The Tampa Bay Rays made one change to their American League Championship Series roster before facing the Cleveland Guardians, adding Brody Hopkins and dropping Garrett Cleavinger. It was the only roster move as the club kept its 26-player group largely intact for the series.
That decision matters now because the Rays reached this point after sweeping the New York Yankees in the American League Division Series, and they are carrying the same postseason formula into a longer, tighter round. Kevin Cash’s team used only 8 of its rostered 12 players in that ALDS, a sign that the bullpen and the back end of the staff were already doing a lot of the work.
Hopkins is the name that gives the move its edge. The 24-year-old came to the Rays a year after the Seattle Mariners drafted him in 2023, and he had already been shifted from the starting rotation to relief work to help with command issues. FanGraphs still described his stuff as elite in a small sample of 5 IP, which is part of why Tampa Bay kept pushing him toward a postseason role.
The numbers show both sides of that profile. In 5.1 IP, Hopkins faced 24 hitters, struck out 6 and threw 3 wild pitches. He also threw in the zone on 49% of his offerings, enough to show the raw pitch quality but not enough to hide the control problems that make his usage harder to pin down. The Rays did bring him to the big leagues in late September for a postseason trial run, but they have not said how much of the ALCS he will actually cover or whether he will be used only in relief.
What is clear is that the roster move is less about surprise than about fit. The Rays are trying to protect themselves in what is likely to be a low-scoring series, and Hopkins gives them another arm with real upside even if the command is still a work in progress. With one roster change and one open role, Tampa Bay has made its choice: the next test is whether that choice can hold up against the Guardians.
