In his latest report for MLB.com, Adam Berry reports that despite their recent reversal of fortunes, the Tampa Bay Rays are “not giving up” on the 2025 MLB season. Berry quotes Rays president of baseball operations Erik Neander as saying he believes his team – who currently stand in fourth place in the American League East with a 54-54 record – are “more capable and, frankly, better than their current record”, and that they still “have a chance.”
Perhaps they do. After all, the Rays – despite their 21 losses in the last 29 games – are still only 3.0 games back of the Seattle Mariners in the Wild Card race. Baseball is an inherently streaky sport, and one downswing does not obligate another. A couple of bad months for formerly excellent relievers Kevin Kelly and Edwin Uceta should not lead to too much doomsaying.
But perhaps that chance is too small to justify being buyers on the market. And if a team does not intend to buy, it should sell – to do neither is to achieve nothing.
Last Year’s Market Flooding
Having traded away so much veteran quality last season, the Rays do not have much to sell. Last July, the Rays flooded the MLB trade market, with each of Randy Arozarena, Isaac Paredes, Shawn Armstrong, Andrew Kittredge, Amed Rosario, Aaron Civale, Zach Eflin, Phil Maton, Tyler Zuber and Jason Adam dealt in that one month alone.
This year, at least, Neander appears to have ruled out any such fire sale. Perhaps bitten by the fact that all three of Adam, Paredes and Arozarena were All-Stars this season, any more selling the Rays do will seemingly be circumstantial rather than an emphatic reshaping of the team, coming only 12 months after the last one. This is, more or less, the right call.
That does not, however, mean standing pat. Just as selective aggression is key to quality team-building, so too is selective regression.
Rays Highly Value Team Control
The most important attribute the Rays value in trade is that of “team control”. By and large, this means acquiring young players who have yet to break into the bigs, but it can also mean young veterans who can be cost-controlled by the MLB’s Collective Bargaining Agreement, which stymies player freedom of movement and salary payments for many seasons. As such, the Rays can and do go old for young, because young is cheaper, if not necessarily better.
The Rays have already done that in a small way, trading soon-to-be-free-agent catcher Danny Jansen to the Milwaukee Brewers for infield prospect Jadher Areinamo, at the same time as trading outfield prospect Matthew Etzel to the Miami Marlins in exchange for Jansen’s replacement, Nick Fortes. It is a downgrade at the catching position in exchange for the added team control of Fortes, who is only 18 months younger than Jansen yet who is arbitration-eligible for the next three years.
Team control is only of use, though, when the player involved is worthy. Fortes is not a frontline MLB player, and the Rays’ perennial need for a catcher is as profound as ever. To prioritize team control at a time of .500 baseball is akin to washing the bathroom sinks in the Nakatomi Plaza. There are other things to be doing right now.
Rays Need Players Worth Team-Controlling
The Rays have kept open an 18-season window of above-average baseball, despite relatively tiny revenues and salary expenditure, largely through following a set formula that prioritizes youth over experience and team control over free agency, so as to maintain considerable payroll flexibility due to Major League Baseball’s arbitration system. In order to do that, they trade veterans when opportunity arises, for those more willing to open the checkbook.
To do so often smarts, and costs the team in multiple ways. Usually, it means immediate backward steps on the field (with the offset of quality returning prospects only made manifest down the road), and the lack of continuity on the team makes for less attachment opportunities to those on the roster. Baseball, like all sport, is a business, but the Rays are particularly keenly aware of the cynical nature of that, and feel compelled to act accordingly. When fan favorites like Randy Arozarena get traded as a part of this cycle, it stings, especially when they go on to make history the following season.
Yandy Diaz, Pete Fairbanks and – to a lesser extent – Brandon Lowe stand together as the Rays’ tenured fan-favorite veterans, and all have at least one more season of that coveted team control left in them. But unless the team’s rumored sale changes the franchise’s trajectory fast, the Rays are not likely to pay the trio what is required to keep beyond 2026. If they are going to depart anyway, why keep them around now, for the sake of continuing a .500 season and an outside shot at a wildcard spot, having already gone so far down this road last July?
Rays “Not Giving Up on 2025” – But They Probably Should