Record: 52-26 (19-8 for the month)
1st place AL East, 13 games up on Baltimore
June was the month when the Rays truly separated themselves from the pack in the AL East. In addition to playing great baseball once again, the rest of the division has turned mediocre with Baltimore 2nd at 40-40 so this should be a second half cakewalk.
We did make one major move early on the month. Rookie Luis Figueroa had been underwhelming at 1B (237/304/399), not giving up the production needed at a bat-first position. So we made a trade to pick up another young first-sacker:
Weaver was the sixth overall pick back in 2029 and had worked his way up to the big club this year but like Figueroa wasn't hitting a lot (208/326/417). We liked his 60/60 bat though and figured it was worth a dice roll even if we did have to part with a halfway-decent pitching prospect in Cardenas who had made it as high as Durham but struggled this year. Well the deal paid off as all Weaver has done since joining our lineup is hit 388/487/597 with 4 HR and 12 RBI in 20 games. (Figueroa meanwhile has resumed raking at Durham (289/372/639 with 8 HR in 23 games) so there's still hope for him too. Elsewhere there was little roster movement with the only injury in June being 2B
Owen Paino missing 10 days before returning. The day-by-day:
A bit of an odd month as we suffered two series sweeps but in between them won 13 straight games. The big picture:
As great as the Rays' season has been Texas has been even slightly better and the month ended after the first two games of a series we had with the Rangers that saw Tampa Bay win both to pull within 1/2 game of them for best in MLB.
An interesting profile as the only categories we lead the league in are batter WAR and pitching strikeouts but we're near to the top in almost every other one with no weaknesses - except perhaps playing on the road. We're an unfathomable 30-4 at Tropicana Field but .500 away from home.
Since we're roughly midway through the season the individual numbers will be YTD, although I'll not some big Junes.
The two big offseason acquisitions on offense, Kath (free agency) and Argueta (trade) have been everything we hoped for, Subaru continues to do Subaru things, but the big surprise has been the renaissance of
Ben Schmidt. When we acquired him mid-season from Toronto in 2031 we thought we were acquiring a franchise cornerstone when he finished the season with 39 HR, 137 RBI and 6.4 WAR. But in three full seasons since he's combined for only 4.2 WAR and barely has exceeded those full-season 2031 HR/RBI numbers in that 3-year span. But while he still isn't the slugger he was that season (although he did hit 329/370/533 in June), he's rebounded to hit for average, get on base and play elite OF defense as is on pace for a little over 4 WAR. He's projected for $15M in arbitration next year and looked like a sure-fire non-tender at the start of the year, but he may just be worth keeping (or trading). The other player of note from June was OF
Jon Bailey, who basically took
Chris Crisp's job as the DH against righties thanks to a 368/400/697 month with 6 HR and 14 RBI in 19 games.
The pitching continues to be great with top four starters all excelling and Sesay looking like a Cy Young candidate. The Taiwanese phenom Thean was also great this month (more on that in a bit) and the only weak link in the rotation is the veteran Lambert, who has mega-prospect Dillon Vokey breathing down his neck if he doesn't get going, making him a candidate for trade or demotion to long relief.
Now about Thean, who seems to have gotten over his early-season penchant for giving up homers:
Thean was also named AL Rookie of the Month for June.
As for the farm system, there's Vokey and well....some other guys. Olivo and Sullivan should be productive MLB OFs in the next year or two and of course Weaver is already raking for the big club but we're going to hope have a really good draft in a couple of weeks to beef up this thin pool of prospects.