On star-studded USA roster, this reliever may not be a star -- but he's certainly a stud

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.

PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla. -- Take a look at the players representing Team USA in the World Baseball Classic, and you’ll find stars all over the place.

Paul Skenes and Tarik Skubal. Aaron Judge and Bryce Harper. Cal Raleigh and Kyle Schwarber. These are some of the game’s best and most famous players, all on one roster.

And then there’s Garrett Cleavinger, the Rays reliever who will be tasked with retiring some of the world’s best left-handed hitters in the WBC. He does not carry the same degree of name recognition present up and down Team USA’s roster, but his Tampa Bay teammates know as well as anyone that he’s there for a reason.

“He’s really kind of solidified himself as one of the top relievers in the game,” Rays catcher Hunter Feduccia said. “I think if people don't really know him now, they're going to know him after this WBC, for sure.”

Cleavinger got the call from manager Mark DeRosa early in the offseason. Well, actually, he missed the call from DeRosa, saw his voicemail and called him back. The mild-mannered lefty said the invitation to join fellow Rays reliever Griffin Jax on Team USA was a “really cool honor” and called the star-studded roster both “incredible” and “crazy.”

“Pretty wild,” Cleavinger said. “I didn’t really expect to get that phone call.”

But the Rays expect he will be right at home getting big outs on an international stage. They’ve seen it plenty in their uniform over the past few years.

“I mean, besides being a top-three left-handed reliever in all of baseball…” deadpanned starter Drew Rasmussen, Cleavinger’s offseason workout partner. “The stuff is off the charts. The consistency, especially over the last two years, he's gotten to the point where dominance is just kind of the expectation, which speaks to how he works. It speaks to how he prepares. It speaks to his confidence at this point.”

Drafted by the Orioles in the third round in 2015, Cleavinger was traded to the Phillies in July 2017 for former Rays starter Jeremy Hellickson. He moved from the Phillies to the Dodgers in a three-team trade that also involved the Rays. (Of course it did.) Finally, the Dodgers sent him to the Rays for Minor League outfielder German Tapia on Aug. 1, 2022.

He immediately found success with the Rays, although his 2023 season was cut short after 15 appearances due to a right knee injury that required surgery to repair a torn ACL. But he was healthy in 2024, leading Tampa Bay’s bullpen in strikeouts (71) and tying Kevin Kelly for the club lead in appearances (68) while being the only pitcher on the Opening Day roster to remain active all season.

“We always knew how good the stuff was,” said starter Ryan Pepiot, who was teammates with Cleavinger in Los Angeles before reuniting with the Rays. “And now that he's been given a run and an opportunity here, he's just proven exactly what we've seen and I've seen in the past and what we all knew he was capable of.”

Always “tinkering,” as Rasmussen put it, Cleavinger made some tweaks to his arsenal in 2024 that all came together in a dominant ’25 campaign as one of the Rays’ top high-leverage relievers. Last year, he set career-best marks in ERA (2.35), innings (61 1/3) and strikeouts (82), cut his walk rate down from 11.7% to 7.4% and held opponents to a .184 average, fourth-lowest among American League lefties.

“You could argue that he probably put up as good a season as any left-handed reliever in baseball last year,” pitching coach Kyle Snyder said.

Cleavinger has always been a strikeout machine, and he’s reached another level thanks to a more relentless commitment to strike-throwing. Last season, he threw 54.2% of his pitches in the zone, the highest rate of his career.

Put it all together, and he whiffed 33.7% of the batters he faced last year, tied for seventh among AL relievers. He made greater use of his two-seam fastball in addition to his four-seamer, with both clocking in around 96-97 mph. His slider was dominant, and his sweeper produced 23 strikeouts compared to only two hits, both singles.

“He's nasty against left-handed hitters, but now he's added being pretty dominant against right-handed hitters,” added manager Kevin Cash. “I'm thrilled for him to go experience that and rub elbows and shoulders with those guys that he's going to be playing with. Very, very deserving.”

No, Cleavinger may not be as famous as those guys. He may not get the level of recognition they do. He may not change the way people feel about players’ participation in the WBC.

But he deserves to be there just the same, and the people who know him best are happy to tell you that.

“If you don't know who he is, what are you doing? I mean, I thought he was deserving to be in Atlanta (for the All-Star Game) last summer,” Rasmussen said. “He's an unbelievable talent. The work ethic and the preparation that he puts into this game, they've afforded him the opportunity, and he's very much deserving of it.”