2025 Team Previews - Tampa Bay Rays
As part of my 2025 team previews series, I go through all fantasy-relevant players on the Tampa Bay Rays ahead of the 2025 season.
Check out the intro and team links page here.
Intro
The Rays will play in Steinbrenner Field this year, as the Trop won’t be ready for baseball after the damage done by Hurricane Milton. That means we have two teams (the Athletics) playing in minor league parks for 2025 and beyond. That’s not a great situation. There are way fewer seats to sell, which will impact the game environment and revenue generation for those franchises.
Their new stadium has the same dimensions as Yankees Stadium. That’s a benefit to left-handed power. That also functions as a potential downgrade for Rays’ pitchers. But it’s tough to know the exact park factors since we haven’t seen many games played there.
Roster
The Rays are always tinkering with the roster. They seem to be in more in sell mode right now, but there are still probably 75+ wins in this roster, especially with them getting some big-name pitchers back.
The lineup is a weakness, and I don’t expect them to add much to it.
But the rotation looks very good, even after the recent Jeffrey Springs trade. I personally would have Drew Rasmussen in the #4 slot there over Zack Littell, and we’ll talk about that as we go.
Getting McClanahan back is huge, and it gives the Rays a very strong 1-3, and a potentially lethal starting five. This organization still seems to be very good at getting the most out of their players (but we can never really know that, right? We’d have to have alternate realities to really know what the other options were).
Let’s get into the details.
Hitters
Junior Caminero
Age: 21
Pos: 3B
Caminero is now the featured player on the Rays. He is still very young, as you see there, but he’s been one of the game’s top prospects for a couple of seasons now and will no doubt start the 2025 season in the Major League lineup. He missed plenty of time with an injury in 2024 but did spend almost a couple of months in the Majors at the end of the season.
177 PA, .248/.299/.424, .724 OPS, 21.5% K%, 6.2% BB%, 6 HR, 2 SB
Just six homers in 177 PAs is really not what you were hoping for from a guy with this much alleged raw power, but we can forgive him on that with his age, lack of experience, and the fact that he was coming off of injury.
Let’s take a look at his minor league track record before focusing on the skills. From 2023-2024 in the minors:
746 PA, .309/.367/.561, .929 OPS, 20% K%, 7.8% BB%, 44 HR (17 PA/HR)
You can understand why he generated so much hype. He has an elite home run rate and a very low K%. This is exciting stuff.
Here is the batted ball profile from his short time in the Majors in 2024.
GB%: 49%
EV90: 108.1
Max EV: 116.3
Brl%: 11.8%
Cont%: 68%
That is a lower contact rate, so I could see the K% moving up above 25% or so. However, the fact that he kept that under control so well in the minors is a good sign. His Swing Percentage was right at the league average of 48%, so he seems neither aggressive nor passive at the plate.
The one bad thing about the profile last year in the Majors was the extremely low sweet spot rate at 25%. That was the fourth worst in the entire league (100 BIP minimum). In some ways, that’s bad news, but it also provides plenty of room for improvement. You would expect some natural regression here (read more about that here), and that will turn into more extra-base hits.
The risk with Caminero is that the strikeout rate comes up to 27%, and he continues to have trouble finding the right launch angle range. That could send him to a .240 batting average and a 20-25 homer season. The upside is enormous, however. He has huge power, so if he does keep the K% down and improve the launch angles, he’s got 40+ homer potential pretty easily.
Rank
He certainly has a much higher ceiling than most of the guys that I’ll have him ranked around. The outlook for 2025 looks somewhat similar to Jake Burger and Matt Chapman. He’s a couple of slots ahead of them in ADP, and he’s currently the #8 third baseman off the board as I write this. My projections have him at #8 as well.
Projection
643 PA, 80 R, 30 HR, 89 RBI, 5 SB, .233/.290/.433, $10.38 roto value
Brandon Lowe
Age: 30
Pos: 1B/2B
It has been three straight seasons with significant time missed for Brandon Lowe. He’s been under 450 PAs in each of the last three seasons. The production has been there when healthy, however, so Lowe is someone who might be worth a little bit of a risk, depending on the league type. Let’s check the trend:
2024 was his best season since that 2021 season, where he went bonkers with 39 bombs. His xwOBA got back over .350, the Brl% came up to 12.4%, and he even dropped the K% under 27%. That’s very good stuff. The power has never been in question. He’s homered 42 times in the last two seasons in just 861 PAs; that’s a homer every 20.4 PAs. That’ll play to a 30-homer season if he can play 150+ games.
The biggest question is the health. There is a long list of injuries on his Fox Sports page. In the last two years he’s had issues with a toe, an oblique, a “side”, a knee, a leg, a neck, and a toe again.
I don’t like to dock guys majorly for injury sheets. He played a full season in 2021, so it’s not as though he’s a Buxton type who has never been able to pull it off.
I’ll project Lowe for 550 PAs or so and lean into that. But let’s keep looking at the numbers. Here is more from his 2024 season:
He was very aggressive at the plate with that 55% swing rate. But that didn’t turn into a problematic chase rate. For hitters with swing rates between 52-58%, the average chase rate is 35%. Lowe was down at 30%.
He’s a good hitter, and he’s going to be cheap in drafts. Adding on the much-improved ballpark setting, you have a guy who could be one of the best picks in the draft next year if he stays healthy. That’s the kind of pick I like to make late in the draft.
Rank
He is my model’s #9 ranked 2B, but the ADP has him at #20. I will be drafting plenty of Brandon Lowe this year, it seems.
Projection
560 PA, 78 R, 27 HR, 69 RBI, 8 SB, .240/.319/.455, $9.35 roto value
Josh Lowe
Age: 27
Pos: OF
Lowe was one of the big breakouts of the 2023 season, but he followed that up with a stinker in 2024.
He went from a 20-homer, 32-steal season to just a 10-25 performance.
There was time on the IL. He had a hip injury in March, a hamstring thing in April, a “side” issue in May, and then a knee thing in August. None of that is good to see, but maybe it did have something to do with the worse performance.
The most interesting thing I’m seeing here is the strikeout rate. He had a problem with that in 2022, a massive one. And he vastly improved on it in 2023, but then in 2024, it jumped back to 32%. His contact rates over this time:
2022: 67%
2023: 70%
2024: 68%
A two-point drop isn’t massive, but it’s worth a couple of K% points.
The other thing that Lowe didn’t have going for him last year was the quality of contact. His .333 xwOBA from 2023 fell to .297 in 2024, and his xBA fell 50 points!
Who is the real Josh Lowe? It’s hard to tell, but I’d say it’s more likely that he’s the 2022 & 2024 guy rather than the 2023 guy. What we know is that he’ll hit some dingers. His 90th percentile EV was 104.9, and he has a double-digit barrel rate for his career. He’s great at getting the ball in the air, and that will turn into homers in this new home ballpark. We also know he’ll be aggressive on the bases as long as he’s feeling okay. The power and speed are there, and that keeps him on my radar.
Chances are, however, that he’ll be a batting average suck on your team. He’s also potentially a platoon guy.
Josh Lowe Career vs. LHP: 54 wRC+
Josh Lowe Career vs. RHP: 121 wRC+
That makes him tougher for weekly-lock leagues, but it doesn’t take him out of the conversation, given the HR/SB damage he can do against righties.
Rank
Lowe is a pretty unique player, and his range of outcomes is wide. He could be a 25/25 guy with health, but it could also go very badly for him if he doesn’t get some of the K% improvements from 2023 back.
Projection
491 PA, 63 R, 17 HR, 64 RBI, 24 SB, .236/.299/.412, $8.81 roto value
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