{"id":337236,"date":"2026-07-11T21:46:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T21:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/337236\/"},"modified":"2026-07-11T21:46:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T21:46:09","slug":"rays-ben-blair-picked-by-tampa-bay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/337236\/","title":{"rendered":"Rays’ Ben Blair: Picked by Tampa Bay"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n This page may contain affiliate links. If you click and sign up, make a deposit, or place a wager, we may earn a commission at no additional cost to you.\n <\/p>\n

The Rays<\/a> selected Blair with the No. 49 overall pick in the 2026 First-Year Player Draft<\/p>\n

Blair has a funky delivery and a deep repertoire that keeps hitters off balance. The 6-foot-3 righty from Liberty pumps mid-90s fastballs while mixing in quality secondaries in his cutter, slider and changeup. He logged a 3.53 ERA, 1.03 WHIP, 113 strikeouts and a 4.3 percent walk rate in 94.1 innings as a junior. Blair has a reasonably high floor due to his command of a deep arsenal, and his pitches could improve even more in pro ball, which would give him a high ceiling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This page may contain affiliate links. If you click and sign up, make a deposit, or place a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":337237,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[32832,135,3815,137,136],"class_list":["post-337236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-fantasy-baseball","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-bay-rays","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337236","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=337236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337236\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/337237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}