The 2025 season is going to be a long, hard year for the Tampa Bay Rays.
The team’s offseason was Murphy’s Law in motion. Hurricane Milton destroyed Tropicana Field’s roof. The Rays will play home games at the Yankees’ George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, but hot Florida summers mean a second half with an inordinate amount of road games.
On the baseball side, it’s another non-playoff year for the Rays unless manager Kevin Cash overachieves them into a Wild Card. Enough pitchers are coming back from major injuries that his usual aggressive pitching strategy won’t be as doable.
Worst of all, the Rays have officially become baseball’s soap opera. At long last, following yet another failed attempt at a new stadium, word on the street is that Stuart Sternberg may finally walk the plank. Per several reports, both Major League Baseball and some of his fellow owners are nudging him to sell the team.
Ignore the Rays on NY sports betting apps. Even under the best of circumstances, either fourth or fifth place in the AL East seems inevitable.
Greatest Addition: Ha-Seong Kim. He’s recovering from shoulder surgery and out until May, but Kim is tailor-made for the Rays. He’s feisty at the plate, a pest on the basepaths, and notorious with the glove. Kim can play three infield positions and owns a career +48 defensive runs saved (DRS), +21 outs above average (OAA), and a +15 fielding run value (FRV).
He’ll be the Rays everyday shortstop when he returns, and should also lightly boost the lineup. Kim’s shoulder held him to a .233 batting average with 11 homers and a 101 wRC+, but he’s better than that. If he’s healthy, there’s no reason a 20-homer season is out of the question.
Greatest Loss: Jeffrey Springs. Injuries can change careers in an instant, but the Rays trading Springs makes little to no sense. He signed a four-year, very team-friendly $31 million extension in 2023 and pitched to an 0.56 ERA in his first three starts that year before needing Tommy John surgery. Springs returned last summer and had a 3.27 ERA in seven starts.
So why did the Rays think it was necessary to trade Springs to the Athletics for a handful of minor leaguers? It’s not as though he was a hard-throwing strikeout artist who blew out his elbow. His average fastball velocity for his career is only 91.7 mph, though it topped out at 89.7 when he came back last year.
But that’s all the more confusing. The Athletics are their own type of pitching lab just like the Rays. Was there really enough concern over Springs’ health and/or price tag that trading him was the only option? This writer thinks not.
Greatest Strength: Kevin Cash. This man has one thing in common with Red Sox skipper Alex Cora: No matter how good or bad their team is on paper, they’ll punch above their weight. He led the Rays to an 80-82 finish, his first sub-.500 season since 2017 when the Rays were…80-82. The Rays missed the playoffs for the first time in five years.
That clearly hasn’t deterred Sternberg and the rest of Tampa Bay’s front office. Cash signed an extension in June and will manage the team through 2030. That’s plenty of time for him to build his next core group.
Greatest Weakness: Cloudy future. This is going to be a very different season for the Tampa Bay Rays, and not in the good way. They have no home stadium, and thus have to rent a minor league stadium from the Yankees. They should be able to get back into the Trop next year, but that’s far from guaranteed.
Aside from that, there is no new stadium deal in sight. Sternberg being pressed to sell the team is a distraction waiting to happen. Relocation should be on the table, perhaps to Montreal, but MLB wants the Rays in Florida.
There is so much uncertainty with the team’s future that trying to predict anything beyond 2025 seems a fool’s errand. Whatever it is, it’s not looking great.
How can the Rays make the best of 2025? It certainly helps that Shane McClanahan and Shane Baz are back in the rotation, though Baz’s 10.40 spring training ERA could be a red flag. Maybe Josh Lowe and Brandon Lowe have bounceback seasons. It’s really just a matter of what happens when Cash tells his men to just go out and play their game.
And above .500 or not, these Rays aren’t making the playoffs. They have solid pitching, but the bats just can’t keep up with the rest of the AL East.
FOR FULL STORY ON STANDARD WEBSITE: ESNY’s MLB Preview 2025: The trials and tribulations of the Tampa Bay Rays | Elite Sports NY