Rays to call up Shane McClanahan, will start Thursday

Shane McClanahan may be a familiar name to baseball fans out there if you followed the Rays’ run to the World Series last year. While McClanahan hadn’t made his major league debut in the regular season, the Rays DID call him up for the postseason where he threw in all three of the Rays’ postseason series including in the World Series. McClanahan possesses a cannon of an arm with a fastball that routinely hits the upper 90’s and a slider that serves as an out pitch as well.

So why wasn’t he in the Rays’ rotation to start the season? Well, the Rays are known to spread the pitching load and have a ton of high end young pitchers to give time to, plus there are the ever pervasive service time considerations associated with the low revenue Rays. However, it looks like folks did not have to wait too long for Shane to make it back to the show.

Again, it is unclear if McClanahan will be on any sort of innings limit or how the Rays will employ him to start his regular season career as the team tends to use guys in a variety of roles on the pitching side, but it is nice to see one of the more dynamic pitchers in the minor leagues make his major league debut (at least in the regular season).