My Two Cents: Rays' McClanahan, Eflin Clearly Best 1-2 Pitching Punch in Baseball

There's a long list of great things the Tampa Bay Rays are doing in dashing out to a 51-22 record. They hit homers and run the bases, and play great defense. But the best thing just might be the 1-2 punch at the top of their rotation with Shane McClanahan and Zach Eflin. The Rays are a stunning 23-4 in their starts.

SAN DIEGO, Calif. — Shane McClanahan was back on the mound for Tampa Bay on Friday night, and the Rays won again.

And that, my friends, is absolutely no surprise.

The Rays beat the San Diego Padres 6-2, with Tampa Bay's ace lefty going 6 2/3 innings and allowing just one run and three hits. He's now a baseball-best 11-1 on the season and the Rays have won 13 of his 15 starts.

Tampa Bay is 51-22 on the season, a whopping 29 games over .500 in mid-June and they have seven more wins than any other team in the game. McClanahan, who started the All-Star game for the American League year, just might be on pace to do it again. His 2.12 earned run average is also the best in baseball.

And now on Saturday night, the Rays turn right around with another ace of sorts. Zach Eflin, something of a surprise free-agent signing by Tampa Bay in the offseason, is back on the mound for the second game of this three-game series at 7 p.m. ET in San Diego. He is 8-2 on the season, and the Rays are 10-2 in his 12 starts. He's been very, very good.

Yep, your math is right. The Rays are now 23-4 in games started by McClanahan and Eflin. That's why they are, without a doubt, the best one-two pitching punch in baseball right now. 

All they do is win.

Practically every single night.

"It is comforting. I didn't realize that (23-4 record), but it's very telling about what they're doing and how much they mean to our team on the nights they take the ball and give us a chance to win just about every time,'' Rays manager Kevin Cash said recently about McClanahan and Eflin.

In the past 15 years during this turnaround for the Tampa Bay franchinse, they've done it with pitching and defense, so the fact that they're doing it again this year doesn't deviate from the big picture.

But it's how they've done it that's different. 

McClanahan burst on the national scene a year ago and now, at 26, is considered one of the best in the game. The Rays have a boatload of pitching, and left the 2022 season knowing they had great rotational arms in McClanahan, Tyler Glasnow, Jeffrey Springs and Drew Rasmussen, plus several promising youngsters — like Taj Bradley and Yonny Chirinois — ready to burst on the scene.

So it was very surprising when the Rays signed Eflin in the offseason instead of addressing their offensive needs. The 29-year-old righty from Orlando spent seven years with the Philadelphia Phillies, and had modest success — at best. He was 44-47 there, with a 4.37 ERA.

But the Rays saw something there, and signed him to a three-year $40 million contract, the largest free agent deal ever doled out by the cash-strapped Rays. It was a worthwhile investment, because not only has Eflin been great on the mound too, but he also fits in perfectly in the Rays' clubhouse.

He's given up one run or less in half of his starts and has a WHIP slightly under one. He's only walked 11 batters all season and has been a critical piece of a rotation that's already lost Springs and Rasmussen to injuries this spring.

Eflin and McClanahan have become fast friends, too, and they're always leaning on each other.

"It's encouraging to hear that. All of our pitchers have learned from (Eflin), and if Mac can help in any way, that can only be a good thing. They all feed off of each other.'' 

Eflin admires all that McClanahan can do, and even though they rack up wins with a different arsenal of pitches, they learn a lot from each other.

"I've learned a bunch of sequence-based stuff from him,'' Eflin said recently. "I'm starting to learn the splitter a little bit too, and I'm always picking his brain about that. He competes and he's absolutely fearless and that's what you preach as a starting pitcher, and it becomes infectious throughout a rotation when you see a guy go other there and give it everything they have. You want the match that every game, so it's been fun. We all feed off one another. This is one of the most competitive staffs I've ever been on.

"You said it. We expect to win, and we go out hungry every night and put in the work on the days we're not out there. We have such a good defense here and a great offense so we just try to go out there and limit the damage and we're usually going to get a win.'' 

Eflin said what impresses him the most about McClanahan is that he can beat you with any of his four pitches at any time in the count, and in any circumstance. That's why he's the best in the game right now, Eflin said.

"He's goes out there every fifth day with his best stuff. He competes, he goes deep into games, he gets you strikeouts, gets you the weak contact,'' Eflin said of McClanahan. ''Every pitch that Shane has is absolutely nasty, and you can see that in a reflection of his stats and in years past, too. He's probably more deserving of being on the All-Star team of anybody in the league right now. That's kind of a no-brainer.

"It's just the way he compete. Not only is he a vocal leader, but he leads by example as well. He goes out there every fifth day and empties the tank, and that's all you can ever ask from your starting pitcher and your No. 1 guy. He just balls every time out, and you feed off that energy every single time.''

McClanahan did that Friday night in San Diego, pitching his way in and out of trouble at times. He gave up three walks, but none of them scored, all erased on the base paths thanks to great defense. He didn't allow a run until the seventh inning, when former teammate Nelson Cruz touched him for a solo home run with two outs. He had retired nine straight batters prior to that, and left having thrown 94 pitches.

“He was outstanding, and he's putting together a pretty special season,” Cash said of McClanahan. “Any time he has a glitch — whether it is one batter or one inning — it seems like he has shown the ability, and the best ones do, to flush it and and move on from it.”

McClanahan was proud of himself for fighting through a few tough spots. He's said it often this year — and said it again Friday night — that he's benefiting from maturity and has learned how to pitch through trouble. He's now given up one run or less in nine of his 15 starts.

“It wasn’t my easiest outing, it wasn’t my best outing,'' McClanahan said. "But it was gritty, and I am pretty proud of that. I got saved a lot by my defense tonight. 

"It was one of those days where it wasn’t going to be pretty, so you've just got to get through it and find a way. and I’m proud about that.''

"It wasn't my easiest outing; it wasn't my best outing, but it was gritty, and I'm pretty proud of that."

Shane McClanahan meets with the media following tonight's win 🎙@RaysBaseball | #RaysUp pic.twitter.com/BpyTl9FCiz

— Bally Sports Sun: Rays (@BallyRays) June 17, 2023