Cover illustration: The Sporting Page / AI-generated editorial illustration.
Statistics and standings through games completed September 11, 2026.
Junior Caminero turned on Bryan Abreu’s first pitch and sent it 417 feet into the seats at Tropicana Field. By the time he reached home plate on Friday, September 11, the Rays had their first postseason berth since 2023 and their 23-year-old third baseman had a second consecutive 40-homer season.
The two-run shot finished a 3–1 victory over Houston, making Tampa Bay the first team to secure a place in the 2026 playoffs. Jonathan Aranda’s one-out double had set up the opportunity, with pinch-runner Jonny DeLuca scoring ahead of Caminero.
“We haven’t made the postseason the last two years, but it feels great to be back,” Caminero said, according to MLB.com.
The player at the centre of the celebration had arrived in the organization as an unranked teenager, acquired before he had played a professional game in the United States. His emergence has given the Rays something their payroll would make difficult to purchase: an established middle-of-the-order star with most of his career still ahead of him.
After hitting 45 home runs in his first full major league season, Caminero has found a way to become more productive without needing to hit them more frequently.
More than another 40-homer season
Through Friday, Caminero was batting .279 with a .365 on-base percentage and a .534 slugging percentage. He had appeared in all 147 Rays games, driven in 95 runs and lifted his career home-run total to 92.
His standing among American League hitters was already substantial. He led the league in home runs, two ahead of Houston’s Yordan Alvarez. He ranked second in total bases, with 300, and third in RBI, according to the Sportradar leaders through September 11.
After a seven-game introduction to the majors in 2023 and 43 games in 2024, Caminero emerged as an everyday player in 2025. He finished that first full season with 110 RBI and earned his first All-Star selection, followed by a place on the All-MLB Second Team.
2025 full season compared with 2026 through September 11.
| Measure | 2025 | 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Plate appearances | 653 | 643 |
| Home runs | 45 | 40 |
| Batting average | .264 | .279 |
| On-base percentage | .311 | .365 |
| Slugging percentage | .535 | .534 |
| OPS | .846 | .899 |
| Walk rate | 6.3% | 11.5% |
| Strikeout rate | 19.1% | 18.4% |
Sources: MLB/MiLB player statistics and CBS Sports’ plate-discipline comparison. Walk and strikeout rates are shares of plate appearances. The 2026 season is incomplete.
His slugging percentage is virtually unchanged, but his on-base percentage has risen 54 points. That increase accounts for essentially all of the improvement in his OPS, which adds on-base and slugging percentage.
Caminero’s walk rate has nearly doubled while his strikeout rate has declined. He is reaching base more often without surrendering the power that makes pitchers reluctant to challenge him. It is an important development for a hitter who can otherwise be judged almost entirely by how often he clears the fence.
A walk cannot produce the celebration that followed Friday’s swing, but it still leaves the next hitter with a runner to drive in. The additional value comes on the many plate appearances when Caminero does not homer, making his contribution less dependent on one kind of result.
The power itself remains historically unusual. His 45 homers in 2025 were the second-most in an age-21-or-younger season, behind Eddie Mathews’ 47 for the Milwaukee Braves in 1953. With another 40-homer season, Caminero and Mathews are the only players to reach that mark more than once through their age-22 campaigns, CBS Sports reported Friday.
Baseball uses a player’s age on June 30 for those comparisons. Caminero’s July 5 birthday makes 2025 his age-21 season and 2026 his age-22 season, although he turned 23 this summer. His early production belongs in that exceptional company; whether he can sustain it across a career remains a separate question.
The teenager Tampa Bay was willing to bet on
Caminero was not a high-profile prospect when the Rays acquired him. Cleveland had signed the Santo Domingo native as an international amateur in July 2019, and the pandemic delayed his professional debut until 2021.
He spent that first season in the Dominican Summer League, hitting .295/.380/.534 with nine home runs in 43 games. The numbers were promising, but they came against the youngest professional competition, several developmental steps from the majors.
On November 19, 2021, Tampa Bay acquired the 18-year-old for right-hander Tobias Myers. The Rays were facing a 40-man roster squeeze, and Myers would have been exposed to the Rule 5 Draft if left unprotected. The trade converted that risk into a younger prospect whose own roster deadline was further away.
The roster deadline explains why the Rays were dealing, but it does not explain their choice of player. Tampa Bay had followed Caminero as an amateur and identified his bat speed and power, making him a scouting target rather than simply a name accepted to complete a transaction.
“I’d rather be a year early than a year late,” Rays executive Kevin Ibach said in 2021, in remarks recalled by MLB.com.
Waiting would have provided more evidence about Caminero’s ability to hit better pitching. It would also have given Cleveland that evidence, potentially making him much harder to acquire. The Rays accepted the uncertainty while they still had an opportunity to act on their evaluation.
Myers was a meaningful price rather than a player to dismiss in hindsight. He eventually produced a 3.00 ERA over 138 innings for Milwaukee in 2024. Tampa Bay had exchanged a pitcher close to the majors for a hitter much further away, taking a different kind of risk in pursuit of a larger return.
Caminero made his major league debut in September 2023. By August 2024, he had become MLB Pipeline’s No. 1 overall prospect. The Rays had acquired him before that wider recognition, giving themselves the opportunity to develop a player who might otherwise have become inaccessible.
How the Rays compete across the payroll gap
That timing matters in the AL East, where Tampa Bay entered this season with a player payroll of $89,632,420, ranked 26th in baseball. Each divisional rival began with substantially more, according to USA TODAY’s reporting of MLB Labor Relations Department figures.
Season-opening player payrolls and records through September 11, 2026.
| Team | Opening Day · US$ | Record |
|---|---|---|
| Tampa Bay Rays | $89,632,420 | 88–59 |
| New York Yankees | $301,064,810 | 85–62 |
| Toronto Blue Jays | $278,989,858 | 73–75 |
| Boston Red Sox | $198,883,374 | 80–68 |
| Baltimore Orioles | $170,369,743 | 72–76 |
Payroll: USA TODAY, using MLB Labor Relations Department figures. Records: completed September 11 standings. These are season-opening player payrolls, not September totals, luxury-tax payrolls or the clubs’ full operating budgets.
New York and Toronto each opened above three times Tampa Bay’s figure. Boston spent more than twice as much. Yet the Rays finished Friday three games ahead of the Yankees, with the Blue Jays below .500.
The discrepancy does not make money irrelevant. A larger payroll gives a team more ways to buy established production and more room to absorb a mistake. Tampa Bay’s answer has to include finding that production before it carries an established player’s price, then helping it develop.
Caminero illustrates the first part. The pitcher who kept Friday’s game within reach illustrates what must follow an acquisition.
Drew Rasmussen allowed one run over seven innings against Houston. He had arrived from Milwaukee in the May 2021 trade built around Willy Adames. Parting with an established shortstop was a substantial decision, but Tampa Bay’s infield depth gave it a way to address its pitching needs.
Rasmussen described the development work in a July interview with FanGraphs’ David Laurila. He had relied heavily on a four-seam fastball and a slider in Milwaukee. As the Rays moved him from relief into the rotation, he learned to adjust the slider’s movement to produce a cutter as well as a more conventional slider. They also dropped an ineffective changeup and developed a sweeping breaking ball.
The change was not simply a longer assignment. It gave Rasmussen more ways to attack hitters, expanding what he could do with the ability Tampa Bay had acquired. The Rays identified potential beyond his existing role, then worked with him to make it usable.
That is where the acquisition and development stories connect. A favourable trade gives a team an opportunity, not a finished player. Tampa Bay’s advantage depends on what happens after the transaction as much as on what it gives up to make it.
Caminero also has help in the lineup. Yandy Díaz led the AL with 171 hits through Friday, while Chandler Simpson led it with 41 stolen bases. Those contributions beyond the home-run leader give the Rays other ways to generate offence when opponents contain Caminero.
The record beyond one season
The larger record explains why Tampa Bay’s work deserves more than a one-season appraisal. The Rays reached five consecutive postseasons from 2019 through 2023. They won 100 games in 2021 and 99 in 2023, and their 40–20 record in the shortened 2020 season led to an American League pennant.
That run did not make them immune to failure. They finished 80–82 in 2024 and 77–85 in 2025. Caminero’s 45-homer season came during the latter campaign, a reminder that even exceptional individual production cannot replace the work of building a complete team.
The postseason record also puts those regular-season successes in perspective. The Rays have won two pennants, in 2008 and 2020, but no World Series, and they have not won a postseason game since 2021.
Friday secured their 10th postseason appearance. It did not secure the division or erase those earlier disappointments. Tampa Bay has earned recognition for competing with less money, but its supporters have reason to expect more than an explanation of how economically the team was assembled.
Caminero’s contract leaves time to build
For now, the Rays have a considerable opportunity in the years before Caminero reaches free agency.
FanGraphs’ RosterResource listing puts his 2026 salary at $794,800. It projects another pre-arbitration season in 2027, followed by arbitration eligibility in 2028. Under the current service-time framework, he is under team control through 2030, with free agency following that season.
That leaves four full seasons of control after 2026. It is not a guaranteed long-term contract, nor does it mean his salary will stay close to its present level. Arbitration offers a route to higher pay before he reaches the open market.
An extension could give both sides more certainty and keep Caminero in Tampa Bay beyond that period. He has expressed affection for the city, although that should not be confused with an agreement on terms.
“I feel this is my city, Tampa. I love Tampa,” he said in February, according to MLB.com.
The immediate opportunity does not depend on an extension. A player producing at this level while earning less than $800,000 gives the Rays room to strengthen the roster around him. Keeping expenditure low is not, by itself, a competitive achievement; using that room to build a better team is what can make the advantage matter.
Tampa Bay still has an AL East race to finish, with the Yankees three games behind. Beyond that lies a postseason in which Caminero’s power will be tested against opponents who have every reason to avoid giving him the pitch he wants.
The Rays acquired him before he had faced a professional pitcher in the United States. He now leads the American League in home runs and is becoming harder to retire on the plate appearances between them. The scouting that brought him to Tampa Bay has helped the Rays return to October; the challenge now is to build a team that makes the most of the years he can spend there.