The Rays are in the ALCS with a starting mix that tells you everything about how they think. Drew Rasmussen opened Game 1.
Freddy Peralta handled Game 2, the only real deviation from the pattern. Now Griffin Jax is set to start Game 3, and Nick Martínez is expected to take Game 4.
Strip away the one trade-deadline exception, and Tampa Bay’s postseason rotation is built around the same kind of pitcher the club has turned into a calling card: the reliever who becomes a starter.
That isn’t a one-off trick for Tampa Bay. Over the last several seasons, the Rays have made a habit of taking arms that were working out of bullpens elsewhere and stretching them into starters of real value.
In a sport that has slowly drifted back toward that kind of flexibility, no team has done it better. Not close.
Rasmussen was the first of the group to make it work. Tampa Bay got him in the Willy Adames trade with Milwaukee in May 2021, after the Brewers had used him strictly as a reliever.
The caution there made sense. Rasmussen had already gone through two Tommy John surgeries early in his career and was carrying serious mileage by the time he reached his mid-twenties.
The Rays let him stay in the bullpen for a bit after the deal, then pushed him into the rotation.
On paper, it was a strange move. Rasmussen was working with a four-seamer and slider at the time, and that doesn’t exactly scream starter’s toolkit.
But the Rays kept building him up. In August 2021, he added a cutter, and it became a major part of his mix the next season.
From there, he kept layering on pieces until he had something much closer to a true starter’s arsenal. For a while, it looked like Tampa Bay had pulled off another clean development win.
Then came 2023, when Rasmussen blew out his elbow again and had his third major surgery. At that point, it would have been easy to think the experiment had reached its end. Instead, it became part of a bigger pattern.
Jeffrey Springs followed a nearly identical path. The Rays acquired him in February 2021, kept him in the bullpen that season, then shifted him to the rotation in 2022.
He succeeded there before needing Tommy John surgery in 2023. Tampa Bay stayed with him as he worked through a long recovery, and then moved him to the Athletics, where he has remained in that role, even if the results haven’t exactly taken off.
The Rays kept going anyway. In May 2023, they traded for Zack Littell and converted him into a starter in July.
Unlike Rasmussen and Springs, Littell stayed healthy on Tampa Bay’s watch. He went from a forgettable middle reliever to a useful back-end starter, and the money followed.
Littell was paid $5.72 million in his final year of arbitration eligibility after making just $1.85 million the year before, a jump tied to the fact that he threw more innings in 2024 than in any two previous seasons of his career.
There’s a version of this story that leaves Tampa Bay looking reckless, as if the team was squeezing every last ounce out of these pitchers and asking them to take the risk. But there’s another side to it, too.
The Rays increased the earning power of Rasmussen and Springs, and they signed both to team-friendly extensions that guaranteed them money they might not have seen as relievers. Even in Littell’s case, the transformation clearly changed his value.
That’s the Rays’ blueprint now: not just finding value, but rebuilding it in bulk.
In Other News...
Brewers World Series Return Just Created A Rare Milwaukee Sports Moment
Major League Baseball has already started shaping the 2026 calendar around a Brewers team that has put Milwaukee in an unusual spotlight. With the World Series set to begin at the end of October, the league announced all seven games will start at 8 p.m. Eastern, and Milwaukee would have the first two games at home if the Brewers get there. The Cleveland Guardians or Tampa Bay Rays would host the middle portion depending on how the American League Championship Series plays out.
The ripple effect reached across town, where the Bucks adjusted their home opener to make room for a potential citywide overlap. Their game was moved from 7 p.m. Central to 3 p.m., a rare scheduling move that gives Milwaukee fans a chance to keep one eye on the court and another on a possible October baseball run. It is the kind of crossover moment that only comes around when a team is deep enough into a postseason chase to force everyone else in the city to plan around it. [Read more 🡒]
Brewers World Series Breakthrough Came With A Tribute Milwaukee Fans Felt
Bob Ueckers absence has lingered over Milwaukee all season, and with the Brewers heading to the World Series for the first time since 1982, the timing has given this run a deeper emotional charge. Uecker, who died in January 2025, was so tied to the franchise that every big moment has felt inseparable from his voice, his humor and the decades he spent turning Brewers baseball into something larger than the box score.
Jeff Levering understood the setting when the pennant was clinched, and his tribute during the moment landed the way only a Milwaukee call could. For fans, this is no longer just a chance to celebrate a breakthrough that has been more than four decades in the making. It is also a way to carry Ueckers legacy into October, with the citys most familiar baseball voice still echoing through its biggest stage. [Read more 🡒]
Brewers Just Saw Why The Dodgers Face A Huge Skubal Decision
The Dodgers went all-in on Tarik Skubal before the Aug. 3 trade deadline, bringing in the left-hander to firm up a rotation they believed could carry them through October. For much of the stretch run, he looked like the kind of difference-maker they had in mind, and his presence only added to the sense that Los Angeles had done enough to chase another deep postseason run.
Then came the NLCS, where Milwaukee swept the Dodgers and turned the focus from what Skubal brought on the mound to what comes next around him. The uncertainty now is bigger than one October stumble, because the Dodgers still have to figure out how long they can actually keep him in the fold with the landscape around the sport potentially changing in a hurry. [Read more 🡒]