With the recent move to the 60-day disabled list of club ace, Shane McClanahan, the Tampa Bay Rays are now short of a shocking amount of quality arms. Their disabled list for starting pitching alone now contains all of McClanahan, the forever underappreciated Jeffrey Springs, Drew Rasmussen and prized prospect Shane Baz - essentially, their number one, four, five and seven starters.

Numbers two, three and six are nonetheless very good. Tyler Glasnow is fragile but exceptional, Zach Eflin is exhibiting Greg Maddux-esque control in his first season in Tampa, and Aaron Civale has a 25:2 strikeout to walk ratio since his trade from the Cleveland Guardians. Yet to lose McClanahan, their All-Star ace, on top of the early season losses of Springs and Rasmussen, should prove terminal to any World Series aspirations of a team that was at one point a dead cert for a 100-win season.

If there is to be any chance of competitiveness salvaged from the ashes, it will have to come from a combination of a three-man rotation ascending to greatness, the line-up continuing to rake, and the bullpen being extremely reassuring. The removal from the roster of Wander Franco very much hinders the second of these. But at least the bullpen is in place.

The Rays have filled innings all season with a view to lessening the workload on the back end guys, something given added importance by the team's largely non-negotiable strategy of not allowing starters to run three times through a line-up. If it was not for this finagling, the bullpen might be as decimated by injury as the starters. As it is, only Garrett Cleavinger is missing long-term from the high-leverage pen, and his injury came from a collision rather than wear and tear.

Because of that, and because of some in-season pick-ups that have paid dividends, the Rays have a clear front eight in the pen for the stretch run of the season. Between the incumbents, the trade acquisitions and the cheap pick-ups, the Rays have put together a quality bullpen

Season-long bullpen metrics do not flatter the Rays as much as the above does. As of today, they rank only 15th in the majors in relief ERA, as middle of the pack as it is possible to be. That said, that number includes the work of far less reliable arms such as Javy Guerra, Calvin Faucher, Luis Patino and Jalen Beeks, all now off the active roster (and in the case of Patino, out of the franchise altogether). It also includes the performances of position player Luke Raley, who has given up nine earned runs in comedic blowout performances, the same amount as Fairbanks.

Once these now-irrelevant contributions that anchor the overall statistics are removed, and the remaining arms evaluated on their own merits, the Rays have positioned themselves to have one of the best relief staffs of any postseason team. It is just a shame that, given the shortages in the rotation, it is not likely to be enough.