Below is an analysis of the expectations in the Tampa Bay Rays farm system. The inspection reports were combined with information provided by industry sources and our comments. This is the fourth year we’ve defined between two expected relief roles, the abbreviations of which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player must be added to the 40-man roster to avoid becoming eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.
A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A more in-depth overview can be found here.
All prospects at the bottom level also appear on IBoard, a service that provides a site with editable evaluation information for the entire organization. It has more detail (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and includes individual team lists so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here.
Other Opportunities for Awareness
Grouped by genre and listed in order of preference within each category.
Shane Baz Update
Baz’s last major league appearance was in July of 2022 (he lost his rookie eligibility that year) before Tommy John surgery caused him to miss the remainder of that season and all of 2023. So far in 2024 he has been playing for Durham, but he is set to make a return to the big leagues tomorrow after the recent trade of Aaron Civale. Baz’s fastball was working 94-98 mph with the same ride life that plagued the Giants hitters before his surgery, and while his command was spotty during his first 10 Triple-A starts, life in the four-seamer still managed to hide his face. his surgical precision. His 85-89 mph slant slider still averages consistently, but his feel for it hasn’t changed much. He still mixes in an 80-84 mph straight curveball and an 87-91 mph power changeup, with subtle action. Baz throws every mix with confidence and looks good from a material standpoint, but rusty from a performance standpoint. How he behaves throughout the season is more important than how he looks in his debut.
Strikeout-Heavy College Bats
Ryan Cermak, WE
Brock Jones, OF
Jalen Battles, 2B
Jones and Cermak were the 65th and 71st overall picks in the 2022 draft, two top college players with tremendous power and questionable hit tools. Both struck out about a third of the time at Bowling Green. Battles was a 2022 fifth-round pick and hasn’t hit since leaving college, hitting at a 27% clip as a pro. He has good defensive hands, is solid at second base, and can handle the hot corner.
Player Depth
Wooyeoul Shin, 1B/LF
Tristan Peters, LF/RF
Tanner Murray, 2B
Carlos Colmenarez, 2B/3B
Dru Baker, OF
Shin grew up in Korea but came to the US in late 2019 to pursue baseball. He ended up at Miami Dade Community College, where he majored in English for a year and hit .407 with 15 homers in his sophomore season. He committed to Miami but instead signed for $150,000 as a 16th round pick. He’s doing well as a 22-year-old in Low-A, and we’d like to see Shin perform against more advanced arms even though it makes sense to avoid the JUCO to High-A jump. Shin’s hands generate a lot of energy at short range. He is a squat 6-foot, 220 pounds and is still learning to play defense at this level.
Peters has a solid hit tool, but he has yet to show enough game power to warrant his defensive profile as a corner outfielder and has seen his strikeout rate rise against Triple-A pitching. He’s an average center back with some ground-up ability, but he lacks both the ability to play in a forward position and defend in a variety of ways. Murray feels the beat and sprinkles his touch all over the place. He’s a solid outfielder at second base but doesn’t have the added impact to carry a defensive-only second base profile. He has some time at shortstop, where he looks passable, but he’ll need to improve there to have real upside/downside value. Signed for $3.2 million through 2022, Colmenarez swings and misses at an unbearable rate and appears to have moved on from shortstop almost entirely (albeit a 2B/3B outfielder). Baker has maintained a decent hit tool, but he hasn’t had much power against Double-A, and he’s not a good enough defender that his bat can be hit.
Deep arms with relief profiles
Enmanuel Mejia, RHP
Cesar De Jesus, LHP
Gerlin Rosario, RHP
Adam Boucher, RHP
Duncan Davitt, RHP
Engert Garcia, RHP
Garrett Acton, RHP
Haden Erbe, RHP
Mejia was part of that great Pirates little Rule 5 outing a few years ago. He was sitting 94-98 with a mid-80s slider and poor command in Durham. His MiLB player page indicates he was suspended for three games last week. De Jesus is a 20-year-old lefty who went 93-96 with an extra slider in the complex before being promoted to Charleston, where things didn’t work out for him. He has a roof on the left if he is able to restore something approaching effective command. Rosario is a big-framed 22-year-old righty with a nasty splitter and slider. He’s a high arm slot player whose fastball only sits around 90 and doesn’t have good fastball command, but hitters don’t seem to see any of his second game and he’s dominated a long relief role this year until his swing gets out of hand. recently. The 6-foot-5 Boucher was the club’s 10th-round pick out of Duke last year. He has a 96 fastball and a very good slider/cutter combination, but the imbalance in his lower half causes his delivery consistency to drop.
Davitt is a low slot/slider whose delivery looks like many Giants prospects. He is having A-ball success as an older starter. A 24-year-old righty, Garcia has hit 97 as a first baseman in Charleston and could be useful if he can find a good second pitch and some consistency. A former A’s first base prospect who was released in 2023, Acton signed with the Rays and is currently on the injured list for the full season. His lively, short-armed delivery creates an evil act in the hands of good people. He looked like a good fastball/slider when he was healthy in Oakland’s system. Erbe has a 94-97 mph fastball that he throws at a high three-quarter mark and struggles to cover the zone. There’s also a solid cutter with a bit of depth and a fade changeup in his arsenal, but he tends to get crazy with those as well. You will need to find the area more often to be trusted to have a balanced up/down.
Depth of First Throw Strike
Cole Wilcox, RHP
Nathan Wiles, RHP
Sean Hunley, RHP
Wilcox signed a $3.3 million draft bonus in the third round in 2020, then was dealt to the Rays as part of the Blake Snell deal. His stuff has been supportive. His fastball sits in the mid-90s and he complements it with a short mid-80s slider and changeup that struggles to produce consistent action. His strikeout record has been solid since entering the pro ranks, and he can provide length when needed, but he doesn’t miss bats or get a lot of ground balls. Wiles commands his 90-94 mph fastball well and his 84-88 mph cutter stays in barrels with its late bite. He throws his changeup to both left-handed and right-handed hitters and his best shows significant depth. Hunley isn’t fast but he fills the zone with his 88-90 mph sinker, slider with great depth, mid-70s curveball, and fadeaway changeup. No pitch in the arsenal can produce consistent whiffs, but Hunley sprinkles his mix into the area and produces weak contact.
Changed Damage
Nick Bitsko, RHP
JJ Goss, RHP
Bitsko has had an unusual and unfortunate career thus far. If you remember, he was originally supposed to be on the 2021 roster but was rescheduled to 2020 shortly before the pandemic, making him difficult for teams that didn’t prioritize the underclass to scout at all. Bitsko still went in the first round, but he started having injury problems almost immediately and those have persisted to this day. He returned from his latest illness in May but made only two appearances before being shut down again. Goss had an ERA over 5.00 last year. This season, he’s moved to the bullpen, where his velo (which sits at 93-94 mph) and ability to miss bats have bolstered others. He’s still using all of his pitches from his debut and may be able to junkball his way into a long relief role.
System overview
Once again one of the best programs in baseball, the Rays have a high mix of big-time impact talent at the top of their organization to go along with the overall depth. As is often the case, their pro scouting department has had a major impact on the farm system, in part because the Rays are a highly traded team that often moves a big-name player every few years due to their budget constraints. A willingness to acquire more versatile players in the minors helped them trade a few impact prospects on the roster. Several pro trade acquisitions have recently been drafted by college pitchers that the Rays then develop, sometimes temporarily. About five years passed between when they found Jacob Lopez and where he started.
The Rays also tend to try to switch up the role when they draft or acquire a player. There are many players in the program who were college recruits but are being developed as starters in pro football, or players who play a stronger defensive position than they did as ateurs. That applies to three of the top 10 players in the program.
The big league team started the season after eight games due to pre-existing injuries to Jeffrey Springs (who returned to Durham yesterday), Shane McClanahan, Drew Rasmussen, and Shane Baz (who was in the tail end of his rehab). The Rays suffered through disappointing performances from many of their hitters (especially Randy Arozarena) to win this one. They recently traded Aaron Civale, the first baseman they invested a little money in last year. It sounds like the Rays will take a trade position at the deadline and that the program could get some foie gras’d prospects. There is so much depth at third base, in particular, that they may need to engage in deals where they part with hopes of avoiding a big 40-man breakout in the near future.
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