All Entries Tagged With: "Tampa Bay Rays"
Should Mets Bother to Make an Offer to Damon and Ibanez?
With the lack of interest the New York Mets have in upgrading their team this offseason, the media and those who blog tend to overanalyze every move they make as well as every player the team is rumored to have interest in. If this was a prior- more active- offseason, most of the discussions Mets [...]
Acquisitions Propel Rangers to ALCS…Again!
For the second straight season, the Rangers beat the Tampa Bay Rays to advance to the ALCS. For the second straight season, their success was largely based on recent player acquisitions. In 2010, Rangers GM Jon Daniels made several key moves in both the offseason and prior to the trade deadline, including the additions of [...]
Lessons Learned: Fantasy Baseball 2011 and Fantasy Baseball 2012
As the 2011 major league baseball regular season comes to a close, we are left to look back at the fantasy baseball season which just ended. However, it is also never too early to look ahead at the coming fantasy baseball 2012 season either. There are several lessons to be taken from this season and several which we can apply [...]
MLB Revenue Sharing: Why doesn’t it seem to work?
When baseball implemented a revenue sharing plan as part of their collective bargaining agreement in 1997, the premise behind the plan was that it would create a more competitive atmosphere between all teams in baseball. So rather than the elite, large market teams such as the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox who can [...]
What The Tampa Bay Rays Need to do in the Second Half
The season is halfway over and it appears that the Rays are still hanging on to a place at the table come October. Being 6 games out, the chances of taking the Division seem slim, but given the equation of a normal team in Major League Baseball of winning 50, losing 50, and fighting for [...]
The Tampa Bay Rays After 5 and a Half Weeks
The Rays are one of the hottest teams in Major League Baseball with 22 wins. They have won 7 of their last 10 games and are sitting in first place with the Yankees now in second by 1 game, the Rays are now 22-15 on the season. Pitching and hitting have equalized [...]
For the Rays, Pitching is Keeping the Ship a Float!
A couple weeks ago, I had written that once the Rays bats start to get hot, lookout. Well, it is not that the team is batting at its full potential, but the pitching staff has really held their ground and the Rays are consistently winning. What they have done lately is most [...]
The Tampa Bay Rays Pitching Gets Them to .500
You have to take your hat off to the Tampa Bay Rays. Their play had to be on the mark for the last two weeks and it has been just that. The team is 8-3 out of the last 11 with a .500 record after starting the season 0-6. It was a must [...]
Taking a Look at the Rays in Week Two and Looking Forward to Week Three
The Tampa Rays have been able to pick up the pace and stay in contention with this past weeks play. Starting 0-6 and a surprise retirement by Ramirez, they have stayed the course and gained valuable ground by playing with consistency. Winning four in a row has the Rays just 2.5 games out of first [...]
The Rays 0-6 Start Are Now Without Ramirez…Now What?
Covering the Tampa Bay Rays was supposed to be a year of excitement on the field. Winning has gotten off to a slow start as well as the bats of Manny Ramirez and Johnny Damon. A start of 0-6 is certainly not what any team GM or manager wants to contend with. In [...]
Is the American League East Caught in a Time Warp?
With the recent signings by the New York Yankees of Bartolo Colon and Andruw Jones, the Tampa Bay Rays of Johnny Damon and Manny Ramirez and the Baltimore Orioles of Derrek Lee and Vladimir Guerrero you have to wonder if these teams realize that it is 2011 and not 2005. If it were 2005, the [...]
American and National League Divisional Series Prediction
OK, this is my first attempt at a webcast so it’s bound to be a little rough around the edges. I now see that it is much easier doing one of these with at least one more person like on the BBA Baseball Talk podcasts or online with the guys over at Pro Rumors TV. [...]
AL East – Who are the Pretenders and Contenders
Right now we are just about six weeks into the 2010 Major League Baseball Season, and the AL East is looking like the strongest of the American League. With both the Rays and Yankees off to fast starts, it is looking like a two team race. As the cool days of Spring move into the [...]
What People Are Saying About Braden’s Perfect Mother’s Day
A Memorable Mother’s Day 2010 As a reminder, Dallas Braden did this against the major league’s hottest team, the Tampa Bay Rays who hold the best record in all of baseball at this point in the season! Here’s what former A’s teammate Dana Eveland had to say about his friend’s perfect game, “I got to [...]
Baseball News, Tweets & More
Image by mikeleeorg via Flickr Tuesday Afternoon Edition @AmalieBenjamin: In today’s Globe: Red Sox notebook: Caught stealing? It remains a running gag – http://b.globe.com/drgvOT #redsox @MLB_Monster: Lind starting to get back on track (source: CBS News): Blue Jays OF Adam Lind got two hits for the second time in … http://bit.ly/a1JVbL @espnrangersblog & espn_durrett: Borbon [...]
Baseball News, Tweets & More…Tuesday pm
Tuesday Afternoon Edition @prorumors : Hank Blalock signs Minor League deal with Tampa Bay Rays http://goo.gl/fb/Qiue #topstories #contract #hankblalock @steveslow: Chasing Sabermetric’s Holy Grail or, Another Stab at Valuing Catcher Defense http://sbnation.com/e/1127904 & Chasing the Grail, Part Two http://sbnation.com/e/1127922 & Updated my attempt at putting a UZR value on catcher defense. It’s only an estimate, [...]
Hot Stove Baseball Free Agent Tracker: 1B
There aren’t many top first basemen available this year. Last year’s free agent class was led by Mark Teixeira, who was the top free agent according to the Elias rankings that determine pick compensation allocation for teams which sign multiple Type A free agents. Teixeira’s new team, the Yankees, signed three: Teixeira, CC Sabathia and [...]
BBA 2009 AL MVP Ballot
Image by Getty Images via Daylife Warning: most of this ballot is going to surprise you. How do I know, because it surprised me! You see, I didn’t just use my eyes or even the traditional method/statistics to make up this ballot. I used 11 statistical categories including defensive metrics & added some objective weight [...]
Many Yankee moments to remember in September
The last month of the New York Yankees‘ season could have been anticlimactic – they essentially clinched the AL East when they swept the Boston Red Sox in four games in August. But the Bombers still ended up turning it on throughout the stretch, even when they rested players to tune up for October. Here [...]
Friday Night Links: Contest
Image by Keith Allison via Flickr Tonight’s version of Friday Night Links will focus on a contest being run by our friends over at RAYS THE STAKES, a Tampa Bay Rays blog. The winner of this contest will get an autographed JASON BARTLETT (Rays SS) Upper Deck baseball card. This contest is being provided by [...]
Breaking News: The Rays Are Sellers, and Looking Towards 2010
They’ve done it. I asked them to. I suggested it. But I didn’t expect them to do it. But they did it. I can’t believe they actually did it. Image via Wikipedia The Tampa Bay Rays have traded Scott Kazmir. My logic at the beginning of the season was as sound then as it is [...]
The Current Mindset of the Rays
It’s hard to believe that in this decade, Tampa Bay major sports franchises have been to the Super Bowl, the World Series, and the Stanley Cup Finals. Not bad for a city that has, at other times, been synonymous with horrendous teams (the Buccaneers before this decade, and the Rays before last season). What have [...]
How Josh Hamilton Defeated His Demons
Image by Keith Allison via Flickr The nice people at Guideposts.com have been kind enough to allow us to bring these stories of current Major League players in their entirety while I’m away on vacation. So without further ado…The Natural by Josh Hamilton (himself): How faith and family helped big leaguer Josh Hamilton beat his [...]
Tracking the Top Prospects: 11-20
No lengthy introduction needed here as we continue with the second half of the top 20 prospects in baseball thanks again to Keith Law of Scouts, Inc. We will start now with No. 11. 11. Tim Beckham, SS, Tampa Bay Rays organization Last year’s number one overall pick in the MLB first-year player draft went [...]
The Rays After 40 Games
The 2009 Tampa Bay Rays played their fortieth game of the season on Monday, May 18th and in so doing got themselves back to the .500 mark at 20-20. But at this point, things that went right in 2008 so far have not in 2009, and the Rays find themselves in fourth place in their [...]
Tracking the Top Prospects: Players 1-10
Image via Wikipedia Back on Jan. 22, Keith Law of Scouts, Inc. wrote a column for ESPN.com that ranked the top 100 prospects in the major leagues for the 2009 regular season. Well, since the most of us do not pay whatever fee that is charged to get ESPNinsider, we only have access to the [...]
America’s Pastime: The Last 4 Innings
Sixth Inning The culmination of a week long bike trip with my Boy Scout troop that encompassed 150 miles was a baseball game on the fourth of July at PNC Park, home of the Pittsburgh Pirates. My dad was not able to accompany us on the biking journey, although he would have loved to, because [...]
World Champions Reload, Reorganize, for Repeat
The start of this offseason brought about a bevy of unwelcomed, albeit unsurprising news to the 2008 World Champions. Left-handed reliever J.C. Romero, who had a 0.00 ERA in four World Series appearances, finally learned the fate of his appeal for violating the league’s steroid-abuse policy. Romero was sentenced to a 50-game suspension to begin [...]
Rays Reflections
David Price and Andy Sonnanstine are exhibits A and B in a lesson about how valuable experience can be when making a major league roster or, more importantly, a starting rotation. Though I am a big fan of Andy’s, anyone can see that Price is likely a far more talented pitcher in every aspect of [...]
Reflections on the Mariners
Last October, Jack Zduriencik was anointed Seattle’s next GM after a ton of success in Milwaukee as Special Assistant to the GM for Player Personnel and Director of Amateur Scouting (and you thought his name was a mouthful, whew!). He may come in with a scouting background to bolster Seattle’s already-strong scouting department, but his [...]
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