{"id":34508,"date":"2025-05-17T19:11:09","date_gmt":"2025-05-17T19:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/34508\/"},"modified":"2025-05-17T19:11:09","modified_gmt":"2025-05-17T19:11:09","slug":"tampa-bay-rays-breakout-star-turning-heads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/34508\/","title":{"rendered":"Tampa Bay Rays Breakout Star Turning Heads"},"content":{"rendered":"

While the\u00a0Tampa Bay Rays<\/a> have been trying to figure out how to pile up more victories in the American League this season, they’ve been watching Jonathan Aranda mash at the plate. Aranda has been a pleasant surprise for manager Kevin Cash and his Rays teammates.<\/p>\n

But Aranda had to deal with injuries last season, cutting into his prospective playing time at first base. This season, though, appears to be taking a different course for him. He’s making the most of it, becoming the Rays’ full-time starting first baseman.<\/p>\n

What about his statistics? He’s been nothing short of spectacular.\u00a0Through Friday night’s action,\u00a0Aranda is hitting .315 with six home runs<\/a> and 20 RBIs. He’s got an OPS of .927 and a .523 slugging percentage. Those numbers are far and away better than his career numbers.<\/p>\n

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Let’s look at some granular numbers from Aranda’s season, this time up until Thursday’s games. Aranda was a pure boss when it comes to breaking balls, slugging .690 against them. He’s been waiting on the pitch, not flailing away at the plate. What about off-speed pitches? Aranda was mashing at a .269 clip with a .462 slugging percentage.<\/p>\n

Jonathan Aranda is filled with lots of confidence early this season for Tampa Bay<\/p>\n

\u201cI’m feeling good right now. Feeling a lot of confidence,\u201d Aranda said through interpreter Eddie Rodriguez,\u00a0MLB.com<\/a> reported. \u201cI’m just looking for that pitch that I can drive, and that’s what I’ve been doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cash knows that he’s got a diamond in the rough, so to speak, with Aranda on his team. He’s not complaining one bit.<\/p>\n

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\u201cHe’s really balanced. And I think even when he gets off balance, or the timing gets messed up, he keeps his hands and the barrel in the zone a long time where he can get out on his front foot and just push a ball the other way,\u201d Cash said. \u201cWe saw him do that a handful of times on the [last] homestand. That’s a sign just of a really good hitter that’s seeing the ball well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Don’t be surprised if Aranda ends up getting a spot on the AL All-Star Team when the summertime classic takes place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While the\u00a0Tampa Bay Rays have been trying to figure out how to pile up more victories in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34509,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2377],"tags":[5,307,5723,4,297,2550,68,2551,2549],"class_list":{"0":"post-34508","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tampa-bay-rays","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-jonathan-aranda","10":"tag-kevin-cash","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-rays","13":"tag-tampa-bay","14":"tag-tampa-bay-rays","15":"tag-tampabay","16":"tag-tampabayrays"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114524761969591722","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}