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.

BOSTON -- Heading into the 2021 postseason, the Rays lineup looked ready for a star-driven push through October. Last year, their pitching staff finished the regular season with a dominant foursome atop the rotation and a deep, versatile bullpen. 

But injuries caught up to Tampa Bay’s pitching staff in a 2021 American League Division Series loss to Boston. And the Rays’ offensive injuries and issues came back to haunt them in the 2022 AL Wild Card Series, as they were swept while scoring just one run over 24 innings in Cleveland. Two years, two early exits that might have left you wondering, “What if…?” 

As the Rays conclude their regular-season schedule this week with a trip to Boston and Toronto, can they overcome this latest onslaught of ill-timed injuries? 

Here’s who they have lost to the injured list over the last two weeks as it reached a season-high 11 players: their starting center fielder, Jose Siri; their starting second baseman, Brandon Lowe; one of their top left-handed hitters, Luke Raley; and a key setup reliever, Jason Adam. 

They also played this weekend without star outfielder Randy Arozarena and setup man Robert Stephenson, although both hope to return as soon as tonight at Fenway Park, and Yandy Díaz had to exit Sunday’s series finale against the Blue Jays due to right hamstring tightness. 

Of course, the Rays are also without three-fifths of their Opening Day rotation -- Shane McClanahan, Jeffrey Springs and Drew Rasmussen -- along with young starter Shane Baz and lefty reliever Garrett Cleavinger due to injuries, while All-Star shortstop Wander Franco remains on indefinite administrative leave.

Just reading the Rays’ injury report should make you appreciate the club’s ability to reach this point with the AL’s second-best record despite all those injuries and absences. It’s also entirely fair if it makes you wonder how they’ll weather all that in October -- or how much more they can take. 

Dealing with adversity is nothing new for the Rays. “It’s the next-man-up mentality,” as Raley said Sunday, and they’ve said it plenty over the past few years. It has served them better than most. But the impact of the latest wave of injuries was obvious in their regular-season home finale Sunday afternoon at Tropicana Field. 

They had a rookie starter (Taj Bradley) pitching to a catcher (René Pinto) with 59 games of Major League experience. After Díaz left, there were rookies batting first (Osleivis Basabe), third (Curtis Mead) and fifth (20-year-old top prospect Junior Caminero) in the lineup. 

“They’re getting opportunities right now, and you’ve got to learn quick on the fly,” manager Kevin Cash said on Saturday. “I'd like to think that all these at-bats, all these ground balls, all these reps are going to help them -- and there's no doubt we're going to need their help.  

“I think our best thing we can do is get them as comfortable as possible and let them embrace the moment. And maybe some of the guys that had been there -- whether it's Yandy, some of the guys on our pitching staff, Randy -- [can] help along with that.” 

The last point is critical. When crunch time comes, the Rays will need to get the most they can out of the key contributors still standing: the All-Stars Díaz and Arozarena, season-long lineup fixtures like Isaac Paredes, Harold Ramírez and Josh Lowe, top starters Zach Eflin and Tyler Glasnow and all the bullpen arms who have previously pitched on the postseason stage. 

But at a time of year you typically see clubs eliminated from playoff contention turning to the next wave of talent as a sort of tryout or preview of better days ahead, the Rays are counting on theirs to help them head into the postseason on a high note. 

“It's obviously unfortunate. The goal is to win, so it sucks having a few of your best players go down,” Mead said. “But yeah, definitely a good opportunity for a few of us to play a little bit more and prove something.”