Are the Rays Changing the Cooking Time for Prospects?

Editor’s Note: Please join me in welcoming Jason Collette back to DRaysBay. He has written across the blogosphere at Baseball Prospectus, Rotowire, and more. We’re lucky to have him! – DR

It is truism accepted by many that the Rays slow cook their prospects like brisket on a smoker.

Anyone who has been on this site for awhile likely remembers the #FreeDesmondJennings movement in 2009 and 2010 as we all watched the club struggle offensively, particularly against lefties, while Jennings amassed nearly 1000 plate appearances for Durham before finally cracking the regular lineup in 2011. At the end of the day, Jennings never did reach expectations, in no small part because leg injuries destroyed his speed. He was waived by the club in 2016, having spent his best playing days in Durham.

To the baseball commentariat, the Desmond Jennings approach to prospect development remains the Rays modus operandi.

For example, here is a video of Derek Van Riper, Eno Sarris, and Keith Law discussing Carson Williams

Those comments were also echoed by Chris Towers from CBS Sports on BlueSky:

Does this perception accord with the current reality of the club?

There is little doubt that the club has had a history of slowly promoting its top prospects over the years; some suspect that the Rays have sought to manipulate service time to get the most prime years possible out of the players before the expensive arbitration years kick in.

If I had similar timelines for all other clubs, that would be an easier topic to dive into, but that data is not easily accessible. I do have data for all Tampa Bay prospects who have appeared on MLB.com’s top 15 list since the 2011 season.

Let’s begin with the hitters, who averaged 553 plate appearances in Triple-A before advancing.

Lost in the focus on Jennings is the fact that several others saw 900+ plate appearances in Durham before finding their way to the big league club in some capacity. Both Brandon Guyer and Mikie Mahtook never achieved more than short-side platoon roles in the outfield despite their prospect pedigree and the Tim Beckham story has been well-covered over the years.

Willy Adames and Josh Lowe both play into the arguments made by the pundits; each saw over 800 plate appearances with Durham before making it to the Rays and earning full-time roles.

Adames first joined the big league club in 2018 after 40 games in Durham for a three-game stint in late May, and then again in mid-June before second demotion around the All-Star break only to be recalled for good in late July just before Adeiny Hechevarria was traded to Pittsburgh for Matt Seelinger.

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Lowe lost 2020 to the pandemic, but spent nearly the entirety of 2021 in Durham hitting .291/.381/.535 with a 20-20 season and earned a two- game promotion in early September. A strong spring earned him a role with the big league club out of camp the next season, but a .188/.257/.344 line with 38% strikeout rate resulted in a ticket back to Durham on May 1st. He made it back to Tampa Bay in late June and hit .239/.299/.342 with an improved 31% strikeout rate before a second demotion to Durham where he remained for the rest of the 2022 season. Lowe has remained with the Rays since, outside of some rehab appearances with Durham this past season.

Jake Bauers and Wil Myers were also Durham darlings. Bauers was an on-base machine but the club decided to stick with Logan Morrison in 2016 and was rewarded with a 30-homer season from Morrison in 2017. Bauers finally did make the club in 2018 but an unimpressive debut season led them to deal Bauers to Cleveland to acquire Yandy Diaz. (This trade has been a clear win for the Rays; Bauers has not lived up to his prospect hype, while Diaz has developed into the one of the five best players in franchise history by oWAR.)

Myers had 759 plate appearances in Triple-A, but nearly half of those came with the Omaha Stormchasers. With the Rays he notoriously won Rookie of the Year despite only playing in 88 games, and then showed up with the worst case of bedhead in the history of television to accept his award. He was dealt away to San Diego where he eventually had a strong run of success in 2016 and 2017 before fading away. I would rather not revisit the trade which sent him to San Diego because the particulars are still too painful to discuss.

The mixture of middle infield prospects that contains Daniel Robertson, Vidal Brujan, Christian Arroyo, and Osleivis Basabe never did pan out at the big league club. Robertson easily ended up being the best of the bunch but was designated for assignment in the pandemic season and bounced around the next three seasons before calling it quits after the 2023 season.

Nathaniel Lowe spent extra time in Triple-A as it was reported the Rays were concerned about his ability to handle velocity at the upper levels of the strike zone. That issue indeed played out once Lowe had full-season exposure with the Rangers in 2021, and has persisted outside what appears to be an outlier season in 2022 even as he’s settled in as a solid player at the big league level. The Rays have enjoyed the 5th-best fWAR from first base since dealing Lowe away to Texas even if the assets received in return of Lowe never amounted to anything in the organization. Richie Shaffer preceded Lowe in the first base pipeline, but the exposure to the major league roster in 2015 accentuated concerns the club had of his issues with contact throughout the minor leagues and the club flipped Shaffer along with Taylor Motter in a deal which brought the value of Andrew Kittredge to the bullpen.

Overlooked in that “slow cooking” reputation is that Brandon Lowe and Wander Franco each spent less than half a season at Durham before sticking at the major league level. It may also come as a surprise to many to learn that Randy Arozarena does have 594 plate appearances in Triple-A, but the entirety of those were done with the Memphis Redbirds before St. Louis dealt him to Tampa Bay along with Jose Martinez, for Matthew Liberatore, Edgardo Rodriguez, and a competitive balance pick.

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The front office recognizes when they have something special, whether it’s Arozarena’s bat or Kevin Kiermaier’s outfield prowess. Kiermaier, you may recall, was called up in 2013 for the wild card tie-breaker game specifically for his defense. One could argue that the only reason Kiermier did not break camp with the club in 2014 was because the Rays had what seemed to be a full outfield: defending rookie of the year Wil Myers in right field and Desmond Jennings in center with Matt Joyce and Brandon Guyer platooning in left.

At the end of the day, the case of Willy Adames may be the most damning because the front office decided to give Hechevarria and Beckham 147 games at shortstop that season rather than accelerate the service time clock of the key centerpiece of the David Price trade. The flip side to that argument is that Adames played the entirety of the 2017 minor league season in Durham as a 21 year old. The last five players to play at least 120 games at shortstop in their age 21 season in the majors are Xander Bogaerts (2014), Addison Russell (2015), Carlos Correa (2016), Gleyber Torres (2018), and most recently, Ezequiel Tovar (2023.) There have been but eight players under the age of 22 who have played a full season at shortstop in this century if we add the trio of Adrian Beltre (2000), Elvis Andrus (2009 & 2010) and Starlin Castro (2010-2011) to the mix.

A similar story plays out with the pitchers. Let us first focus on the starting pitching prospects.

Jake Odorizzi leads the list with the most innings worked in Triple-A, but that time was nearly evenly split between Omaha in the Kansas City system and Durham once he was acquired in the deal which sent James Shields and Wade Davis to the Royals. Ian Malinowski did a dive into Odorizzi’s stuff the day of Odorizzi’s debut with the club and noted that all his secondary pitches were not as impressive as what was happening with his fastball concluding, “Overall, this is not the repertoire of a front-line starter.” It’s almost as if the extra time in Durham was more about pitch development than service time manipulation.

Jeremy Hellickson was banging on the door in 2010 for a club which won 96 games and already had David Price, Matt Garza, James Shields, Jeff Niemann, and Wade Davis in the rotation. That quintet each made 29 or more starts while working 168 or more innings.

Simply put, there was no room for Hellickson at the inn because the club enjoyed an unprecedented amount of starting pitching health that season and there was no way the club was going to pull a struggling James Shields from the rotation after what he had done for the club in previous season. He began his career with an uncanny ability to strand runners until the Luck Dragons had enough of his defiance and made him suffer in 2013.

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Nate Karns was the return from the Nationals when the Rays sent Jose Lobaton and Felipe Vazquez to Washington. The Rays once again had four starters pitching at least 165 innings that season, but the fifth spot was meshed between Erik Bedard and Jeremy Hellickson as the duo went 5-11 with a 4.65 ERA over their 28 starts. The Rays opted to use other players such as Cesar Ramos, Drew Smyly, and even Alex Colome that season to cover starts from the rotation but gave Karns his shot in the early summer with three starts before sending him back to Durham for the rest of the season. Karns failed to make it five innings in any one of those outings while allowing 17 hits including 5 home runs in the 12 innings of work. Karns did have a solid 2015 season before being sent to Seattle in a deal which netted Danny Farquhar, Brad Miller, and Logan Morrison.

Jake Faria spent parts of 2016 and 2017 with Durham before making it to the majors with some immediate success in 2017. That success was derailed by a severe oblique strain in mid-May of 2018 which kept him out until August. He rejoined the rotation again in 2018, but was demoted to the pen and eventually dealt to Milwaukee in 2019 for Jesus Aguilar.

Chris Archer made his debut with the Rays in 2012 with two starts at the end of June before returning to the club as part of September roster expansion. That 2012 saw four starters make 31 or more starts and work 175+ innings while Alex Cobb and Jeff Niemann made 31 starts combined to cover the five spot. Archer, like Hellickson, did not really have a spot to join the club, but did so the following season once opportunities presented themselves to him due to injuries and underperformance on the roster.

Blake Snell dominated three levels of the system in 2015 with a 15-4 record and a 1.41 ERA finishing the season going 6-2 with a 1.83 ERA for the Bulls. The 2016 Rays were clearly not going to be a contending club, and it was obvious that Snell had the makings of a front-line starter so Snell’s assignment to Durham to begin the season was seen for what it was – service time manipulation. Snell was called up to make a late April start at Yankee Stadium and was amazing, but he was not seen again until the middle of June once the service time had been sufficiently manipulated. Two years later, he won the first of his two career Cy Young awards but ended his Rays career in a dramatic fashion, walking angrily off the mound during the sixth inning of Game 6 of the World Series. Worse yet, he was dealt away for Blake Hunt, Cole Wilcox, Francisco Mejia, and Luis Patiño. No matter how one attempts to prune that trade tree, it will not look good.

Brent Honeywell was a tragic story as he was all but assured of pitching for the club in 2018 after his breakout 2017 season in the minors which saw him strike out 172 batters 136.2 innings across two levels. However, his arm had different plans for him as he underwent several surgeries before debuting in the 2021 season. His career never panned out as expected, but he can at least cherish the World Series ring he won with the Dodgers. Brendan McKay has a similar story, but lacks the ring to show for his struggles. Jose DeLeon tore his UCL in spring training of 2018 after a cup of coffee with Tampa Bay in 2017 and returned for three outings before being dealt away in 2019. Baz falls into this group to a point because the lost 2020 season, a managed workload in 2021, and eventual Tommy John surgery in early 2022 have led him to spend more time in Durham than with the Rays since being acquired in the Chris Archer deal.

Matt Moore could have been the best success story of the pitching development because Moore needed just 52.2 innings in Durham before being called up to join the club in the heat of a pennant race in 2011 including his unforgettable outing at Yankee Stadium on September 22nd when he struck out 11 Yankees over five shutout innings and seven more shutout innings in the ALDS against the Texas Rangers. Moore made the big league club in 2012, due equally to his accomplishment and the fact he signed a five-year, $14,000,000 contract that offseason negating the need to manipulate any service time. He went on to pitch well that season as well as 2013 before leaving the mound in early April of 2014 in Kansas City with a torn UCL and was never the same pitcher with Rays, or any club, as a starter. He did eventually find a niche as an effective reliever in the majors in 2022 and 2023 before a rough patch with the Angels this past season.

Finally, we have the pitchers who converted to relief while in the system. Few pitchers are drafted and developed as relievers, so top prospects are given their time to let the story play out. Mason Montgomery is the most recent success story; his results in the minors were a mixed bag of success and struggles, yet he looked fantastic as a reliever in his nine games with the Rays last season and so far in camp this month. Alex Colome eventually pitched his way out of a starter role once it was clear his best path forward was in the bullpen. Since the saves statistic was created, 30 pitchers can claim at least 150 career saves as well as 15 or more games started, Colome is one of those 30 guys. Jake McGee and Ryne Stanek were always destined for relief and did not require much time to get to the big league pen.

Lastly, you could win some bar trivia if you asked people to correct guess how long the Rays allowed Shane McClanahan to slow-cook in Durham before finally calling him up because the next pitch McClanahan throws for the Durham Bulls will be his first one.

Simply put, when the Rays have recognized special talent in recent years, they have flash fried those prospects out of the minor league frying pan and onto the major league platter. The days of slow roasting prospects appear to be over.

Carson Williams is slated to play this season in Triple-A and the strikeout issues he has had to date are a good reason for him to spend time in Durham. Chandler Simpson is already making waves in camp with his blazing speed, and given that speed is a young man’s game, him not breaking camp with the club could absolutely be more about the fact he has fewer than 80 games played above A-ball than any type of service time manipulation. Yoniel Curet too hasn’t seen the dirt in Durham, but there is also no need to rush his talented arm to the big leagues with the current depth (knock on any piece of wood within reach) on the roster.

For now, the accusations the Rays habitually slow play their prospects is unfounded because their better products in recent seasons have spent little to no time in Durham.