Tampa Bay manager Kevin Cash said Tuesday that McClanahan will start the team's Opening Day game April 8 versus Baltimore, Neil Solondz of the Rays Radio Network reports.
With Tyler Glasnow (elbow) expected to miss most of the upcoming season while recovering from Tommy John surgery, McClanahan entered spring training as the most logical choice to get the ball for the Rays on Opening Day. The 2018 first-round pick is coming off a brilliant rookie campaign in which he submitted a 3.43 ERA and 1.27 WHIP across 123.1 innings while posting a 27.3 percent strikeout rate and limiting opposing hitters to a .251 average. Since he won't turn 25 years old until April, the Rays are likely to manage his workload carefully in 2022, so he can't reliably be counted on to clear much more than 150 innings.