before he was traded to the Mariners in the 2018-19 offseason.
The one weak link of the Brewers’ trade return, however, was Phillips. There was no doubt that Phillips had MLB-caliber speed and glovework, except after a promising .799 OPS over 98 plate appearances in 2017, he struggled badly the next season and found himself on the move again.
This time, Phillips was headed to Kansas City (along with right-hander Jorge Lopez) in another deadline deal, as Milwaukee picked up Mike Moustakas for the pennant race. The Moose was a key part of a Brewers team that came within a game of the 2018 NL pennant, and the Brew Crew reached the playoffs again in 2019 thanks in large part to Moustakas’ All-Star season. For Phillips, he found himself on another rebuilding team with another opportunity at a fresh start, yet he again couldn’t capitalize — Phillips hit .178/.256/.308 over 236 PA spanning three seasons with the Royals.
As a player who relied on doubles and triples rather than homers, Phillips wasn’t quite a “three true outcomes” player in the minors, though he used a keen batting eye to counter-act his strikeouts and generate a career .274/.362/.478 slash line over 3174 PA. The problem is, Major League pitchers have feasted on those holes in Phillips’ swing, as he has struck out 133 times in his 383 plate appearances at the big league level.
Phillips’ trade history is indicative of his declining prospect stock, as he went from a headline piece of a blockbuster deal to last August’s swap that didn’t generate many headlines. Not many headlines, that is, until last night. While Phillips’ first two trades carried so much import for other teams and players involved, it wasn’t until his third time changing uniforms that Phillips himself now stands as the most important part of a trade. Phillips is still only 26, and given the Rays’ penchant for finding hidden gems, perhaps last night’s heroics will only raise the curtain on a big second act of Phillips’ Major League career.
Ryan Sherriff Discusses Move To Tampa Bay
- Rays reliever Ryan Sherriff worked his way back from a 2018 Tommy John surgery to appear on Tampa Bay’s World Series roster. This season marked his first big league action since a 2017-18 stint with the Cardinals, as Sherriff discusses with Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Released by St. Louis in August 2018, two months after undergoing surgery, Sherriff concedes he was frustrated with the way things ended. In light of his success with the Rays, Sherriff now considers his Cardinals release the “best thing that ever happened to me.” A grievance filed in 2018 against the St. Louis organization for back pay and MLB service time related to the date of Sherriff’s injury is still pending, Goold reports.
Rays To Start Blake Snell In World Series Game 6
Last night’s back-and-forth thriller ended with an 8-7 Rays win. That knotted the World Series at two games apiece, setting the stage for a Tyler Glasnow – Clayton Kershaw showdown in tonight’s crucial Game 5.
Tampa Bay’s win also guaranteed the series will go at least six games. Unsurprisingly, Blake Snell is set to take the ball for the Rays in the sixth contest on Tuesday night (via Juan Toribio of MLB.com). That’ll give the southpaw five days rest since his most recent start in Game 2, when he tossed 4.2 innings of two-run ball, striking out nine while allowing a pair of hits and four walks.
Snell was warming in the bullpen in the late innings last night, but manager Kevin Cash decided against bringing him into the game. How the Dodgers will deploy their pitching staff in Game 6 remains to be seen, but it’s easy to envision a potential Game 7 matchup between Charlie Morton and Walker Buehler.
Rays Play Match-Ups In Game Four
The Rays are changing it up tonight in an effort to even up the World Series with the Dodgers, per MLB.com’s Juan Toribio (via Twitter). Against the southpaw Julio Urías, the Rays have dropped Brandon Lowe to the 5-spot, while lefty killer Mike Brosseau gets the start at third base batting third. Hunter Renfroe gets the start in right field in place of Austin Meadows. The Rays tend to play match-ups against lefties, but don’t be surprised to see Ji-Man Choi or Meadows come in off the bench late in the game. While we wait for first pitch, let’s see what else is going on around the game…
Rays, Athletics Seen As Favorites To Sign Cuban Prospect Luis Pino
- 16-year-old Cuban outfielder Luis Pino worked out for scouts this week in the Dominican Republic, and ESPN.com’s Enrique Rojas (Spanish language link) reports that the Athletics and Rays are the favorites to land Pino when the international signing window opens on January 15. The Giants, Cubs, White Sox, Red Sox and Padres have also shown interest in Pino, who seems likely to command a bonus of $1MM or more.
Looking Back At The Randy Arozarena Trade
For starters, yes, it’s now officially “The Randy Arozarena Trade.”
Arozarena has been the star of the Rays’ postseason run, hitting an incredible .382/.433/.855 with seven home runs over 60 plate appearances in these playoffs. The 25-year-old outfielder’s performance earned him ALCS MVP honors, making him the first rookie position player in baseball history to ever be named MVP of a league championship series or World Series.
It’s pretty on-brand for the Rays’ style of roster-building that their October hero is someone a lot of fans probably had never heard of as recently as September. For a team that is rightly credited for a strong minor league system, it’s a little surprising that so few members of Tampa Bay’s World Series roster are actually homegrown players — only seven of the 28 players came up entirely through the Rays’ pipeline, with the other 21 all acquired via signings or trades.
Case in point, Arozarena. Back in January, the Rays and Cardinals completed a multi-player deal that, at the time, was best known as “the Jose Martinez trade” or even “the Matthew Liberatore trade.” Tampa Bay sent top pitching prospect Liberatore, catching prospect Edgardo Rodriguez, and their draft pick in Competitive Balance Round B (which ended up 63rd overall) to St. Louis in exchange for Martinez, the Cards’ pick in Competitive Balance Round A (or the 37th overall pick) and a certain future ALCS MVP.
At the time, Martinez was easily the best-known quantity, having hit .298/.363/.458 with 41 homers over 1288 PA for the Cardinals in 2016-19. If you had predicted in January that a player from this trade would help lead the Rays to the AL pennant, the assumption would have been that Martinez continued (or improved upon) the offensive production he delivered in St. Louis. A move to the American League was long seen as a way to possibly fully unlock his potential, as the defensively-challenged Martinez would no longer have to worry about playing the field in a league with a designated hitter position.
As it turned out, Martinez didn’t even finish the season in Tampa. After missing much of Summer Camp due to a positive COVID-19 test, Martinez hit .239/.329/.388 over 76 PA for the Rays and was traded to the Cubs in a deadline deal for two players to be named later. Martinez then didn’t collect a single hit over 22 PA for Chicago, and now looks like he could be a non-tender candidate this winter.
It’s worth noting that Martinez didn’t hit as well in 2019 as he did in 2017-18, leading some Tampa fans to wonder why a 31-year-old DH type was the apparent headliner of a trade package for one of the Rays’ (and baseball’s) top prospects. Liberatore was the 16th overall pick of the 2018 draft and a consensus top-65 prospect, and even accounting for the lost 2020 minor league season, there’s no reason to believe Liberatore couldn’t still become a quality MLB starter. Liberatore could even factor into the Cardinals’ pitching plans for 2021, as president of baseball operations John Mozeliak said Liberatore impressed the team while working out at the alternate training site this summer.
Arozarena was a well-regarded prospect in his own right, but hardly a top-100 type or even one of the top-tier names in the Cardinals’ system alone; MLB Pipeline ranked Arozarena as the tenth-best St. Louis minor leaguer at the time of the trade. Since the Cards were already overloaded with outfield candidates, it was more than understandable that Mozeliak and company jumped to unload some of that surplus while bringing back a promising minor league arm. Granted, St. Louis fans might not agree with this logic based on immediate returns, as several Cards outfielders (such as Tyler O’Neill, Lane Thomas, and even top prospect Dylan Carlson) badly struggled at the plate in 2020 while Arozarena thrived in Tampa Bay.
As valuable of an asset as Liberatore was and still is, however, the Rays felt okay with moving a piece of their future for the win-now addition of some outfield bats. This is where the Rays’ outstanding player development system really comes into play — Tampa Bay is comfortable in taking the risk in trading such prospects because the front office has confidence they can always draft, acquire, and develop more good players to fill that void.
In a baseball world that holds top-100 prospects in higher regard than ever before, the Rays have dealt three such players (Liberatore, Jesus Sanchez, and Nick Solak) since July 2019, bringing back the likes of Arozarena, Nick Anderson, Peter Fairbanks, and Trevor Richards in return. All are controllable young players in their own right, and all have been able to contribute at the big league level more immediately, with Arozarena, Anderson, and Fairbanks in particular all being major components of Tampa’s push to the World Series.
The Rays/Cardinals trade is also perhaps instructional in considering just how much teams value draft position. The concept of trading draft picks is still unusual in baseball terms (the Competitive Balance Round selections are the only picks that can be traded), though fans of the NFL, NBA, or NHL are very familiar with how much teams in those sports often have to surrender in order to trade up in those respective drafts. A 26-spot jump in the draft was a big leap upwards for the Rays, who used that 37th overall pick on Arizona State shortstop Alika Williams. St. Louis, meanwhile, took Arkansas high school pitcher Tink Hence with the 63rd overall pick.
Perhaps in a decade’s time, we’ll look back on this deal as “The Alika Williams Trade” or “The Tink Hence Trade,” or even “The Edgardo Rodriguez Trade.” Since the swap has already led to at least an AL pennant, the Rays likely won’t be too upset if Hence, Rodriguez, or Liberatore end up being staples of the Cardinals’ roster. While fans take stock of which teams “win” or “lose” trades, most front offices hope all their deals are win-win moves — it won’t help future trade negotiations, naturally, if other teams are too wary of a club who only trades away future underachievers.
The Rays do tend to come out on the better end of trades more often than not, however, which is why the low-payroll franchise is currently playing for a World Series title. Every playoff champion seems to have at least one unheralded acquisition leading the way, and while Arozarena is but one of several such players on Tampa Bay’s roster, his immediate impact and long-term potential make him a particular success story for the Rays’ front office.
