What is the story about?
Opening Day is here tomorrow and the bold predictions are flying in the Slack chat, so I’ve pulled together the hottest takes from masthead. Some are reasonable. Some are absolutely nuclear. All of them are compelling.
Let’s get into it with Daniel, who set things off:
Daniel Vonderwalde
- Jake Fraley hits 20+ home runs
- The Rays make the playoffs, with Brody Hopkins starting one of those postseason games
Ian Malinowski
- Griffin Jax ends the season as a starter with a combined ERA under 3.00 across all roles
- Drew Rasmussen finishes top-5 in Cy Young voting
- Ben Williamson puts up more fWAR than Giancarlo Stanton
- Yandy Díaz, Jonathan Aranda, and Junior Caminero all outproduce their projections thanks to the new pitching machines (nobody else has the old setup baked into the projections anymore)
Danny Russell
- The Rays finally have a closer, and his name is Bryan Baker — he picks up 37 saves
- But the Rays lose 80 games
Jason Collette
- Bryan Baker records 20 saves
- Ian Seymour picks up 10 wins
- Chandler Simpson steals 100 bases and adds a bunch of infield hits (he had 58 steals last season) — he’s going to love playing on the turf instead of weather-hardened infields
Darby Robinson
- Shane McClanahan wins Comeback Player of the Year
- Carson Williams has a 20-20-20 season (20 HR / 20 2B / 20 SB)
- My biggest hot take: the 2026 season will remind us a lot of 2018 Rays
Cole Mitchem
- Jacob Melton posts the highest WAR/PA ratio of any Rays position player
- Rays total catcher WAR ranks in the top half of baseball
- Chandler Simpson has a strong first half, then gets surprisingly traded at the deadline for a controllable big-league pitcher
Brett Rutherford
- Ryan Pepiot leads all Rays pitchers in fWAR, even after an early-season IL trip
- The Rays trade Drew Rasmussen at the deadline but remain in contention, with Brody Hopkins seamlessly replacing him in the rotation
- The Rays finish the season with two catchers who are not currently in the organization
Homin Lee
- Nick Fortes has the highest fWAR by a Rays catcher since Mike Zunino in 2021
- Three Rays pitchers will throw over 162 innings (I called this last year too… and it actually happened)
Adam Sanford
- Kevin Cash is fired at the end of the season (Editor’s note: !!!)
Bradley Woodrum
- Drew Rasmussen finishes 4th or better in Cy Young voting (much to the delight of whichever team employs him)
- Xavier Isaac is traded mid-season (internal projections have soured on his contact rate, and the front office looks to cash out on his prospect value)
There you go — every hot take ready for print. Please now feel empowered to argue with (or defend)
specific site contributors all season long.
Which hot takes are you buying? Which ones are you laughing at the most? Let us know in the comments.
Let’s go Rays!
