Tampa Bay Rays

The Tampa Bay Rays are reportedly planning to furlough a portion of their full-time employees in the face of remaining uncertainty about when baseball will return during the coronavirus pandemic.

The Associated Press (h/t ESPN) and Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times reported the news, noting the American League East team is the first known Major League Baseball team to plan furloughs, which start Saturday.

What's more, some members of the baseball operations department will see their salary cut.

Topkin explained the furloughs are considered temporary, although there is no set timetable for when they will end with no set plan for the sport's return. There is also the possibility games will be played at remote locations outside of Tropicana Field with no fans, meaning ticket sales workers and those who work inside the stadium on game days will not be as needed.

The Rays are covering the costs of health insurance for those furloughed, although they canceled the internship program.

According to Topkin, "it is believed to be considerably less than half" of Tampa Bay's 400-500 full-time employees who are being furloughed.

This comes after Mike Puma of the New York Post reported the New York Mets are cutting the pay of all full-time employees starting June 1 even if there does end up being a 2020 baseball season.

Puma noted the San Diego Padres did so as well and said other teams are expected to follow suit.

As for the Rays, they are one of the game's least profitable franchises but were still valued at $1.05 billion—28th in the league—in Forbes' annual ranking of MLB's most valuable teams.

Baseball could eventually be on the way back, as Jon Heyman of MLB Network reported "there is growing optimism" there will be a season. He also noted July 1 "is a good estimate for the goal and the date heard most."

The Tampa Bay Rays reportedly reached an agreement Friday to sign Japanese slugger Yoshitomo Tsutsugo to a two-year, $12 million contract after paying a $2.4 million posting fee to the Yokohama DeNA BayStars.

Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times reported the deal's financial details.

Tsutsugo, who needed to sign before Dec. 19 to complete the MLB transition this offseason, also generated interest from the Los Angeles Dodgers before opting to join Tampa, per Jon Morosi of the MLB Network.

The 28-year-old outfielder earned five straight Nippon Professional Baseball All-Star selections for Yokohama starting in 2015. He made his debut for the Central League club at the age of 18 and has since developed into one of Japanese baseball's top power threats.

He's coming off a 2019 campaign where he posted a .272/.388/.511 triple-slash line with 29 home runs across 131 games. He's recorded 185 homers over the past six years, including a career-high 44 longballs in 2016.

"I'm not feeling carefree about this. There is a sense of anxiety, of course, and excitement as well," Tsutsugo told reporters in November. "We'll find out soon enough how it turns out. All I can do is prepare as well as I can."

Although most of his playing time in Japan came in the outfield, he's also gained limited experience at both corner infield spots (first base and third base). Signing with an American League club also gives manager Kevin Cash the option to utilize his pop as a designated hitter.

He'll provide a boost to a Tampa offense that ranked 21st in MLB with 217 home runs in 2019.

The Rays already feature Austin Meadows and Hunter Renfroe at the corners in the outfield with defensive wizard Kevin Kiermaier in center. So the team will likely start Tsutsugo at DH, though he could shift to first or third if Ji-Man Choi or Yandy Diaz falter.

Tampa Bay Rays starting pitcher Blake Snell wasn't happy when he found out Thursday night that the team traded outfielder Tommy Pham to the San Diego Padres.

Snell's reaction was broadcast live on his Twitch stream as he learned the Rays acquired outfielder Hunter Renfroe and prospect Xavier Edwards in the deal (some language NSFW):

Blake Snell lol pic.twitter.com/sjwTZNU5f6

— Red Sox Stats (@redsoxstats) December 6, 2019

On Friday, a friend of Snell told Jon Heyman of the MLB Network the Rays pitcher "wasn't aware of Xavier Edwards' abilities at the time."

Tampa Bay also will receive a player to be named later, while San Diego got two-way prospect Jake Cronenworth, per ESPN's Jeff Passan.

Pham is coming off a terrific 2019 season during which he posted an .818 OPS with 21 home runs and 25 stolen bases across 145 appearances in his first full year with the Rays. However, the 31-year-old is arbitration-eligible with an estimated salary of $8.6 million for 2020, per Spotrac. That's a high price tag for a low-payroll club.

Calling Edwards a "slapd--k prospect" isn't necessarily a fair assessment.

The 20-year-old Florida native was ranked as the No. 5 player in San Diego's system and the No. 72 overall prospect in baseball by MLB.com. The middle infielder compiled a .322 batting average with 34 steals across two minor league levels in 2019.

Renfroe is also no slouch after hitting 33 homers for the Padres last season.

The Tampa Bay Rays' idea of splitting their home games between St. Petersburg and Montreal has been put on hold until at least after the 2027 season.

Per a letter from St. Petersburg mayor Rick Kriseman, the Rays and the city "agreed that the best path forward is to abide by the existing use agreement" between the two parties:

"As you know, team officials first began contemplating future stadium locations in St. Pete twelve years ago. With only eight seasons remaining under the use agreement, the Rays will need to decide on their future soon, as it will take several seasons to finalize a future site and build a stadium either here in St. Petersburg or elsewhere.

"As I stated earlier this year, while the City of St. Petersburg is willing to discuss contributing to the funding for a new stadium for a full-time team here in St. Petersburg, we will not contribute public dollars to construct a stadium for a part-time team.

"As such, with no imminent discussions pending regarding a new stadium for a full-time team, we will begin to evaluate our next steps in redeveloping at least parts of the site following additional public engagement."

ESPN's Jeff Passan reported in June that Major League Baseball's executive council gave the Rays permission to explore a two-city home schedule.

Under the Rays' proposed plan, they would play games at Tropicana Field early in the season and shift to Montreal later in the year. It wasn't specified if the two cities would get close to a 50-50 split between the 81 home games the team plays annually.

Rays owner Stuart Sternberg said in a statement he remained "committed to keeping baseball in Tampa Bay for generations to come" but also believed this idea was "worthy of serious exploration."

Per John Romano of the Tampa Bay Times, Kriseman said at the time he wasn't going to grant the organization permission to speak with Montreal under terms of the use agreement.

The Rays have been looking for ways to boost their attendance as they continue to struggle to draw fans.

Despite winning 96 games and making the playoffs in 2019, Tampa Bay had the second-lowest average attendance (14,734) and total attendance (1,178,735) in MLB, per ESPN. The franchise has only drawn more than 2 million fans once, in its inaugural season in 1998.

Montreal hasn't had an MLB team since the Expos left following the 2004 season. The Toronto Blue Jays have played two spring training games at Olympic Stadium every year since 2014.

Tampa Bay Rays pitcher Tyler Glasnow admitted he was tipping his pitches following Thursday's 6-1 loss to the Houston Astros in Game 5 of the American League Division Series.    

"When I came in and checked my phone, there were a lot of people asking me about it," Glasnow said, according to the Tampa Bay Times' Marc Topkin. "I went and looked [at the video], and it was pretty obvious. It's something that I've done in the past, and some starts it's worse than others. Today it was relatively obvious."

Glasnow allowed four earned runs and five hits in just 2.2 innings of work, failing to match counterpart Gerrit Cole. The Houston starter was brilliant, giving up just one earned run and two hits while striking out 10 in eight innings.

"I don't know if that was it," he added. "I'm not going to say that's why I pitched bad. I'm not going to do that. They're a really good lineup. They're very good hitters, and they got good swings."

All four of Houston's runs off Glasnow came in the first inning. Jose Altuve and Yuli Gurriel each drove in a run on a single, while Alex Bregman earned two RBI with a double.

Former MLB players Preston Wilson, Kevin Frandsen and Trevor Plouffe all tweeted during the game that they recognized Glasnow was tipping pitches:

No doubt in my mind. Glasnow is tipping his pitches #ALDSGame5

— Preston Wilson (@PrestonWilson44) October 10, 2019

https://twitter.com/KevinFrandsen/status/1182437431154335744

I had his pitches this Spring Training. Every one of em and it only took an inning. https://t.co/AmZ9cNuuPS

— Coach Trev (@trevorplouffe) October 10, 2019

Fox Sports' Alex Rodriguez also broke down what he was seeing from Glasnow during the broadcast:

"To me, the @astros had something early & that was the difference in this game."@AROD believes Tyler Glasnow was tipping his pitches tonight, and it gave the Astros an advantage. pic.twitter.com/v7cvbtbexy

— FOX Sports: MLB (@MLBONFOX) October 11, 2019

Danny Vietti of CBS Sports shared a notable exchange between Bregman and Carlos Correa:

Either Glasnow is tipping his pitches or the Astros' first base coach can see the catcher's signs.

"If it's down, it's a curveball. If it's up, it's a fastball." -Alex Bregman#TakeItBack pic.twitter.com/twIcqPKaCt

— Danny Vietti (@DannyVietti) October 10, 2019

It was an unfortunate development for Glasnow, who was largely unhittable during his 12 starts this season when not limited by a forearm injury. He finished with a 1.78 ERA, 0.89 WHIP and 76 strikeouts over 60.2 innings in the best individual effort of his career. It was the first time he posted an ERA below 4.24 for a season.

He was solid but unspectacular in his first start against the Astros in this series and allowed two earned runs, four hits and three walks in 4.1 innings during the Game 1 loss.

Glasnow is just 26 years old and will surely use this experience as a learning lesson while his career progresses. Still, it came at an inopportune time for him and his team.

The Tampa Bay Rays weren't supposed to be here. They're perennial small-market underdogs, toiling in a division with massive spenders such as the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox. 

Yet with the MLB postseason upon us, here they are: winners of the American League Wild Card Game and one of six teams left standing in the scramble for the 2019 Commissioner's Trophy.

After defeating the Oakland Athletics 5-1 Wednesday night at RingCentral Coliseum in Oakland, Tampa Bay will advance to a division series clash with the Houston Astros. We'll delve into that matchup in a moment and examine how the Rays could be a credible threat to the Junior Circuit's other contenders.

For now, let's pause and admire what they've accomplished thus far.

Prior to the season, FanGraphs gave the Rays a 28.2 percent chance of making the playoffs and a 14.3 percent chance of advancing as far as the division series.

That might have been a tad harsh. The Rays were coming off a 90-win campaign in 2018, missing the playoffs but flashing their potential as slingshot-wielding Davids capable of at least rattling the Goliaths of the AL.

But with a scant $63 million payroll, per Spotrac, could Tampa Bay realistically compete deep into October? The Red Sox, who won the title in 2018, dished out more than that this year on starting pitchers David Price (4.28 ERA), Rick Porcello (5.52 ERA) and Nathan Eovaldi (5.99 ERA).

Then again, maybe that's less a shot against Tampa Bay's penny-pinching ways and more an indictment of the free-spending Sox, who won another trophy but are now saddled with crippling payroll obligations going forward.

The Rays, on the other hand, are charging ahead despite their comparatively minuscule bottom line.

Yandy Diaz, Tommy Pham and Avisail Garcia, who combined for six hits and four home runs (two from Diaz) in Wednesday's victory over the A's, are making less than $9 million between them.

Veteran right-hander Charlie Morton, who threw five innings of one-run ball and earned the win, is the club's highest-paid player at $15 million in 2019. After that, no one is making more than $8 million and change. 

Burgeoning stars such as reigning Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell, left fielder Austin Meadows, right-hander Tyler Glasnow, shortstop Willy Adames and infielder/outfielder Brandon Lowe are all earning $1.6 million or under. 

It's the Rays' way. Since their inception, they've spread their dough thin, yet they still won an AL pennant in 2008 and appeared in the division series in 2010, 2011 and 2013.

Now, they're back, pesky as ever.

First, they'll lock horns with the Astros, who won an MLB-high 107 games this season and boast a deep lineup and a stacked starting rotation helmed by Cy Young Award front-runners Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole.

The 'Stros, by any measure, are a juggernaut. Put the champagne on ice. Cast the Rays aside. Minute Maid Park is going to squeeze the life out of Tropicana Field.

Hang on a second, though.

First, Tampa Bay won the season series against Houston, 4-3. And while the Astros (and any future Rays opponents) will have home-field advantage, the Rays also posted the second-best road record in either league at 48-33.

More than anything, the Rays bring a pitching staff that paced the AL with a 3.65 ERA. That's just one point above Houston's 3.66 ERA, but it shows Tampa Bay can sling it with the best of them.

They may not have the pedigree and star wattage of the Astros' top arms, but the likes of Morton, Snell and Glasnow and a sterling bullpen that led MLB with a 3.66 ERA make them a force to be reckoned with.

That'll come in handy against Houston's lineup, and it would benefit Tampa Bay in a theoretical American League Championship Series against either New York or the Minnesota Twins.

The 2019 Twins set the all-time record for home runs by a team with 307. The Yanks finished second with 306.

As for Rays hurlers? They surrendered the fewest dingers in baseball at 181.

The safe money is on the Rays folding before the champagne-and-confetti finish line. They've never won it before. Any and all future 2019 postseason foes will have deeper pockets and probably more thump.

Tampa Bay, though, has a power-squelching pitching staff and enough offense to get the job done, as it demonstrated Wednesday against an Oakland team that finished sixth in the game with a 3.97 ERA.

Credit skipper Kevin Cash for pulling the right levers. Among them? Starting Diaz, who is recovering from a foot injury suffered in July and could have been relegated to bench duty.

And credit the Rays for fearlessly donning the team-of-destiny mantle.

"I don't think it can hurt to have confidence and feel like you've got a little bit of magic on your side going into this thing," third baseman Matt Duffy told reporters prior to the Rays' wild-card triumph. "I think it's certainly going to help."

The Rays weren't supposed to be here. But they are.

They drew the second-fewest fans in baseball during the regular season (14,734 on average, ahead of only the Miami Marlins' 10,016).  But watch that number increase exponentially as long as they keep proving they belong.

And watch opposing clubs take them very, very seriously.

   

All statistics current as of Wednesday and courtesy of Baseball Reference and FanGraphs.

The Tampa Bay Rays will return to the American League postseason for the first time since 2013 after their 6-2 win over the Toronto Blue Jays on Friday.

Tampa Bay will face the Oakland Athletics, who also clinched a playoff berth Friday, in the AL Wild Card Game on Wednesday.

The location of the game is unknown, but the A's will host it if they finish tied with or better than the Rays. They are currently tied at 96-64.

Both teams held off the Cleveland Indians, who were eliminated from playoff contention with an 8-2 loss to the Washington Nationals on Friday.

After finishing below .500 for four seasons, the Rays reemerged in 2018 with a 90-72 record. They missed out on the playoffs but stormed back in 2019, starting the season 14-4 and staying hot for most of the year.

The Rays pitching staff has been sensational, especially considering 2018 American League Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell has started only 22 games (and gone 6-7 with a 4.21 ERA) because of elbow and toe injuries.

Right-hander Tyler Glasnow (6-1), who has a 1.78 ERA in 60.2 innings after 4.1 no-hit frames Friday, has also been limited to 12 starts with a forearm strain.

Despite those ailments, Tampa Bay is first in the league in ERA. Charlie Morton has paced the club with a 16-6 record, 240 strikeouts and a 3.05 ERA. The Rays' opener strategy has also proved effective once again thanks to a deep bullpen that ranks second in the majors in ERA.

At the dish, an improved power stroke has helped. A year after finishing second-to-last in the AL in home runs and featuring just one player (designated hitter-first baseman C.J. Cron) who smacked more than 14, the Rays have nine players with 14 dingers or more.

Outfielder Austin Meadows has been an offensive force with a team-leading 33 homers, 89 RBI and .293 batting average. Left fielder Tommy Pham has 21 home runs and 23 steals, and 24-year-old shortstop Willy Adames has 20 homers.

Tampa Bay will be a tough out in the playoffs if it gets past Oakland. The American League Division Series will begin Friday with the Houston Astros hosting the wild-card winner. Tampa beat Houston 4-3 in their regular-season series.

Tyler Glasnow sat by his locker and glanced at the TV, and then at the local media standing nearby, and nobody said a word. It was late July, a little more than a year ago, and his career was spiraling downward. He'd been relegated to long-relief duty, baseball's most inglorious role, where his lack of confidence and control had followed him. He'd walked four batters over three innings his last time out. He was only 24 years old, but he seemed to be aging quickly.

At one time, Glasnow was a consensus top prospect, ranked ahead of Aaron Judge and Blake Snell, the reigning AL Cy Young winner. But after his major league call-up, Glasnow struggled greatly: an ERA over 4.00 as a rookie and then an unsightly 7.69 mark as a sophomore. The shine was wearing off.

This was his third year, and in the Pirates clubhouse, the TV was airing MLB Network. It was trade deadline day. In the early afternoon, a deal broke across the screen. The Pirates were acquiring Chris Archer from Tampa Bay.

Hmm, Glasnow thought. He began to do the math. Archer is a pitcher, and he is too, and there might be a match there. He stayed seated. A minute later, the details came in: It was Archer to Pittsburgh for outfielder Austin Meadows, Glasnow and a player to be named later (Shane Baz).

The Pirates clubhouse was silent. Reporters shuffled awkwardly. Glasnow wasn't sure what to do, either. Below the surface, though, he was celebrating. Failure and bad vibes had mounted in Pittsburgh. "I was pretty stoked to be traded," he says now.

This season, one year removed from the midseason deal that brought him here, and two years removed from his near-flameout, Glasnow is at the top of his class. Before he was sidelined with a forearm strain in May, his ERA (1.86) and WHIP (0.91) stood as the best in the American League.

For the season, he's struck out over a third of opposing batters, a Justin Verlander-esque rate. And where once Glasnow lacked the confidence to throw strikes, his strikeout-to-walk ratio is a tick better than that of Chris Sale and Jacob deGrom.

On Sept. 8, after four months on the injured list, Glasnow returned in his old form. His second pitch registered at 100.2 mph; he punched out five across two innings. The Rays are now 3-0 in games he's pitched since returning from the injured list, crucial wins in the tight AL wild-card race. It's easy to imagine the damage Glasnow could inflict on postseason teams.

At 6'8", he throws his heater faster than all starters but Noah Syndergaard and Gerrit Cole. His curve, which he buries down in the zone, is among the league's fastest as well. Opponents have a collective .534 OPS against him this year. He has effectively turned a record-setting league of sluggers into feckless backup catchers.

It's an amazing turnaround for a pitcher whose career nearly went bust. But this is not a revival story based on the usual factors, like newfound health or the discovery of a reliable pitch. To hear Glasnow explain it, the change has been entirely mental—all he did was psych himself into becoming a Cy Young-caliber arm.

"Everything starts with a thought," he likes to say. "You can fake confidence, fake a mentality. And if you walk tall and convince yourself you're confident, your mind starts to think it. The more nervous I am before a start, that's the most important time to be like, 'Nope, I'm the man, doesn't matter.' Just convince yourself that it's your day, and no one can touch you."

---

In the mornings, Glasnow meditates—four deep breaths and then a half-hour spent watching his thoughts move around him. Doubts creep in, especially about baseball, but he lets those notions fly by without feeding into them, or without "judging" them.

"The mind can be manipulated," he says. "The second I wake up, the whole day is dedicated to me convincing myself I'm the best person on the field."

In Tampa, Glasnow has found a welcoming environment and even a spiritual adviser. His clubhouse neighbor is Snell, who credits his own career breakthrough to a psychological adjustment. "Your mind is very powerful, man," Snell says. When Glasnow first arrived in Tampa, Snell was in the midst of a Cy Young season, and Glasnow wanted to know his secret.

Snell swore it was all mental. "Last year I just said, 'I'm doing it.' There was no ifs, ands or buts in my head," Snell says. "Tyler just needed to find what motivated him, what made him be the best him."

At first, the advice puzzled Glasnow. He'd been looking for mechanical tips or a new pitch grip—this was a little abstract. But Snell kept hammering the same message—to have faith and stay calm while pitching—and Glasnow began to come around. "As I started to experiment with it, I was like, 'That's it!'" he says. "That's the ticket right there."

On the mound, where Glasnow used to come undone so easily, he has relaxed, though perhaps he had to fail first to do it. "Everyone has something holding them back, and mine was fear of failure," he says. "I started to realize, 'Oh, my biggest fear happened and I'm still alive. Don't freak out so much, you're fine.'"

In meetings with pitching coach Kyle Snyder, Glasnow was encouraged to pound the strike zone. "It's just a matter of saying, 'Y'know what, hitting is difficult, and hitting is particularly difficult against you,'" Snyder recalls telling Glasnow.

Immediately, he cut his walk rate nearly in half and finished last season strong, punching out 64 batters over 55.2 innings. Throughout this year's breakout, his control has only improved. There was never a doubt that Glasnow possessed dangerous stuff. Now he has the conviction to weaponize it.

"The biggest adjustment," says teammate Matt Duffy, "was just like, stand tall and throw the shit out of it."

---

Growing up in Newhall, California, about a half-hour north of L.A., Glasnow rarely watched baseball. "It was just boring and slow to me," he says. Instead of watching the Dodgers, he watched skate videos. Instead of idolizing Clayton Kershaw or Eric Gagne, it was pro skaters, like Andrew Reynolds and Antwuan Dixon.

Were he not a baseball player, Glasnow might be mistaken for a skater himself. On a summer afternoon in Tampa, he's wearing red skater shoes with beige pants that bunch up around the ankles and a white Henley. His hair is parted down the middle and drops down to his shoulders. His speech is a mix of baseball slang and skater cool, often punctuated with a "dude." Jose Alvarado, the Rays' power reliever, is "disgusting, dude." On a recent day, "he shoved." Glasnow is good-spirited—when he was traded to the Rays last year, they told him he'd be pitching for them the very next day. "I was like, 'What?! Aw, OK, cool.'"

Says Duffy, "He takes his work very seriously, but he doesn't take himself too seriously."

Glasnow is a huge rap fan—the evidence is all over his body. On his lower lip, a tattoo reads, "No Juice," a Lil Boosie song. On the bottom of his right foot, there's a fading tattooed portrait of Ol' Dirty Bastard, the late Wu-Tang Clan member. Glasnow developed a love for rap early on, starting with Eminem. He would hide the CDs under his pillow at night and play them on repeat on his Discman throughout the day. "It was a little bit of forbiddenness when I was little," he says.

Glasnow attended high school with Reds pitcher Trevor Bauer, who remembers him as a class clown. "I say that in the most complimentary way possible," Bauer adds. "He seemed to have a very fun-loving personality and get along with people very easily."

Glasnow still calls himself a "goofy human being," though in recent years he's developed his intellectual side.

"He's his own psychologist a little bit and can be for other guys as well," says Duffy, who is not just Glasnow's teammate but also his roommate. The two of them live in a house on the bay that they rent from former Rays star Evan Longoria. Often, Glasnow and Duffy will talk deep into the night, philosophizing about the game and their place in it.

Glasnow is a fervent reader of Malcolm Gladwell—"thinking books," he calls them—and he rips through podcasts, especially in recent months as he rehabbed his throwing arm. "He's just very thoughtful, and there's a lot more to him than just baseball," Duffy says. "He spends a lot of time sitting and pondering."

---

Over the winter, Glasnow pondered Bauer's arbitration case, for instance, sitting in and observing the exchange of stats and opinions and even researching for Bauer's camp. "I've always been really interested in the numbers in arbitration," he says. He recalls spending entire days—1 p.m. to midnight, by his estimation—studying Bauer's statistics.

"I was surprised at how interested he was in knowing the behind-the-scenes process and the inner workings of the process," says Bauer, who won his case against his old Cleveland Indians team. "I'm not sure why I was surprised by this—perhaps I still had the goofy kid from high school in mind—but it was very refreshing to talk to a young, budding MLB star who was engaged in his career, the current state of baseball and the future of the game."

Glasnow also studies his own game; like Bauer, he is a believer in analytics. Since arriving in Tampa, he has leaned heavily on edgertronic high-speed cameras that capture his mechanics, to be reviewed frame by frame, and produce data sets. The cameras showed why Glasnow's heater carried natural cut action, for instance. He embraced that movement and learned to mix it with a straight fastball on command.

https://twitter.com/MattHanifan_/status/1116130842818957312

Those in Tampa appreciate his curious nature and drive to improve.

"He's really bright, open, energetic, great conversationalist," says Rays VP of Baseball Operations Chaim Bloom. "The big thing that stands out to me this year has been his approach to where he's mentally locked in in a way I don't think we'd seen before. The commitment to attacking the strike zone has been so strong and really unshakeable to this point."

Glasnow credits Tampa's culture for helping bring about that change. "A lot of it is the mentality the front office and coaches bring: Go. Go throw. Go play baseball," he says.

It's a mindset that has taken him a long way, from struggling youngster to towering menace on a Cy Young track. All Glasnow had to do was buy in, to abide by one core principle: "Don't overthink this." It's a simple notion, and it's one he thinks a lot about.

    

Advanced statistics via FanGraphs.com.

Tampa Bay Rays minor league pitching prospect Blake Bivens gave a tribute to his late wife, one-year-old son and mother-in-law, who were all slain earlier this week.

He posted a series of photos of his wife, Emily, son, Cullen, and mother-in-law, Joan Bernard, along with a lengthy post on his Instagram page detailing the pain and his feelings:

"Two days ago my heart was turned to ash. My life as I knew it is destroyed. The pain my family and I feel is unbearable and cannot be put into words. I shake and tremble at the thought of our future without them.

Emily, my sweetheart, you are the best wife and mother this world has ever seen. You made me into the man I am today and you loved me with all of my flaws. You brought our precious baby boy into this world and made our family complete. Your love and kindness changed countless lives, including mine.

My sweet little boy, dada loves you so much! I can’t breathe without you here. I finally understood what love was when you were born and I would have done anything for you. You have changed my life forever, you are my reason why. I long to hold the both of you again in heaven. I’m so glad you are with all your Great-grandmothers now, I know they are eating you up. This earth did not deserve either of you; you were just too wonderful to comprehend.

Joan you were the best mother-in-law anyone could ask for. You loved your family more than anyone I’ve ever seen. You raised the most wonderful girl in the world. I’m so glad y’all are still together. You were the best Nana this world has ever seen and I will never forget you."

Bivens plays for the Montgomery Biscuits, which painted "BIV" behind home plate:

For Blake. pic.twitter.com/nLYL7TnTdZ

— Montgomery Biscuits (@BiscuitBaseball) August 29, 2019

The Associated Press (h/t ESPN.com) provided more details on the killings, noting the 18-year-old brother of Emily was charged with first-degree murder.

The complaint filed against Matthew Bernard said he punched a neighbor in the arm on Tuesday morning and then ran. Said neighbor then heard gunshots next door and eventually found the dead bodies.

According to the AP, up to 100 officers were brought in to help find Bernard. An officer used pepper spray and a baton to capture the teenager after he emerged naked from the woods and attempted to choke someone at a church.

Minor league pitcher Blake Bivens' wife, Emily Bivens, one-year-old son, Cullen Bivens, and mother-in-law, Joan Bernard, were killed in Pittsylvania County, Virginia, on Tuesday, authorities confirmed, according to Jason Lanning of BayNews9.com.

Police arrested Bivens' brother-in-law, 18-year-old Matthew Bernard, and charged him with three counts of first-degree murder.

ABC 13 News reported police responded to a 911 call and found a woman dead in a driveway on Keeling Drive. Another woman and a child were found dead inside the home.

Later in the morning, the Pittsylvania County Sheriff's Office named Bernard as a suspect. Soon afterward, he was seen emerging from the woods naked and running around the neighborhood.

"ABC 13's Kyle Wilcox was standing in the media staging area when Bernard ran past reporters, attacked a church groundskeeper by putting his hands around his neck, and a police officer chased him down the street after macing him and hitting him with a nightstick to no avail," per ABC 13 News.

"He was taken into custody after running toward the homicide scene and officers."

According to NBC 10 News, Pittsylvania County Sheriff Mike Taylor told reporters that 100 officers assisted, including Virginia state troopers.

"This was a shock to our community, to anybody's community when something like this happens. And it's just a reminder about how fragile life is," Taylor said.

Bivens, a 24-year-old reliever, plays in the Southern League for the Montgomery Biscuits, a Double-A affiliate of the Tampa Bay Rays.

The Biscuits announced earlier Tuesday that their doubleheader with the Chattanooga Lookouts would be canceled because of a "tragic event within the Biscuits family." Jeff Passan of ESPN reported the killings Tuesday evening.

The Rays and Biscuits both issued statements.

We're with you, Blake. pic.twitter.com/gJqdUCIf7p

— Tampa Bay Rays (@RaysBaseball) August 28, 2019

A statement from CEO & Managing Owner, Lou DiBella. pic.twitter.com/Uocm0juKb7

— Montgomery Biscuits (@BiscuitBaseball) August 28, 2019

Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times forwarded a GoFundMe page from Our Baseball Life in support of Bivens and his family.