The Rays still aren't done shopping this offseason

This story was excerpted from Adam Berry's Rays Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

ST. PETERSBURG -- With the holiday season upon us, the Rays have crossed a few key items off their offseason shopping list.

They landed a veteran starter in left-hander Steven Matz, potentially filling the Zack Littell/Adrian Houser spot in their rotation.

They boosted their outfield defense and power potential by signing center fielder Cedric Mullins, and they gave themselves another corner option in veteran Jake Fraley.

They also clarified their stance on their outfield jam, saying at the Winter Meetings that they’d like to increase the amount of competition in Spring Training to get the most out of their bounce-back candidates in the outfield and elsewhere.

So, with nearly two months remaining before camp opens in Port Charlotte, what’s next?

“We’ve just got to find ways to get better,” president of baseball operations Erik Neander said earlier this week. “That’s trying to find a way to get better in ’26. It’s trying to find ways to get better beyond ’26. We've always got to walk that line in terms of how we balance it.”

Neander said the Rays will bring in more pitching if they can, and they’ll keep an open mind when it comes to adding to their position player group. They seem to have enough starting pitchers, but they’ll be opportunistic if something comes along that makes sense within their roughly $85-90 million payroll.

They have previously stated their need for an infielder who can potentially back up Taylor Walls at shortstop, and they’ve acknowledged catcher is an area where they can always improve. They could trade veteran second baseman Brandon Lowe, and their controllable starters (namely Shane Baz) have come up in trade rumors. They still could make moves with an eye toward 2027 or beyond, too.

In short, they’re still in what Neander described at the Winter Meetings as “talent accumulation mode.”

“I think right now, your eyes and ears are open for any ways you can find improvement now or later,” Neander said after signing Matz. “And you keep running out those plays until we're a little closer to camp.”

To that end, it’s worth noting one option that the Rays recently explored, as first reported by Ken Rosenthal at The Athletic: pursuing free-agent Jorge Polanco. The switch-hitting infielder wound up signing a two-year, $40 million deal with the Mets to mostly play first base, but Tampa Bay had another idea in mind that illustrates the mentality that adding to the roster comes now and figuring out how it’ll fit comes later.

The Rays are seemingly set at the positions where Polanco has lined up: second and third base, designated hitter and now, apparently, first base. They have Yandy Díaz at DH, Jonathan Aranda at first, Lowe at second and Junior Caminero at third. But they could have made time for Polanco in an infield/DH rotation, essentially using him as an everyday player without an everyday position, or they could have felt freer to trade someone else -- like Lowe or Díaz -- to add talent elsewhere.

Would an acquisition like that have shown up on one of our lists of offseason needs? Not necessarily. Would it have made them better? Yes.

Expect the Rays to carry that mindset through the next phase of the offseason, whatever shape that may take.

“At some point here, we need to create the most functional roster possible. But it's very much, you know, ‘How do we get better? How do we get better?’” Neander said. “And then, ‘How do we make it fit?’ It'll shift more to that probably a couple months from now.”