Coming off back to back losing seasons, Baseball’s intellgentsia and proprietary projection systems had it out for the Tampa Bay Rays this past winter. MLB.com ranked them 22nd before a pitch was even thrown and a pair of experts didn’t predict them to be competitve in the Wild Card race. PECOTA projected 81 or 82 wins while ZiPS bleep-blooped a 74-win team. But they’ve started the season 18-12, demonstrating a return to their historical track record of flustering prognosticators with their own brand
of data-driven baseball.
How are they doing this? They’re not the best offense. Their team wRC+ of 97 is ranked 16th in MLB, as are their 137 runs scored. They do lead the American League in stolen bases with 34, but I’ll talk about those more in a bit. Their 8.9% is pedestrian (22nd) as is their .128 ISO (25th), but their sparkly 19.1 K% as a team is second-best behind only the Blue Jays. Their team OBP of .327 is 10th in MLB and when they get on base not only can they use their team speed to steal, they can also use it to run the bases well. Their +1.4 Baserunning Runs is 7th in MLB (the Giants are, of course, dead last in this category, as they are with most things because they’re a bad baseball team).
Leading the Rays in this baserunning prowess is 25-year old Chandler Simpson, who’s already at +1.2 Baserunning runs through 30 games. He is incredibly fast (29.6 ft/sec sprint speed — 99th percentile). Here’s a highlight video put out by MLB.com from his 2025 rookie season and if you watch it you’ll notice that he has unusual speed because of where he is when the camera angle changes. He is already 75% of the way to second base by the time the catcher uncorks a throw, for example. Or when the camera cuts from the pitcher’s mound angle to the outfield angle, he’s already closed the gap so that he’s taking just a few steps to make the defensive play.
There is also an early highlight of a bunt that made my stomach rumble thinking when imagining the Giants having to defend it.
Speaking of the Giants, our favorite team (unfortunately), this Chandler Simpson fellow is Buster Posey’s platonic ideal of a Giant. He plays great defense (already +4 Outs Above Average in left and +2.4 Defensive Runs Above Average), makes a lot of contact and doesn’t walk very much (.314/.349/.356 with a 5.4 K% and 7.8 BB%) and is fast. He’s just 1 shy (37) of the team lead for hits, trailing only the veteran Yandy Diaz (38). He has just 1 double and 2 triples. If the Giants don’t keep him off base, it’s going to be a rough series.
But it’s not all Chandler Simpson here. Diaz is off to another great start, leading the Rays with a 152 wRC+ and a really nice 9.8 BB% to 12 K%. 22-year old sensation Junior Caminero hit 45 home runs last season and has 8 already in 2026. But also — and here’s where things get really Rays-y — 27-year old Jonathan Aranda has 7 homers in his first 132 PA after hitting just 24 in his prior 755 across four seasons. He’ll turn 27 at the end of the month and so it’s entirely possible that he’s setup to have a Casey Schmittesque breakout age-27 season.
The Rays are constantly retooling and relying on these breakouts. They traded away longtime Ray Brandon Lowe, their closer Pete Fairbanks, platoon outfielder Josh Lowe, and released lefty reliever Mason Montgomery and Adrian Houser. Their offseason transactions page (as assembled by MLB Trade Rumors) is really quite something. They did, essentially, replace these players in the aggregate through trades and a few free agent signings. Houser is now Nick Martinez, who is off to a terrific start (1.70 ERA in 6 starts). Josh Lowe and Brandon Lowe are a combination of Jonathan Aranda and Jake Fraley? They acquired Ryan Vilade from the Reds to make him a utility player. He had 71 PA before this season and an MLB career triple slash of .141/.200/.188, but in his first 35 PA with the Rays, he’s hitting .344/.400/.406.
On the pitching side, not only has Nick Martinez dazzled, but Steven Matz has been solid (4.31 ERA in 6 starts). Their closer, Bryan Baker, was acquired during last year’s trade deadline and he has capably replaced Pete Fairbanks in the role (7 saves in 11.1 IP, 2.78 FIP). Overall, though, their pitching staff has been about as good as the Giants’, which is to say that it’s basically mediocre. They’ve also used just 32 players (the Giants have used 31). So, why the early season success?
Well, besides playing in Tropicana Field for the first time since it was heavily damaged by Hurricane Milton, I’d say these two stats explain it:
- With runners in scoring position (312 PA), they’ve hit .271/.349/.382. That’s 38 more plate appearances compared to the Giants, who are hitting .254/.301/.385 in the same situations. The batting average, for those who can only see that number, is ranked 9th in MLB. The Giants’ .254 is 14th.
- The pitching staff’s .251 batting average on balls in play leads the sport by a decent amount (Atlanta is #2 at .256, the Dodgers #3 at .260). However, the Rays’ defense (Chandler Simpson excepted) has been poor, ranking 28th by FanGraphs’ measure with a -12.5 Defensive Runs Above Average (the Giants are 16th with -4.1). The only explanation is that their staff is funky, and when you consider the looks given by Nick Martinez, Steven Matz, and Shane McLanahan, before even considering the bullpen, that makes a lot of sense. Combine the funk with the 26th-ranked Park Factor, and it would seem that they are a naturally difficult team to hit, even if their team ERA and all the expected pitching stats have them in the 4.00s.
- OK, there’s also a secret third thing: despite being a team in the ultra competitive AL East, they’ve only had one series against an AL East team. Sure, they swept the Yankees in Tropicana Field, but still! One series against a tough division. The rest of their schedule to this point has been Cardinals, Brewers, Twins (6 games!), Cubs, White Sox, Pirates, Reds, and Cleveland.
The Giants are going to try to brute force their way through this statistically optimized roster to get some wins. Will the Giants’ “Trust Yer Gut” Baseball frustrate the time tested and successful track record of the Rays model? Skepticism is warranted!
Series overview
Who: San Francisco Giants (13-18) at Tampa Bay Rays (18-12)
Where: Tropicana Field | St. Petersburgh, Florida
When: Friday at 4:10pm PT, Saturday at 3:10pm PT, Sunday at 10:40am PT
National broadcasts: None.
Projected starters
Friday: Robbie Ray (LHP 2-3, 2.70 ERA) vs. Shane McClanahan (LHP 2-2, 3.91 ERA)
Saturday: Landen Roupp (RHP 5-1, 2.55 ERA) vs. TBD
Sunday: Tyler Mahle (RHP 1-4, 5.87 ERA) vs. Steven Matz (LHP 4-1, 4.31 ERA)
Players to watch
Rays
Chandler Simpson: I talked about him a lot already, so, maybe this should’ve been Cedric Mullins, one of the other offseason additions and one I didn’t mention because he’s been bad. .126/.184/.232 in 105 plate appearances. Not good defense in center (-0.9 Defensive Runs Above Average, -1 Outs Above Average) and a real drag on the roster (-0.7 fWAR). We just watched a moribund franchise turn their season around against the Giants. What about a single player?
Junior Caminero: I talked about him already, so, maybe this should’ve been a blurb about second baseman Ben Williamson. Okay, sure, let’s do that. He came to the Rays via a three team trade back in February between the Mariners, Rays, and Cardinals. That’s the trade that sent Brendan Donovan to Seattle. Williamson was the Mariners’ 2nd round draft pick of 2023. In 188 MiLB games (825 PA) he hit .291/.377/.415 with 30 stolen bases and about a 2:1 strikeouts to walk ratio (very good). Last year, he got into 85 games for Seattle and that K:BB shot up to 4:1 and his triple slash of .253/.294/.310 wasn’t great. But not every rookie hits the ground running. In 27 games with the Rays so far, he’s hitting .250/.318/.338 with a 2:1 K:BB. No homers yet, but 5 doubles, a triple, and a trio of SBs.
Casey Legumina: The Rays just traded for him from the Mariners (literally April 24th) and I’m trying to figure out what the Rays see in this 28-year old reliever who has bounced around a bit. Well, he has a 10.1 K/9 in the minors, so, that’s a start. But in 84.1 MLB innings, a 5.76 ERA, 1.3 HR/9, 4.3 BB/9, and 8.8 K/9. Not good. He has a four seam fastball and a sinker and both average 93-94. His sweeper, though, is high spin (2,744 rpm). Okay, well, maybe that’s it. Except… no. In his first appearance for the Rays on April 29th, he became a fastball-changeup guy. So, I might be a little interested to see if they’re going to have him limit the sweeper and play up his change.
Giants
Do we have to?
Casey Schmitt: Look, yesterday, I gushed about the guy. Is he the next Rich Aurilia?
Tyler Mahle: It would be nice if he had a good start. He’s never pitched in Tropicana Field before.
Rafael Devers: Tropicana Field is a tough place to hit and so that’s something to keep in mind as Giants fans try to hold out hope that Rafael Devers will return to being a middle of the order force. But also, in 55 games there, he’s hit just .230/.303/.382 with 7 homers.
Tony Vitello watch
It’s starting to feel like he’s deferring too much to his coaches and the front office’s guidance and I wonder if when the team hits rock bottom he’ll finally be able to unleash the supposedly great baseball guy that’s in there. Things are not looking too good right now and it does seem like the worst fears of this setup are coming to pass.
I have a tough time embracing the idea that he should be given grace while he adjusts to this new context. I think some of the people asking for this are mainly projecting themselves into his cleats rather than staying outside of the matter, and I think others simply have low expectations in general. The Giants didn’t have to give him this job and it’s okay to expect excellence in a high pressure, high status, high profile position. Of course, when teams are stinky doo-doo losers like the Giants are, the clubhouse chatter gets a little more fraught and the manager has fewer answers. More pressure in a pressure situation would be difficult for any experience level in that position.
Prediction time
Surely, the Giants will win a game in this series. Surely!…?
