ST. PETERSBURG -- The Rays will spend Saturday night like a lot of baseball fans, glued to Game 5 of the American League Division Series and waiting to see who survives.
Their AL Championship Series opponent won’t be known until the White Sox and Guardians settle things at Progressive Field, but Tampa Bay already knows this much: the winner gets a trip to Tropicana Field for Game 1 on Monday night.
“We'll find out a lot probably around 11:30 p.m. tomorrow,” Rays manager Kevin Cash said during a Zoom call from Tropicana Field on Friday afternoon. “I think right now, we're just fans of baseball watching two good teams.”
That’s the immediate assignment for the Rays, who are preparing for either AL Central club after already taking care of business in the ALDS. It’s a different kind of wait than the one they faced before the division series, when they were sorting through the Yankees and Red Sox.
This time, the opponent is less familiar, and all six regular-season meetings with each team came before the Aug. 3 Trade Deadline.
The Rays handled both clubs during the season, but in different ways.
Against the White Sox, Tampa Bay went 4-2. The Rays opened by sweeping a series at Rate Field from April 14-16 and outscored Chicago 21-11. The White Sox answered with a three-game sweep of their own at the Trop from July 31-Aug. 2, winning the run total 15-3.
“What we saw of Chicago in the beginning of the season is different than the team they are now, for sure,” Cash said. “We saw midway through they came in here and played really good baseball.”
Cleveland gave Tampa Bay even more trouble in terms of the final score, even though the Rays won that season series 5-1 and outscored the Guardians 20-8. The Rays took two of three at Progressive Field from April 27-29, with their lone loss coming against a gem by Gavin Williams, then swept a three-game set at the Trop from July 24-26. That home set included a sharp 1-0 battle between Drew Rasmussen and Parker Messick.
Take away the Rays’ 11-3 win on July 24, and every other game between these teams was decided by three runs or fewer. Half of those games were one-run games, and two ended 1-0.
“As far as the Guardians go, it feels like it's kind of like a Yankees series where they're always tight ballgames,” Cash said. “Very well-played.
Very well-pitched. Big, timely hits.”
From Tampa Bay’s vantage point, both possible opponents bring their own issues. The White Sox offer plenty of thump, something that could matter against a Rays pitching staff that allowed the eighth-most home runs in the Majors this season with 201.
Chicago finished fifth in the league with 211 homers and was the only team in the Majors with three 30-homer bats: Munetaka Murakami, Miguel Vargas and Colson Montgomery. Chase Meidroth, Sam Antonacci and former Ray Tristan Peters add a different layer with more contact and on-base ability.
The pitching side is less settled for Chicago, which has forced manager Will Venable to lean on creative game-planning throughout the ALDS. Even so, Sean Burke has given them a true front-line arm for a stretch, posting a 2.74 ERA with 112 strikeouts in 98 2/3 innings over his final 18 appearances and working well in Game 2 of the ALDS.
Cleveland looks like the tougher assignment on paper, and the regular-season meetings backed that up. The Guardians have a knack for turning games into nail-biters, and their top-end arms can tilt a series. Messick and Williams both pitched well enough to beat the Rays during the season, and closer Cade Smith can turn the ninth inning into a headache.
The Guardians also make teams work. They can squeeze production out of their staff, and their lineup is deeper in some ways than the Rays have seen before, even without a single 20-homer hitter this season. José Ramírez still sets the tone after a down year at the plate, and he has help from Jo Adell, Chase DeLauter, Travis Bazzana and Steven Kwan, among others.
The Rays don’t get a vote. They just get the scouting report, then the matchup. And after Game 5 ends, the waiting stops.
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