The Rays entered the 2026 season with an unsettled closer situation for the first time in years. Manager Kevin Cash’s fickle ninth-inning usage ended when Pete Fairbanks emerged. From 2017 through 2022, a different reliever led Tampa Bay in saves each season. Fairbanks became the permanent closer in 2023 and paced the club in saves for three straight years.
With Fairbanks signing with the Marlins in free agency, the Rays had a vacancy to fill. I dug into the candidates over the winter to find the best fit. While I did have Bryan Baker on the list, he was behind Edwin Uceta and Griffin Jax. Lefty Garrett Cleavinger even received an honorable mention before Baker.
Tampa Bay landed Baker in a July 2025 trade with the Orioles. He had solid results in Baltimore as mostly a middle reliever. Baker became an All-Star with the Rays, matching Cade Smith of the Guardians for the league lead in saves at 41. He put up 65 innings of a 1.44 ERA in the regular season and has continued to dominate in the playoffs. Baker closed out all three victories against the Yankees in the ALDS. He tossed three hitless innings with four strikeouts.
The 31-year-old Baker made his MLB debut with the Blue Jays in 2021. He was claimed off waivers by the Orioles and became a regular member of their bullpen for three seasons. Baker posted back-to-back years with a mid-3.00s ERA and a solid strikeout rate. He scuffled in 2024 and was up and down with the big-league club. Baker bounced back in 2025 through improved control and top-tier strikeout stuff. Tampa Bay picked him up for a draft pick.
The breakthrough for Baker didn’t happen immediately. He kept the walks down, but the punchouts also regressed after the trade. Baker struggled to keep the ball in the yard and posted a 4.75 ERA over 31 appearances with his new team. The seeds for his turnaround were sown, though. Tampa Bay had Baker significantly increase his changeup usage. It became his second-most used pitch, dwarfing his slider usage. Baker threw the changeup 22.2% of the time with the Orioles last season. It jumped to 34.2% with the Rays.
Baker has leaned even harder on the changeup this season. He’s thrown it at a hefty 43.8% clip. The increased changeup usage has basically eliminated the slider. Baker threw 32 sliders all season, resulting in a 3.3% usage rate. That number had never been below 26% coming into this year.
A pitcher throwing his best pitch more often isn’t groundbreaking. Baker’s changeup has accrued 16 Run Value since he became a full-time big-leaguer. It’s held opponents to a sub-.200 batting average in all but one season. It makes sense for Baker to lean on the pitch, particularly in favor of a slider that gave up nearly half his homers in 2025.
A recent comment from Cash about the changes the organization made with Freddy Peralta comes to mind. “I personally feel that’s being a little bit overtalked about,” Cash told Will Sammon of The Athletic. “I don’t want anybody to lose sight that Freddy Peralta has been an elite pitcher for a long time.”
Like Peralta, Baker has always been a solid pitcher. Tampa Bay didn’t make any drastic changes to help him level up. The one key that did help him take the next step, and the same goes for Peralta, is the increasing usage of right-on-right changeups. The Rays specialize in this approach. Eno Sarris of The Athletic had an insightful breakdown of the trend and why it’s effective.
Baker threw 977 pitches to right-handed hitters in the regular season, 428 of which were changeups. That’s a 43.8% rate, perfectly in line with his overall usage. Baker threw changeups to righties 27.9% of the time in 2025. It was 7.5% in 2024. Baker limited righties to a .549 OPS this year. That number was .774 last season and .749 the year before that.
The Rays have Baker under team control for the next two seasons. He probably won’t be this good again, as minuscule .203 BABIP and a massive 88% left-on-base rate helped fuel the sub-2.00 ERA. Baker’s 3.07 xERA is a more reasonable expectation moving forward. But even if he regresses, Baker has still established himself as one of the top closers in the American League. He’ll be a critical part of Tampa Bay’s playoff run.
Photo courtesy of Brad Penner, Imagn Images
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