Jeff PassanOct 20, 2026, 12:10 PM ETMultiple AuthorsOpen Extended ReactionsST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Self-awareness is the Tampa Bay Rays’ superpower. A natural disaster tore the roof off their home, and their franchise player torpedoed his career in the ugliest manner imaginable, and never did the Rays fall prey to doubt. Baseball can be brutal and unrelenting and unforgiving, but when the world seemed to conspire against them, the Rays found solace in the one thing in which they never stopped believing: themselves.Their trip to the 122nd World Series, booked with a rollicking 7-3 victory against the Cleveland Guardians in Game 6 of the American League Championship Series on Monday night, crystallized the power of Tampa Bay’s method and delivered madness to the 40,230 who filled Tropicana Field.
Over the past two decades, the Rays had built something meaningful. Competing in a comically moneyed AL East, habitually dispossessed by comparison, the Rays leaned on that acute understanding of exactly who they are — an organization that deifies a culture of questioning, improvement and accountability — as their great equalizer. They stuck to these principles even after the demise of the career of Wander Franco, around whom they planned to build their franchise, and when damage to the Trop from Hurricane Milton forced them to a temporary home for the 2025 season.And so through it all, the Rays did what the Rays always do, which is rely on a process honed through years of commitment to a single purpose: winning — regardless of the impediments that exist.”We have people that truly care about what they do,” Rays president of baseball operations Erik Neander said. “Staff and players alike with a prevailing belief that we can win a championship here.
A relentless pursuit of improvement by way of respecting all our differences and finding the good in each and everybody involved in this organization.”Neander leads a baseball operations department nearly 200 heads deep, and from it was born this group of 26, many of them misfit toys. Junior Caminero and Yandy Díaz, acquired in separate trades with the Guardians three years apart, supplied a pair of late-inning two-run home runs that provided the margin of victory. Freddy Peralta, secured in a deadline deal with the New York Mets in August, contributed 5 1⁄3 innings of high-octane pitching en route to ALCS MVP honors. Fifty-four innings of error-free baseball in the series reinforced that the Rays did not win the most games in the league by accident.
They know who they are, and they spend every day seeking validation not for that but rather for what it breeds.Which is a brand of baseball strikingly similar to that of their World Series opponent, the Milwaukee Brewers, the best team in the National League. The Rays and Brewers are baseball Rorschach tests. Some see them through the lens of their payrolls, 26th and 19th, respectively, and the size of their markets, 19th and 30th. That’s too simple, though.
The Rays and Brewers are not what they spend; they are what they produce, and that happens to be wondrous displays of baseball, from their multidimensional offensive approaches to their parade of arms that propel baseballs in manners that stretch the limits of the human body to the pride they take in minutiae, from defense to bunting to base stealing.This World Series, in other words, is no accident, not some stroke of luck that will be painted as a battle of unlikelies. Doing so is a disservice to everything the Rays and Brewers are, which is proof that the power of money — and suggesting it isn’t an inherent advantage would be disingenuous — has its limits. Namely, organizations that actively commingle the old and new, whether it’s scouting and statistics or small ball and big flies. Without that ethos — and without the certitude that it’s right — Caminero would not have been dancing on the field Monday night, holding a flag declaring the Rays AL champions.It was not the first time Caminero inspired the Trop to ear-splitting decibels Monday, urged on by what was unfolding on the field.
Up in the seventh inning against the Guardians’ impermeable closer, Cade Smith, Caminero saw a split-fingered fastball boring inside and unfurled the fastest swing in the major leagues. Smith had thrown 884 splitters in his big league career without yielding a home run, only to see the 885th clang off the left-field foul pole.Caminero went into showman mode, turning to his teammates and pounding his chest before touching first base. Nearly 40 seconds after his home run trot began, Caminero finished it by stopping a stride shy of home plate, turning toward the stands, pointing to one specific person and crossing his arms, full boss-mode.He was looking at Randy Arozarena, the former Rays outfielder who hit a record 10 postseason home runs the last time Tampa Bay advanced to the World Series in 2020 and punctuated his best moments with that signature pose. Though he’d since been traded to Seattle, Arozarena wasn’t going to miss this game, nor was Tyler Glasnow, the former Rays pitcher who had left in a deal to the Los Angeles Dodgers, winners of the past two World Series.Once a Ray, always a Ray isn’t some platitude.
It is, perhaps, the foremost explanation of who they are and why they find themselves four wins from the first championship in franchise history.Before the ninth inning of Game 6 began, Shane McClanahan found Yandy Díaz in the dugout and told him exactly where Díaz was going to hit a home run. The two are the most tenured members of the Rays, and even if dugout home run predictions are notoriously wrong, McClanahan felt something coming, a function of spending the last six seasons studying Díaz’s consistent excellence.”From Day 1, we’ve instilled it in every single person in this clubhouse,” said McClanahan, who started the 2022 All-Star Game but is out for the postseason with left forearm tightness. “We’re a team-first group. We’re no egos.
We play for each other, and we play hard. That’s why he gave me that bear hug in the dugout at the end. I called the shot, man.”Losing a trade is painful enough — and the Guardians unequivocally lost both deals with Tampa Bay. Caminero has turned from a rookie-ball flier into an MVP candidate.
Díaz has posted the 10th-best on-base percentage in baseball since joining Tampa Bay in 2019. Losing a season to those who left in trades, as Cleveland just did, is insult, injury and indignity. And yet Caminero and Díaz comprise less than 8% of the Tampa Bay roster Neander and his band of dreamers constructed, so often via trades and unexpected signings.Take Nick Martinez. Three days before spring training, the 36-year-old right-hander was unemployed.
Tampa Bay, looking to expand its pitching depth, considered the array of available talent: future Hall of Famer Justin Verlander, veteran Chris Bassitt and right-hander Zack Littell, who, like many that go to the Rays, had demonstrably improved in his time there the prior two-plus seasons before being traded to Cincinnati at the 2025 deadline. When Neander reiterated the primary intention of any pitching signing — “We are going to prioritize the one that’s going to leave a lasting impression on their teammates,” he told his group — they kept gravitating back to Martinez.He was, it turned out, an archetypal Ray despite never having worn navy and Columbia blue. Up at 23. Out of the league four years later and off to the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters.
Resurrected by four years in Japan before a return to the United States led to four solid seasons split between San Diego and Cincinnati. Because Martinez’s fastball rarely exceeds 93 mph, teams let him rot in free agency until the Rays gave him a one-year, $13 million contract.Their read on Martinez proved fortuitous. Pitchers gravitated toward him, as did hitters — rare for clubhouses traditionally bifurcated by position. He spoke English and Spanish.
He had lived a rich baseball lif
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