{"id":561498,"date":"2026-03-24T16:48:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T16:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/561498\/"},"modified":"2026-03-24T16:48:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T16:48:07","slug":"rays-top-prospect-carson-williams-to-start-at-shortstop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/561498\/","title":{"rendered":"Rays top prospect Carson Williams to start at shortstop"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a data-clubhouse-guid=\"f8a579c6-08b9-7584-141d-317d0645763b\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com.au\/mlb\/team\/_\/name\/tb\/tampa-bay-rays\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Tampa Bay Rays<\/a> top prospect <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/mlb\/player\/_\/id\/4872692\/carson-williams\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Carson Williams<\/a> will enter the season as the team&#8217;s starting shortstop, it was announced Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>The 22-year-old Williams, who is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com.au\/mlb\/story\/_\/id\/47684202\/top-100-mlb-prospects-2026-kiley-mcdaniel-konnor-griffin-kevin-mcgonigle-jesus-made\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">ESPN&#8217;s No. 39 overall prospect<\/a>, has a solid spring, hitting .281 with a home runs and a stolen base in 32 at-bats. He&#8217;s an above-average runner and defender at shortstop with a plus arm and plus raw power.<\/p>\n<p>Editor&#8217;s Picks<\/p>\n<p>2 Related<\/p>\n<p>He became the favorite to win the Rays&#8217; starting shortstop job after <a data-player-guid=\"7f6f327d-4e9f-1d22-d011-ab4a663b49cd\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/mlb\/player\/_\/id\/40576\/taylor-walls\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Taylor Walls<\/a> suffered a right oblique injury last week and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com.au\/mlb\/story\/_\/id\/48250475\/rays-ss-taylor-walls-start-season-il-due-oblique-issue\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">will be placed on the injured list.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Williams, the 28th overall pick in the 2021 draft, hit .172 with a .219 on-base percentage, 5 homers, 12 RBIs and two steals in 32 games with Tampa Bay last season. He batted .213 with a .318 on-base percentage, 23 homers, 55 RBIs and 22 steals in 111 games for Triple-A Durham.<\/p>\n<p>The Rays open the season on the road against the <a data-clubhouse-guid=\"c781e7c6-2c5b-beaf-55b8-999c76f76661\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com.au\/mlb\/team\/_\/name\/stl\/st-louis-cardinals\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">St. Louis Cardinals<\/a> on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>ESPN&#8217;s Kiley McDaniel and The Associated Press contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tampa Bay Rays top prospect Carson Williams will enter the season as the team&#8217;s starting shortstop, it was&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":86157,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,85],"class_list":["post-561498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561498","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=561498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561498\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=561498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=561498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=561498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}