Up and down the Rays’ roster are potential fits for the Yankees, which speaks both to the kind of haul Tampa Bay could land if it decides to sell and the handful of needs for a Yankees club that has too many holes.
One among the trade possibilities resides in the back of the Rays’ bullpen, where Pete Fairbanks has developed into one of the game’s better closers.
Fairbanks has locked down 17 of 19 save chances this season and owns a 3.21 ERA.
The Yankees know they have several holes in their bullpen, which has suffered too many injuries and not pitched like the strength it has been in the past.
Fairbanks knows that a Rays club that reached .500 Saturday could pivot to a sell-off by July 30, unless the club goes on a run.
Fairbanks is aware of the rumors mostly accidentally — his wife will send him tweets that pretend to be “breaking news,” he said, when they are nothing of the sort — but he otherwise puts blinders on.
“There’s no sense in worrying about something twice,” Fairbanks said in the visiting clubhouse before his Rays beat the Yankees, 9-1, in The Bronx.
Fairbanks, a 30-year-old signed at least through next season and making a bargain $3.66 million per year, is the type of power arm the Yankees could use.
The righty averages 97.2 mph with his four-seamer, and his bottom-drops-out breaking ball has been the better weapon.
His results have slipped since last season, when he pitched to a 2.58 ERA with 68 strikeouts in 45 ¹/₃ innings, but not by too much, and the stuff looks similar.
“It’s big stuff,” Rays manager Kevin Cash said. “Pretty electric arm with the fastball-curveball combination. When he’s right, he’s getting ahead of hitters and racking up a lot of strikeouts.”
“He’s pitched in a lot of big, big leverage innings for us, whether it’s in the ninth or anytime throughout the course of the game.”
In postseason runs from 2020-22, Fairbanks posted a respectable 3.60 ERA in 15 innings with 19 strikeouts.
He has proved himself in big games, even if the sixth-year reliever — who pitched in eight games with the Rangers as a rookie in 2019 before being sent to the Rays — has yet to show he can handle a large market.
He said he has never “shied away from anything,” and believe he would handle a big city the same way.
“I don’t think that I would necessarily like or dislike it until I had to deal with it,” he said.
The Yankees — who could look elsewhere in Tampa Bay’s pen, or even rotation, and surely would love to slot in Isaac Paredes as their everyday third baseman — have been short in a bullpen that no longer has Jonathan Loaisiga, Nick Burdi and Ian Hamilton, among others.
Their pen entered play with a 4.09 ERA since June 1, the 12th-worst in the span.
Fairbanks is a 6-foot-6 righty who owns a reputation for top-notch stuff, for being a fiery competitor and for being a cerebral, thoughtful human.
In an age when advanced data probably gives an edge to pitchers with brains, Fairbanks is smart.
“I don’t like to toot my own horn, but if other people say it, then I’ll accept it,” said Fairbanks, a University of Missouri product.
He hasn’t talked with the Rays’ front office about the next few weeks and is trying to keep his head straight and his routine the same.
“I’m sure there’ll be a conversation at some point,” Fairbanks said. “But that’s not something that’s super pressing on my day to day.”