RaysDangerous
Kaitlin O’Toole is joined by SI’s senior writer Tom Verducci for more on why the Rays are the best team in baseball for the shortened season.
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00:00Major League Baseball is coming back with a shortened season and expanded roster.
00:09Based on these new guidelines, the Tampa Bay Rays may be the most dangerous team this baseball
00:14season.
00:15Joining me now is SI senior writer Tom Verducci.
00:18Tom, the Rays won 96 games last year with the lowest payroll in baseball, and a shortened
00:24season actually plays to their strengths.
00:27Why is no team better prepared for this season than the Tampa Bay Rays?
00:31I'll give you three reasons.
00:33Pitching, pitching, and pitching.
00:35No, really.
00:36The games that will be played coming out of a short spring training are exactly the kind
00:40of baseball the Rays like to play.
00:42You're going to need a lot of pitchers, especially early on in this 60-game schedule.
00:47And to me, there's no team in baseball that has better pure stuff from pitcher one through
00:5315 than the Rays.
00:55You can start with their starters, Blake Snell, Charlie Morton, Tyler Glasnow, elite stuff.
01:01But out of the bullpen, it's one guy after another throwing upper 90s, nasty breaking
01:07pitches.
01:08They have something to get every kind of a hitter out.
01:11So matching up a lot of bullpen pitchers on hitters, the Rays do that as well as anybody
01:18in baseball.
01:19Yeah, they're dangerous.
01:21I love that.
01:22You mentioned some of these elite pitchers that they have, but this new lineup is going
01:27to take them further into almost 15 deep into pitchers.
01:29So let's talk about a new guy that they picked up, Peter Fairbanks, and the difference he's
01:33making on the Rays.
01:34Yeah, I like to call him the perfect Ray because probably nobody heard of this guy.
01:39It's a great story to begin with.
01:41Two Tommy John surgeries, had an ERA of about four and a half in the minor leagues.
01:45And after his second Tommy John surgery, he literally retaught himself how to throw a
01:51fastball and his velocity kicked up to about 99 miles per hour.
01:56He is an elite arm.
01:58Nobody can spin a baseball in the upper zone quite like Peter Fairbanks.
02:02And this is why I say the Rays are the antiques roadshow of baseball, because the way people
02:08find Picassos in the attic or Tiffany lamps in the basement, the Rays just find these
02:13pitchers and other organizations and they turn out to be better in Tampa than they are
02:18anywhere else.
02:19Peter Fairbanks is just one of many where they've hit the jackpot.
02:23All right, we're looking forward for baseball coming back and everybody's got to watch out
02:27for the Rays this season.
02:28Thank you so much for your insight, Tom.
02:30Appreciate it.
02:31Thank you.