ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – Former Webster University All-American pitcher Josh Fleming will make history on Sunday afternoon here at Tropicana Field as the 6-foot-2 left-hander will make his Major League debut when he starts for the Rays in the third game of its four-game series against the Toronto Blue Jays.

Sunday's game with Fleming taking the mound will be shown nationally on television on TBS beginning at 12:10 p.m. (St. Louis time), thanks to the postponement of the New York Yankees game with the New York Mets, which was originally scheduled to be shown on TBS. 
 
Fleming, who was called up to the Rays on Friday afternoon from the club's alternate training site in Port Charlotte, Fla., took the place on the Rays 40-man roster of Yonny Chirinos, who was put on the disabled list after suffering a UCL tear that will require Tommy John surgery and will keep him out until the 2022 season. Chirinos is now the seventh pitcher for the Rays and the fourth that will miss the remainder of the season as he joins Brendan McKay, Colin Porche and Andrew Kittredge.
 
With his call-up to the Rays, Fleming becomes the first baseball player from both Webster University and the St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference to ever advance to the major leagues. Sunday's start and MLB debut for Fleming, who was named the 2017 D3Baseball.com Pitcher of the Year, will mark a rapid climb through the Rays farm system for the former Gorlok hurler after being a fifth round selection (139th pick overall) of the Rays in the 2017 MLB Draft. Fleming is in his fourth season of professional baseball and was expected to start the season at Triple-A Durham before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the sports world in mid-March and forced the cancellation of the entire minor league baseball season for 2020.
 
Fleming, who was a non-roster invitee to the Rays MLB spring training camp this spring and was on the club's 60-man roster for the 2020 season, has recorded a combined 3.40 ERA with a 6.6 K/9 and a 1.6 BB/9 and a ground-ball rate north of 50 percent in his first three seasons of professional baseball.
 
In his third minor league season in 2019, Fleming, who finished the 2019 season at Triple-A Durham, was named the MVP of the Double-A Montgomery Biscuits of the Southern League by the Rays after making 21 appearances on the mound for the Biscuits.
 
For the 2019 season at both the Double and Triple-A levels, Fleming, who is ranked as the 29th top prospect in the Rays system according to MLB.com, went a combined 12-7 with a 3.57 ERA. He made 25 appearances, including 20 starts and tossed three complete game and one shutout. In 148.2 innings of work over two teams, Fleming allowed 151 hits, 70 runs, 59 earned runs, walked 27 and recorded 108 strikeouts. On the year, he had a combined WHIP of 1.20.
 
Since beginning his professional career with Princeton (W.Va.) in the Appalachian League in the summer of 2017, Fleming has posted a 22-13 record and a 3.40 ERA in 56 appearances and 46 starts for five different teams. In his professional career, he has tossed four complete games, one shutout and in 294 career innings, he has recorded 214 strikeouts and walked just 53.
 
After pitching in 12 games at the Rookie level with Princeton, Fleming, who was named the D3Baseball.com Pitcher of the Year in 2017, began the 2018 season with Bowling Green (Ky.) in the Class-A Midwest League, before being promoted to High A Port Charlotte (Fla.) in the Florida State League. In 2018, Fleming went a combined 9-4 with a 2.53 ERA at the Single-A level and then opened the 2019 season at Double-A Montgomery, before his mid-August promotion to Triple-A Durham.
 
In his three year Webster career from 2015-17, Fleming set Webster single season marks for ERA and strikeouts and allowed the second lowest batting average for opponents (.165). Additionally, Fleming recorded the lowest career ERA in school history (1.92) and finished second in career strikeouts (251) and fourth in wins (19).
 
During the 2017 season, Fleming was named the D3Baseball.com Pitcher of the Year and earned First-Team All-American honor from both D3Baseball.com and ABCA/Rawlings and was also named the SLIAC Pitcher of the Year, the Central Region Pitcher of the Year and a First-Team All-Central Region selection by both D3Baseball.com and ABCA/Rawlings and was recently named the Webster Baseball 2010s Pitcher of the Decade and was also named to the 2010s All-Decade Baseball Team.