{"id":421845,"date":"2026-10-08T02:52:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T02:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/421845\/"},"modified":"2026-10-08T02:52:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T02:52:10","slug":"rays-took-liam-hicks-risk-yankees-wouldnt-and-its-a-big-reason-why-they-are-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/421845\/","title":{"rendered":"Rays took Liam Hicks risk Yankees wouldn&#8217;t \u2014\u00a0and it&#8217;s a big reason why they are here"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At catcher, the Rays took a risk that the Yankees did not.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Hitting sixth and behind the plate Wednesday was Liam Hicks, who has been excellent since <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/08\/03\/sports\/rays-acquire-catcher-liam-hicks-in-trade-with-marlins\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">arriving from the Marlins<\/a> at the Aug. 3 trade deadline.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Hicks, a second-year catcher who was enjoying a breakout season in Miami, was shipped across Florida and instantly turned a middling position for the Rays into a strength, replacing Hunter Feduccia as the lefty-hitting platoon partner with Nick Fortes and batting .288 with an .819 OPS in 41 games to finish the season.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Of course, offensive contributions at the spot are nearly secondary.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At catcher, the Rays took a risk that the Yankees did not.\u00a0 Hitting sixth and behind the plate&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":421846,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[99052,3817,163001,3821,110,45911,202,204,203,199,201,200,3815],"class_list":["post-421845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-austin-wells","tag-mlb","tag-mlb-playoffs","tag-new-york-yankees","tag-sports","tag-sports-plus","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-tampa-bay-rays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421845","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=421845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421845\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/421846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=421845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=421845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=421845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}