Buyers or Sellers? As Play Resumes Friday, Rays Boss Erik Neander Still Isn't Sure

TAMPA, Fla. — The All-Star break is over and the Tampa Bay Rays get back to work on Friday, at home for a week against last-place teams Baltimore and the Chicago White Sox,. They are 50-47 and 1.5 games on on the wrong side of the playoff picture, thanks to a 4-12 swoon to end the first half.

With two weeks to go before the trade deadline, Rays baseball operations president Erik Neander said these next two weeks are critical before the July 31 trade deadline, and there is no etched-in-stone plan at the moment.

Are the Rays buyers or sellers? Neander can't answer that question right now.

“We’ve got to make up some ground,” Neander said during a 30-minute Zoom call with local media on Thursday afternoon. “There’s a belief in this team, but these are really big games that will have some sort of influence on our decision-making as the month draws to a close.

“Most of those games, when we were playing well, we were scoring a lot of runs. We were preventing runs. And things were timing up really well. I think we’re going to see good starting pitching. We’re going to see the bullpen get back to an accustomed level of ability for those that have it.''

This is certainly an interesting time for they Rays, who are playing in 10,000-seat Steinbrenner Field in Tampa this season after Hurricane Milton did millions of dollars of damage to Tropicana Field. They are renters, but when they went 25-9 for a month-plus and suddenly were just a half-game out of first place in the American League East, they became legitimate contenders again.

At their best, their starting rotation — which hasn't missed a start all year — are among the best in the game. Their bullpen, before this horrific collapse the past two weeks, had a 3.05 ERA on June 25 that was second-best in baseball. They've hit well at times, and have led all of baseball in average with runners in scoring position for much of the season.

But they've also been held to one run or less a whopping 22 times.

So there's no telling how good this team really is. Can they make postseason noise as presently constituted? Even Neader has no clue.

“This is a good team, but in terms of just kind of how aggressive I think we’re likely to be, that’ll be affected some by our wins these next couple of weeks,” Neander said. “I’d like to think that just about anything I think this group is capable of over these few weeks will lead us in a position where we’re looking to at least improve somewhere on the roster, if not significantly so.''

There's also this huge side pot in that Stuart Sternberg is about to sell the Rays. Does that hang over any decisions about to be made? Neander says no, that it's business as usual. It's still all about winning baseball games, and the best personnel decisions to accomplish that goal.

“I’m not going to comment on the potentials of things as we haven’t throughout the process, but it’s business as usual as we’re trying to win games,'' Neander said.

“If we’re in position to be in contention for a postseason spot or greater than that, we’re going to do all we can to improve their chances. We’ve been through a lot of all year, all the way back from the storms, but we’ve stayed very present. Our players have, our staff has, and we’re going to continue to operate that way.”

Watch the full Erik Neander press conference

To watch the entire Erik Neander Zoom call, CLICK HERE