The Rays have placed shortstop Taylor Walls on the 10-day injured list with a left groin strain, the team announced. In a corresponding move, outfielder Tristan Peters was recalled from Triple-A.
Walls has been Tampa Bay’s primary shortstop this year, with 77 starts and 94 appearances at the position. It was particularly noteworthy that he still got his fair share of starts at shortstop when both he and Ha-Seong Kim were healthy. Kim signed a two-year, $29MM deal with the Rays over the offseason (a sizeable deal by their standards) with the expectation that he would become the starting shortstop. While injuries have limited Kim to just 18 games this year, the fact that Walls has shared the position with Kim lately shows how highly the Rays must think of Walls’ defense. Indeed, Walls was scheduled to start at shortstop on Saturday before he was scratched from the lineup. Kim has since started at shortstop in each of the team’s last three games.
Manager Kevin Cash explained that Walls still felt “closer to 75% rather than 100%” before today’s matchup with the Athletics, so the team decided he needed “a couple days to let [his groin injury] continue to calm down” (per Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times).
Tampa Bay will be just fine in the middle infield in Walls’s absence. Kim can play shortstop full-time (with Tristan Gray around as a backup), and All-Star Brandon Lowe can return to playing second base on a daily basis. Lowe had recently started a handful of games at first base and DH to make room for Kim at second base when Walls was starting at short. The problem is that with Lowe at second base and Yandy Díaz at first, the Rays are left without a good option to DH. All-Star Jonathan Aranda is on the IL with a broken wrist (hence Díaz’s return to first base). He remains hopeful he’ll return this season (per MLB.com’s Joey Johnston), but it’s far from a guarantee. For as long as Aranda is out of the equation, the Rays are at their best with Walls and Kim sharing middle infield duties while Lowe and Díaz cover first base and DH. They have not yet offered a timeline for Walls’s return, but they will hope his groin strain proves to be minor.
Entering play today, the Rays are 5.5 games back of the last AL Wild Card spot. They’re a talented team, with a +43 run differential that is far more impressive than their sub-.500 record. However, they’re running out of time to make a comeback. Both FanGraphs and PECOTA have their postseason odds below 5%. With Aranda out indefinitely and Shane McLanahan officially done for the season, they can’t afford for much else to go wrong.
