{"id":644942,"date":"2026-03-26T17:34:47","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T17:34:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/644942\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T17:34:47","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T17:34:47","slug":"rays-opening-day-lineup-for-2026-has-some-surprises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/644942\/","title":{"rendered":"Rays Opening Day lineup for 2026 has some surprises"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The Rays Opening Day lineup for 2026 has been posted by manager Kevin Cash, and has some surprises compared to the expected starters for the season, in part because a left hander is on the mound in for -Rays first round pick Matthew Liberatore, who was traded to St. Louis in the January 2020 deal for Randy Arozarena.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Liberatore has been on the Cardinals since 2022, and makes his first Opening Day start opposite of Drew Rasmussen, who also gets the nod for the first time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Here\u2019s how the Rays line up against the Cardinals southpaw:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Rays Opening Day lineup for 2026 has been posted by manager Kevin Cash, and has some surprises&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":644943,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2377],"tags":[5,4,297,2550,68,42466,2551,2549],"class_list":{"0":"post-644942","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-mlb","10":"tag-rays","11":"tag-tampa-bay","12":"tag-tampa-bay-rays","13":"tag-tampa-bay-rays-news","14":"tag-tampabay","15":"tag-tampabayrays"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116296687686272263","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644942","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=644942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/644943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=644942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=644942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=644942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}