From miner to rookie in 12 months for Rays’ Shane McClanahan

PORT CHARLOTTE — At this time last year, the future was officially just an afterthought.

Shane McClanahan had been reassigned to minor league camp midway through spring training and was intended to start the season at the team’s alternate training site.

The Rays were days away from the start of the season in Miami with Tyler Glasnow on the mound, and McClanahan was holed up in a Venice-area Airbnb with teammate David Hess.

“I’ll be the first to tell you that I was disappointed,” McClanahan recalled Tuesday. “But, at the end of the day, I had a job to do at the alternate site and that was to work my cock. I was there for a reason. Maybe they didn’t think I was ready , and every day my goal was to prove them wrong.

“I was ready whenever they needed me to show them that, you know, I can do it.”

It’s not that the Rays needed convincing, it was more about simplifying McClanahan’s journey into the big leagues. So it was about a month at the alternate site, a late April call in Tampa Bay, a few starts in the four-inning range, and then it was up to McClanahan to dictate how fast he progressed.

Turns out it’s pretty darn fast.

Not quite a year later, McClanahan was named Tampa Bay’s starting pitcher for opening day of the 2022 season. McClanahan came so far so fast that the announcement was practically disappointing. No call to the principal’s office, no official announcement.

Assuming McClanahan already had a pretty good idea he was in line to kick on April 8, manager Kevin Cash casually made it official when meeting with reporters Tuesday morning. His would-be ace called himself out just before a post-workout massage.

“I saw it on Twitter,” McClanahan said.

It really shows how quickly McClanahan has climbed the rotation hierarchy. Back in the 2020 World Series, the Rays’ rotation included Blake Snell, Charlie Morton and Glasnow. At the time, McClanahan was more of an oddity. A secret weapon in the bullpen, the first pitcher in history to make his MLB debut in the playoffs.

Now Snell and Morton are gone, Glasnow is likely out for the season after elbow surgery and McClanahan is the closest the Rays have to an ace.

“There were a lot of questions in 2020, which elevated it,” Cash said. “His stuff got him up there. We didn’t know much about him on the alternate site, but we felt confident enough that he could contribute and be one of our best pitchers when we made playoff rosters.

“And then last year we had honest conversations with him. The lack of (previous) workload meant that we had to be quite strict, rigorous with his workload from the start. And it takes a state of “mature mind to understand that. When you’re his age, it’s basically ‘Give me the ball until I run out of gas’. We wanted to make sure we had him available in September, where he was a healthy pitcher and could contribute to any title. It’s a lot for a young pitcher to figure that out in April and May, and he did.

The Rays went through nine different starting pitchers in 2021 before McClanahan made his regular season debut on April 29. At the end of the season, he was 10-6 with a 3.43 ERA and was the No. 1 starter in the American League Division Series against Boston.

“I feel like a different pitcher than I did last season,” McClanahan said. “I’ve definitely been working on being more consistent, getting a little bit stronger and trying to improve in any way I can, whether it’s conditioning or pitch selection or whatever I do, honestly. I think I’m well placed.”

McClanahan, 24, called his mom and dad to give them the news on Tuesday morning, but otherwise seemed unfazed to be Tampa Bay’s youngest opening day starter since Scott Kazmir was 23. in 2007.

“I think you get what you work for,” he said. “And I’ve had that mindset all my life, you know, I want to do what I think I can do. And I think I’m just starting to find out what I’m capable of. So there’s a lot more to it. make.

Jean Romano can be reached at [email protected]. Follow @romano_tbtimes.

• • •

Sign up for the weekly Rays Report newsletter to get fresh insights on the Tampa Bay Rays and the rest of the majors from sports columnist John Romano.

Never miss the latest with the Bucs, Rays, Lightning, Florida College Sports and more. Follow our Tampa Bay Times sports team on Twitter and Facebook.