{"id":194905,"date":"2026-03-17T13:15:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T13:15:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/194905\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T13:15:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T13:15:08","slug":"tampa-bay-rays-starting-rotation-made-official","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/194905\/","title":{"rendered":"Tampa Bay Rays starting rotation made official"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Opening Day is right around the corner the Tampa Bay Rays starting rotation plans have been made official.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">We already knew that Drew Rasmussen had been selected as the team\u2019s Opening Day starter but we now know how the rest of the starting rotation will fill out.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Here is the Rays plan every five days<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Drew Rasmussen will serve as the team\u2019s ace while newcomers Nick Martinez and Steven Matz file in behind him. Ryan Pepiot will be counted upon to be a workhorse in the rotation early on in the season as both Steven Matz and Shane McClanahan will have their innings limited with Matz transitioning back into a starters role and McClanahan returing from injury.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">With the way the schedule works out, this line up Shane McClanahan to be the starting pitcher when the Rays make their highly anticipated return to Tropicana Field on April 6th when they\u2019ll take on the Chicago Cubs. It will be McClanahan\u2019s first time pitching at Tropicana Field since July 22nd, 2023; only three players to suit up for the Rays that day remain with the team, Yandy Diaz, Kevin Kelly, and McClanahan.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Opening Day is just over a week away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Opening Day is right around the corner the Tampa Bay Rays starting rotation plans have been made official.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":194906,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[2239,135,137,136],"class_list":["post-194905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-general","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}