Tampa Bay Rays Remove Hometown Favorite Player From Roster

ST. PETERSBURG, FL — To make room for a new player acquired in a three-team trade with the Houston Astros and Baltimore Orioles, the Tampa Bay Rays have removed a hometown favorite from its 40-man roster, the team tweeted Monday afternoon.

The Rays designated outfielder Brett Maverick Phillips, a graduate of Seminole High School, for assignment so the team could welcome center fielder José Siri from the Astros.

As of Tuesday evening, Phillips hasn’t released a public comment about his new status.

So far this season, Phillips has a .147 batting average in 184 at bats, compared to a career average of .190.

Also referred to as DFA, when a player is designated for assignment, they’re immediately removed from his club’s roster, according to the glossary on the Major League Baseball website. Within seven days, that player can be traded or placed on irrevocable outright waivers.

If another team claims the player off these waivers, that club will immediately add the player to its 40-man roster. From there, the player can either be sent to the minor leagues or assigned to the new team’s 26-man roster.

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Teams sometimes use this option to clear a spot on their 40-man roster when acquiring new players, the MLB said.

Tampa Bay also traded minor league pitchers Seth Johnson and Jayden Murray in the deal, while Houston acquired first baseman/designated hitter Trey Mancini from the Orioles and minor league pitcher Chayce McDermott went to Baltimore from the Astros.

On social media, Rays’ fans had mixed reactions to the news about Phillips. Many expressed remorse about his being DFA.

“On all the fan pages I belong to, the overwhelming feeling is of sadness that we lost Brett, not excitedness that we gained Siri,” one fan commented on Facebook.

Another wrote, “Brett Phillips was a much bigger asset to the Rays than his batting average. Big mistake! I will always be his fan!!!”

Other fans welcomed the new blood, though.

One fan wrote, “So glad Phillips is gone. Like-able guy but that doesn’t win us games.”

“Siri has way more offensive potential and upside than Phillips and it’s not even close,” another wrote.

The trade was announced just two days after a promotional giveaway at Tropicana Field in the Phillips’ honor — the team gave away a Devil Rays basketball jersey modeled after one the player wore in a picture taken on his fourth birthday.

After graduating from Seminole in 2012, Phillips was a sixth-round draft pick for the Astros — one of just three high school players in the country drafted by a professional team that year — and skipped college for the minor leagues. He made his MLB debut in 2017 as part of the Milwaukee Brewers franchise and went on to play for the Kansas City Royals, as well.

He went home to Florida in 2020, when the Royals traded him to the Rays. Phillips has been a local fan favorite even before he joined Tampa Bay.

When he came into town in 2018 for his first time as a Major League player, his family and friends took over Section 127, making it the unofficial “Brett Phillips Area,” according to his bio on the Rays’ website. While his sister reserved 200 seats for that game, around 1,000 people came out to support him.

Phillips is, perhaps, most famous for his Game 4 walk-off single in the 2020 World Series, which gave the Rays an 8-7 win over the Los Angeles Dodgers. Following the play, he celebrated with his signature move — mimicking an airplane windmill as he ran across the outfield.

In 2021, he hit three grand slams, including one inside-the-park home run, in only 19 plate appearances, making MLB history, according to a league blog post. He comes only second to Jim Northrup, who hit three grand slams in just 14 times at bat in 1968 and beat the legendary Lou Gehrig, who did the same in 20 appearances in 1931.

And Phillips bested another baseball icon, Babe Ruth, who hit a combination three grand slams and an inside-the-park home run within 36 days in 1929, MLB said. This makes him the first player in either the American or National League to make three grand slams and an inside-the-park homer within 30 days.

“These are some of the greatest baseball players of all time, and … it doesn’t even sound right for my name to be in the same sentence as theirs. Even though I did that, I broke their records, I feel like we should just be like, ‘No, we still need to give it to them,’” Phillips told Jayson Stark with The Athletic.

The player also launched his own brand, Baseball is Fun, selling T-shirts, hats and other items. According to its website, the company’s name is inspired by comments he made after that 2020 Game 4 win, when he stated, “Baseball is fun.”

The bio on the brand’s Instagram page states that its mission is “reminding people the joy baseball can bring.”