With their postseason hopes fading, the Tampa Bay Rays will use the remainder of the season to get a have a look at one of many high prospects in baseball. The Rays will name up infielder Junior Caminero on Tuesday, experiences the Tampa Bay Instances. The crew has not but confirmed the roster transfer.
Caminero, 21, briefly made his MLB debut final season, going 8 for 34 (.235) with a house run in seven video games in September. Tampa carried him on their postseason roster as effectively. Caminero went 0 for two with a strikeout in two pinch-hitting appearances within the membership’s two-game Wild Card Sequence sweep towards the eventual World Sequence champion Texas Rangers.
A quad pressure has restricted Caminero to 53 Triple-A video games this season, throughout which he is slashed .277/.331/.498 with with 13 dwelling runs. Our R.J. Anderson ranked Caminero the second finest prospect in baseball coming into 2024. Here is his write-up:
Caminero is already the reply to a enjoyable trivia query: what participant did the Rays receive once they traded right-hander Tobias Myers to the Guardians in November 2021? OK, so of us usually tend to ask the inverse of that query. Caminero has an extremely quick bat. It does not matter that he wraps the barrel; he is in a position to generate big-time exit velocities and simple energy. (His first big-league dwelling run demonstrated how the ball sails off his bat.) He does have an overaggressive method on the plate, and he was pounding the ball into the sand greater than 50% of the time at Double-A earlier than the Rays skipped him to the majors. (To be clear: he was nonetheless on a 40-homer tempo regardless of that grounder charge.) Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Jordan Walker are simply two gamers who’ve confronted questions on maximizing their power by including carry. They’ve labored out simply advantageous. The distinction between Camerino and people lads is that he has the athleticism and arm to stay on the scorching nook. It is unfair to match any prospect to Austin Riley, however a extra polished Caminero might get shut.
The Rays traded incumbent third baseman Isaac Paredes on the commerce deadline, clearing a path for Caminero to take over because the long-term resolution on the scorching nook. Curtis Mead had gotten nearly all of the enjoying time at third base following the Paredes commerce, although he was all the time a stopgap. The job was all the time going to Caminero and now his time has come.
Monday evening’s loss (HOU 6, TB 1) dropped the Rays to 59-59 on the season. They’ve misplaced 5 of their final seven video games and are 5.5 video games behind the third and closing wild-card spot. FanGraphs places their postseason odds at 4.6%.
