{"id":573393,"date":"2026-02-15T04:30:33","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T04:30:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/573393\/"},"modified":"2026-02-15T04:30:33","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T04:30:33","slug":"rays-jonny-deluca-in-line-for-short-side-role","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/573393\/","title":{"rendered":"Rays&#8217; Jonny DeLuca: In line for short-side role"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>    <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"VideoPlayer-backgroundImage\" alt=\"default-cbs-image\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1770851060_344_video-slate.png\"\/><\/p>\n<p>                            <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbssports.com\/mlb\/teams\/TB\/tampa-bay-rays\/\" aria-label=\"home team page\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><\/p>\n<p>    <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"TeamLogo-image\" alt=\"team logo\" src=\"https:\/\/sports.cbsimg.net\/fly\/images\/team-logos\/329.svg\" loading=\"lazy\"\/><br \/>\n                                                <\/a><\/p>\n<p><a class=\"Annotation-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cbssports.com\/mlb\/players\/2836800\/deluca\/fantasy\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">DeLuca<\/a> (hamstring\/quad) is likely to see regular at-bats against left-handed pitching this season, per John Romano of the Tampa Bay Times.<\/p>\n<p>DeLuca stands out as one of Tampa Bay&#8217;s few right-handed-hitting outfielders, considering the club&#8217;s primary options consist of as lefty-hitters Chandler Simpson, Cedric Mullins and Jake Fraley. DeLuca ended the 2025 season on the 60-day injured list due to a right quadriceps strain, so he&#8217;ll need to prove he&#8217;s healthy during spring training before the <a class=\"Annotation-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cbssports.com\/mlb\/teams\/TB\/tampa-bay-rays\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Rays<\/a> trust him to handle this role. The 27-year-old posted a promising .812 OPS with six stolen bases through 59 regular-season plate appearances amidst an injury-ruined 2025 campaign, and it doesn&#8217;t sound like he&#8217;ll open the new year in a spot for everyday action.<\/p>\n<p>        More News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DeLuca (hamstring\/quad) is likely to see regular at-bats against left-handed pitching this season, per John Romano of the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":553027,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2377],"tags":[5,28,1398,4,297,2550,68,2551,2549],"class_list":["post-573393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa-bay-rays","tag-baseball","tag-fantasy-baseball","tag-jonny-deluca","tag-mlb","tag-rays","tag-tampa-bay","tag-tampa-bay-rays","tag-tampabay","tag-tampabayrays"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116072772163156498","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573393","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=573393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/553027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}