PT TOMORROW: AL East—What to make of Rays’ ‘bullpen day’

Tampa Bay Rays

Initially considered to be merely a first-month-of-the-season ploy, Rays manager Kevin Cash recently clarified that, no, it has always been the team’s plan to take an unconventional approach to its rounding out its rotation, and a scheduling a “bullpen day” every a fifth day could continue indefinitely, if the first six weeks are a success.

While it will take some time to fully grasp the implications of this new strategy, one hint to how this could play out is that all of the six pitchers to be deployed—Matt Andriese (RHP, TAM), Anthony Banda (LHP, TAM), Yonny Chirinos (RHP, TAM), Austin Pruitt (RHP, TAM), Chih-Wei Hu (RHP, TAM) and Ryan Yarbrough (LHP, TAM)—have significant recent experience as starters, though Hu and...

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