Shane Baz has been with the Tampa Bay Rays franchise for seven seasons now, and has appeared with the big league club for parts of four of them. It would have been more were it not for a series of injuries.
Acquired as the player to be named later in the ludicrously one-sided deal that sent Chris Archer to the Pittsburgh Pirates back in August 2018, Baz had prior to the 2025 season only managed to pitch in 23 games since making his MLB debut back in 2021. He nevertheless showed electric stuff and a lot of promise in those 23 games, managing to post a 2.2 WAR in the 2024 season by pitching to a 3.06 earned run average and .200 batting average against in 14 outings, all starts.
Coming into the 2025 season, Baz – along with fellow prized young starting prospect Taj Bradley – was supposed to be healthy, finally get the chance to prove himself over a full season, and emerge as a future frontline rotation option as the Rays‘ eternal churn trundles along. However, the unfortunate reality is that Baz has struggled.
Struggles Attributed To Third Pitch
On the 2025 season so far, Baz has pitched more innings than in his entire prior career in the majors combined, but the results have not been there. In 144.0 innings across 26 starts, he has yielded a 5.19 ERA, despite only allowing a reasonable-enough 8.8 hits and 3.4 walks per nine innings – largely on account of how much hard contact he has given up.
By and large, Baz’s struggles have come from the loss of his slider. Once one of his better pitches – per Baseball Savant, opponents hit only .167 off of it in 2024 – Baz seemed to lose the feel on the pitch to begin the season, and was seeing it shellacked. Baz has thrown 82 sliders this year (79 of which were to right-handers), and has given up a .429 average and an astronomical 1.286 slugging percentage on it, on account of six home runs. The one-time put-away pitch became a juicy meatball that just did not drop any longer.
An in-season adjustment saw the slider replaced with a cutter – similar in shape, but with a higher velocity, averaging 90.0 miles per hour compared to the slider’s 86.7 – that has fared slightly better. However, opponents are still hitting .317 off of that pitch.
There is therefore a big gap between Baz’s best two pitches and the remainder. His four-seamer, with its average of 96.9 miles per hour and plenty of rise, pairs well with his knuckle curve (whose novelty value as an increasingly rare pitch in an era of sweepers) to mix a potent two-pitch mix. If no third pitch is going to break through, though, perhaps the bullpen is Baz’s best prognosis.
Still Plenty Of Time For The Rays
To be fair to Baz, even amid his struggles, he has shown flashes of reaching his high level of potential. In his most recent outing, for example, despite a difficult first inning in which he gave up three runs to a Cleveland Guardians team who had been on a history-making run-scoring drought, he returned to pitch five perfect innings. The stuff plays; the future remains bright.
It is also certainly not time to give up. Despite a confused trade deadline picture in which they opted not to throw in the towel when they probably should have done, the Rays are not competing for anything, and have all the reason in the world. The team clearly felt Bradley – traded to the Minnesota Twins at the deadline in exchange for Griffin Jax – was never going to make the required grade. But moves such as the Bradley trade are very un-Rayslike. Another trade of that nature should not be expected.
If Baz’s slider does not come back, however – or if its replacement cutter does not start to break more – then the two-pitch mix starts to sound more bullpenny. Baz’s change-up is OK and elicits soft contact when he can keep it down, but one of these peripheral offerings needs to make a leap if his projection is to remain that of a starter. There is still plenty of time, but 2025 was supposed to be a break-out year; regression was not expected.
Should Shane Baz Move to the Rays Bullpen?