{"id":319353,"date":"2025-11-30T22:01:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-30T22:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/319353\/"},"modified":"2025-11-30T22:01:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-30T22:01:07","slug":"rays-interested-in-zach-eflin-adrian-houser","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/319353\/","title":{"rendered":"Rays Interested In Zach Eflin, Adrian Houser"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Rays are known to be perusing the market for shorter-term starting pitching<\/a> help as they look to fill out their 2026 rotation, and Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times<\/a> reports that a pair of familiar names are being discussed by the team as potential targets: right-handers Zach Eflin<\/a> and Adrian Houser<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Eflin, 32 in April, signed a three-year, $40MM deal with the Rays prior to the 2023 season. He made 50 starts for the Rays before being traded to the Orioles at the 2024 trade deadline. In that time, he posted a 3.72 ERA and a 3.26 FIP with a 23.5% strikeout rate against a 3.2% walk rate. His 2023 season in particular was very strong, as he finished 6th in AL Cy Young award voting with a 26.5% strikeout rate against a 3.4% walk rate with a 3.50 ERA and 3.01 FIP across 177 2\/3 innings of work. His strikeout rate fell to 19.6% last year, however, and this past season the bottom completely fell out from Eflin\u2019s performance. He was limited to just 14 starts for the Orioles by injuries, and when he was healthy enough to take the mound he struggled to a 5.93 ERA with a 5.64 FIP with a 16.2% strikeout rate.<\/p>\n

Houser, 33 in February, was acquired by the Rays from the White Sox at this year\u2019s trade deadline. He made ten starts with a 4.79 ERA and a 4.38 FIP, though his overall season was much stronger than that. In 125 innings between Chicago and Tampa, Houser posted a 3.31 ERA and a 3.81 FIP across 21 starts this past year despite a 17.8% strikeout rate and 7.3% walk rate. Despite those strong overall results, Houser\u2019s weak ratios combine with a long history as a bottom of the rotation arm or fifth starter (99 ERA+ from 2019-24) to make the 2025 season look like an outlier in his career, and while the Rays are an organization known for maximizing their pitchers his ten starts in Tampa didn\u2019t inspire much confidence.<\/p>\n

Both pitchers have flashed mid-rotation ability in the past but head into free agency with significant question marks that could leave them limited to relatively affordable short-term deals. It shouldn\u2019t be a shock that this would be appealing to the Rays, as the club perennially faces a payroll crunch. Topkin suggests the club\u2019s payroll is likely to clock in around $85MM for 2025. RosterResource<\/a> currently projects the club for a payroll of around $94MM, but that would include a $15.5MM salary for embattled shortstop Wander Franco<\/a>, who hasn\u2019t played since 2023 and was convicted of sexual abuse<\/a> earlier this year. He\u2019s been on the restricted list since July of 2024 and has not collected an MLB paycheck ever since. Without Franco\u2019s money on the books, the team\u2019s payroll falls to $78MM, meaning they have around $7MM in budget space for additions.<\/p>\n

That should be enough to sign a low-end rotation arm like Eflin or Houser in free agency, but with other needs to fill (such as a hole at catcher and a desire to improve over Taylor Walls<\/a> at shortstop) Topkin suggests the club could also turn to the trade market. That could be an attractive avenue to acquire cost-controlled talent while also shedding salary if the club parts with a player like Brandon Lowe<\/a>, who is due $11.5MM in 2026 and has been considered a trade candidate for years. Topkin speculatively suggests a reunion with Twins right-hander Joe Ryan<\/a> could be one avenue the Rays could pursue on the trade market. The 2025 All-Star\u2019s projected<\/a> $5.8MM salary in 2026 is certainly affordable, but the link between the Rays and Ryan seems to be largely speculative on Topkin\u2019s part. Other possible trade candidates who would come on affordable salaries this year include Edward Cabrera<\/a> of the Marlins and MacKenzie Gore<\/a> of the Nationals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Rays are known to be perusing the market for shorter-term starting pitching help as they look to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":319354,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[16821,64,63,591,85,25105],"class_list":{"0":"post-319353","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-adrian-houser","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-zach-eflin"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}