Tampa Bay Rays Trivia
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59 free Tampa Bay Rays trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This Tampa Bay Rays trivia quiz covers the whole franchise: the decades of failed bids for a team, Vince Naimoli's lawsuit-settled expansion club, the Devil Rays' rainbow jerseys and Hit Show, Wade Boggs's 3,000th hit, Lou Piniella, Joe Maddon and the 9=8 pennant winners of 2008, David Price and Blake Snell's Cy Youngs, the opener, Randy Arozarena's record October, the Montreal split-season plan, Hurricane Milton and the 2025 sale. Expect easy questions on the ballpark, the mascots and the biggest names, plenty of history for regular fans, and hard ones about the Maui Stingrays, the Whitecaps and Panthers bids, and the club whose 1970s uniforms inspired the fauxbacks. Uniforms, the cowbell and the Skyway cap get their turn too. Every answer was checked against primary and encyclopaedic sources before it went in, so when you miss one you can trust the explanation. Play it solo or run it as a round at your next watch party. For the wider game, our MLB baseball trivia page is the natural next stop.
30 of 59 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which city is the Rays' home ballpark, Tropicana Field, located?
St. Petersburg
St. Petersburg finished the ballpark in 1990 to attract a big-league club, then waited eight years before the Devil Rays played a game there.
Q 02Which other expansion team entered Major League Baseball alongside the Devil Rays in 1998?
Arizona Diamondbacks
Arizona Diamondbacks. The twins' fates split at once: Arizona won the World Series in 2001, its fourth season, while Tampa Bay had a losing record in each of its first ten.
Q 03Which businessman won the Tampa Bay expansion franchise in 1995 after his deal to buy the Giants was blocked?
Vince Naimoli
Vince Naimoli had agreed to pay $115 million for the Giants and move them to Tampa Bay, but the National League took a lower bid that kept the team in San Francisco.
Q 04The Devil Rays' first-choice name, 'Sting Rays', already belonged to a winter-league club in which location?
Maui
Maui, whose Stingrays played in Hawaii's winter league, already held the name. Rather than buy the rights, the new club simply chose a different kind of ray.
Q 05Which alternative to 'Devil Rays' did the club offer fans in a 1995 telephone poll?
Manta Rays
Manta Rays was the fallback after objections to the word devil, but the club declared the original the winner of the phone vote and the name stayed.
Q 06Which outfielder did the Devil Rays draft in 1997 and trade for Kevin Stocker?
Bobby Abreu
Bobby Abreu was taken from Houston in the expansion draft and traded away the same day. He hit .312 for his new club in 1998.
Q 07Which Tampa-born slugger did the Devil Rays acquire from the Atlanta Braves on the day of their 1997 expansion draft?
Fred McGriff
Fred McGriff, the 'Crime Dog', left a perennial contender for a last-place expansion club, then drove in four runs in the franchise's first win.
Q 08Who was the Devil Rays' first manager, hired in November 1997?
Larry Rothschild
Larry Rothschild was the Florida Marlins' pitching coach when Tampa Bay hired him. Two straight 69-win, last-place seasons followed, and he was fired in April 2001.
Q 09Which team did the Devil Rays face in their first-ever game on March 31, 1998, an 11–6 loss?
Detroit Tigers
Detroit Tigers won 11–6 before a sellout crowd of 45,369, but the Devil Rays beat the same club 11–8 the next day for their first victory.
Q 10Which Devil Ray became the first player to reach 3,000 career hits with a home run, in 1999?
Wade Boggs
Wade Boggs, a singles hitter known for his lack of power, homered off Cleveland's Chris Haney at Tropicana Field for hit number 3,000, then retired after that season.
Q 11What nickname did the 2000 Devil Rays give veteran sluggers Canseco, Castilla and Vaughn?
The Hit Show
The Hit Show was the billing, but most of its sluggers were past their prime and the Devil Rays still lost 92 games.
Q 12Which 1999 first overall pick never played for the Devil Rays?
Josh Hamilton
Josh Hamilton spent seven years in Tampa Bay's system without reaching the majors, was lost to another club in the 2006 Rule 5 draft, and made his debut with Cincinnati months later.
Q 13Which Tampa native, who had won a World Series with the Reds, managed the Devil Rays from 2003 to 2005?
Lou Piniella
Q 21What was the Rays manager's mathematical mantra for the 2008 season?
9=8
9=8 meant nine players playing hard for nine innings would earn one of eight playoff spots. A club that had never won more than 70 games then reached the World Series.
Q 22Which hairstyle spread through the Rays' roster during the 2008 pennant race?
Mohawk
Mohawk cuts spread from player to player until even the manager had one done, calling it a unity kind of thing.
Q 23Which pitcher threw the Rays' first no-hitter, in July 2010?
Matt Garza
Matt Garza faced the minimum 27 batters: his only baserunner walked in the second inning and was wiped out on a double play.
Lou Piniella cost Tampa Bay its only All-Star, Randy Winn, as compensation to Seattle. He took a $2.2 million buyout after three losing seasons because the payroll rise he was promised never came.
Q 14Which outfielder won AL stolen-base titles in 2003 and 2004 and holds the Rays' season record with 60 steals?
Carl Crawford
Carl Crawford set that mark in 2009, the year he stole six bases in a single game to tie the modern major-league record.
Q 15Which longtime Angels coach, hired as manager for 2006, led the Rays to their first pennant?
Joe Maddon
Joe Maddon lost 101 and then 96 games in his first two seasons before the 2008 club won 97, a turnaround that made him AL Manager of the Year.
Q 16Which executive did Stuart Sternberg install to run the Devil Rays' baseball operations after 2005, replacing Chuck LaMar?
Andrew Friedman
Andrew Friedman was 28 and had little front-office experience, yet the club he rebuilt won the pennant three years later.
Q 17After dropping 'Devil' for 2008, the team said its shorter name 'Rays' also referred to what?
Sunshine
Sunshine, as in the Sunshine State, is what the yellow burst in the logo stands for. The renamed club promptly had its first winning season and won the pennant.
Q 18Which baseball lifer, a Rays senior adviser until his death in 2014, had his number 66 retired by the club?
Don Zimmer
Don Zimmer had long called the Tampa Bay area home, and the adviser's job he took after leaving the Yankees in 2003 became the longest stint of his 65 years in professional baseball.
Q 19Which team did the Rays beat in seven games in the 2008 ALCS to reach their first World Series?
Boston Red Sox
Boston Red Sox were the defending champions and erased a 7–0 deficit in the last three innings to win Game 5, yet Tampa Bay still closed out the series with a 3–1 win in Game 7.
Q 20Which team beat the Rays four games to one in the 2008 World Series?
Philadelphia Phillies
Philadelphia Phillies clinched in a Game 5 that rain stopped in the sixth inning and that resumed two days later, the first suspended game in World Series history.
Q 24Whose 12th-inning walk-off homer against the Yankees clinched the 2011 wild card on the final night?
Evan Longoria
Evan Longoria homered twice as the Rays came back from 7–0 down in the eighth inning: a three-run shot started the rally's finish, and his second won it in the 12th.
Q 25Who became the first Rays pitcher to win the Cy Young Award, in 2012?
David Price
David Price first made his name as a reliever, closing out Game 7 of the 2008 ALCS to send the Rays to their first World Series. By 2012 he led the AL in ERA as a starter.
Q 26Which Tampa native and former Devil Rays backup catcher was named the Rays' manager in December 2014?
Kevin Cash
Kevin Cash had hit .161 in 13 games for the 2005 Devil Rays. As their manager he became the first in AL history to win Manager of the Year in back-to-back seasons, 2020 and 2021.
Q 27Which pitcher went 21–5 with a 1.89 ERA in 2018 to win the Rays' second Cy Young Award?
Blake Snell
Blake Snell was later pulled from Game 6 of the 2020 World Series in the sixth inning with a 1–0 lead, two hits allowed and nine strikeouts. The bullpen lost the lead that inning, and the Series with it.
Q 28What pitching innovation did the 2018 Rays pioneer, with a 'bulk man' following a short first stint?
The opener
The opener debuted on May 19, 2018, when reliever Sergio Romo started against the Angels, struck out the side and handed over after one inning. Other clubs soon copied the idea.
Q 29Which team received Chris Archer in the 2018 trade sending Glasnow, Meadows and Baz to Tampa?
Pittsburgh Pirates
Pittsburgh Pirates made the deal at the trade deadline on July 31, 2018. Archer went 3–9 with a 5.19 ERA for them the next year, never pitched for them again, and rejoined Tampa Bay in 2021.
Q 30Which Rays rookie outfielder set records with 10 homers and 29 hits in the 2020 postseason?
Randy Arozarena
Randy Arozarena had played so little before that October that he was still a rookie in 2021, and he won the AL Rookie of the Year award a full season after his record run.