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Tampa Bay Rays Roster

pitchers # Pos.

Christopher Archer 35 P

Burke Badenhop 45 P

Matt Bush 44 P

Alex Cobb 53 P

Alexander Colome - P

Wade Davis 40 P

Dane De La Rosa 49 P

Kyle Farnsworth 43 P

Brandon Gomes 47 P

Jeremy Hellickson 58 P

J.P. Howell 74 P

Josh Lueke 52 P

Jake McGee 57 P

Matt Moore 55 P

Jeff Niemann 34 P

Joel Peralta 62 P

David Price 14 P

Cesar Ramos 27 P

Fernando Rodney 56 P

Wilking Rodriguez - P

James Shields 33 P

Albert Suarez 50 P

Alexander Torres 56 P

catchers # Pos.

Robinson Chirinos 38 C

Jose Lobaton 31 C

Jose Molina 28 C

Stephen Vogt - C

infielders # Pos.

Reid Brignac 15 SS

Elliot Johnson 9 SS

Jeff Keppinger 7 2B

Evan Longoria 3 3B

Carlos Pena 23 1B

Sean Rodriguez 1 2B

Ben Zobrist 18 2B

outfielders # Pos.

Sam Fuld 5 LF

Brandon Guyer 11 LF

Desmond Jennings 8 LF

Luke Scott 30 LF

B.J. Upton 2 CF

designated hitters # Pos.

Matt Joyce 20 DH

Book Review: Out Of My League by Dirk Hayhurst

by Jason Collette on Feb 16, 2012 9:00 AM EST in Features & Analysis

It was a nice story last season when The Garfoose signed with the Rays and did well in Durham before getting injured. Even though his career is now taking him over to Italy this season, he still remains one of the more intriguing guys to follow on Twitter as he is quite a diverse personality and an engaging person.

When I was presented with an opportunity to receive a review copy of his latest book in December, I jumped on it even though the timing could not have been worse. At the time, I was elbow-deep into writing the Rays' chapter for the 2012 Baseball Prospectus while carrying my typical writing workload for the many sites in which I produce content for after hours from my day job which taxes me with both heavy workloads and heavy travel schedules. In short, this book quickly grabbed my attention span and kept me interested until its very end.

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The Rays Tank: The Attack Of The Saber

by Steve Slowinski on Feb 16, 2012 8:37 AM EST in The Rays Tank

We may be in a dead time of the year for baseball news, but that certainly doesn't mean there's a dearth of cool articles to read. In fact, there were a number of articles yesterday that featured some interesting -- and new! -- sabermetric research. If you're into such things, don't waste a moment and check out these three pieces:

Matt Swartz continued his series on the price of a Win, and he finished his piece with a chart of the $/WAR that teams have spent in every year going back to 1985. To me, it's fascinating to see how prices remained relatively stable through the '90s, but then started to skyrocket come the '00s. It also seems like that inflation is increasing faster and faster. Jeff Zimmerman looked at how intentional walks can screw up a player's perceived walk rate and patience. In short, players that see a boost in their intentional walk rate also typically receive a bump in their unintentional walk rate as pitchers will be more cautious around them and give them non-intentional walks. So when you see a player that boosted his walk rate dramatically, you should first stop and see if that's because the player has truly improved their plate discipline, or in large part because pitchers are being more cautious with them. Bill Petti has done some recent research on park factors affect a team's chance of winning, and he followed that work up by looking at how park factors and ERA estimators relate. Are certain ERA estimators more effective in hitter- or pitcher-friendly parks? Do ERA estimators that include batted ball profiles gain importance depending on the park? It's some interesting stuff, and will hopefully lead to even more research down the line.

And now, on to other baseball articles. If research bores you, there are still plenty of fun reads this morning:

Jeremy Hellickson and James Shields have two of the best changeups in baseball? Color me shocked! Being a product of the '90s, I learned a bunch from this Baseball Nation article on the history of artificial turf. I never knew why AstroTurf was invented, but the story with the Astros makes a bunch of sense. The Padres are the most recent team to score a new TV deal, and they're set to rake in upwards of $30 million each year for the next 20 seasons. By the time the Rays are able to renegotiate their current deal, they're going to be well behind the times at this rate. It got announced yesterday that O's starter Zach Britton is still dealing with a shoulder injury that has lingered from the end of last season. While it's bad news -- and speaks poorly on the O's management of their young pitchers -- it's worth pointing out that their new GM has made some strides this year to fix that problem in the organization. Who knows if it'll pay off, but they're at least moving in the right direction. Carson Cistulli was gracious enough to have me on FanGraphs Audio yesterday, where I hopefully didn't make big a fool of myself. We talked about a number of Rays-related topics, including Brandon Guyer, Matt Moore, Scott Kazmir, and (of course) Casey Fossum.

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Yankees Looking Ahead to 2013

Well, at least their writers are. Larry Koestler of RiverAveBlues asked us to chime in on B.J. Upton as he makes the case for the Yankees to target him after this season should he opt for free agency.

about 19 hours ago Jason Collette 16 comments

Fantasy Baseball Sleepers, Rays Edition

by Steve Slowinski on Feb 15, 2012 1:00 PM EST

We don't delve into the realm of fantasy baseball too much here at DRaysBay, but it's not because of lack of interest; I imagine almost everyone on our staff plays fantasy baseball to some degree (or has in the past), and I know for a fact that one or two of us might be...umm, well, let's just say that my wife will be hosting old college friends this weekend while I participate in a 5-hour draft.

There's not always a ton of fantasy baseball content that we can write for DRB; after all, we are just covering one team, and there's only so much that can be said about those players. But since fantasy baseball drafts will be kicking off soon-ish, it's at least worth pointing out some players on the Rays that could be underrated by your fellow leaguemates.

Please note, I'm no fantasy baseball expert. Take my word with a grain of salt, but these are the Rays players that I'm hoping to snag this season:

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Has Johnny Damon Altered His Plate Approach To Reach 3000 Hits?

by MrNegative1 on Feb 15, 2012 9:35 AM EST

Back on July 29th, JC Mitchell wrote an article titled Damon's Quest for 3000 Has Hurt. Mitchell examined Damon's plate discipline in 2011 and compared it to his career and surmised that Damon was altering his approach at tthe plate in his quest to reach 3000 hits.

In his article Mitchell wrote:

Damon enters today with 2677 hits and could reasonably reach 3000 hits with 2-3 more mediocre seasons. Damon's approach at the plate makes one believe he could reach 3000 hits by this time next year. Lately, the man swings at anything short of a pitch out. He has 5 walks since June 21st, a span of 110 plate appearances, or the equivalent of how often Corey Patterson walks. His O-Swing% (percentage of swings out of the strike zone) is a career high at 31.8%. His career O-Swing% coming into this season was below 21%.

Today Joel Sherman of the New York Posts writes an article titled Damon's Quest for 3,000 hits keeping Yankees at bay. Here are some of the quotes:

Damon has done nothing in recent years to hide his obsession with reaching 3,000 hits, in part because he believes it will elevate his Hall of Fame chances. He is 277 hits shy of the milestone.

Do you believe Johnny Damon has altered his approach at the plate in order to enhance his chances at reaching the 3000 hit mark?

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The Rays Tank: Joe Maddon Extension Edition

by Erik Hahmann on Feb 15, 2012 8:00 AM EST

We didn't get a chance to cover it much yesterday afternoon, but in case you missed it, Joe Maddon signed a three year extension worth roughly $6 million total. He had one year left on his old contract, and was never going to seriously entertain any other offers, but it's nice to lock up, and I say this with no hyperbole, the best manager/coach in the history of major Tampa Bay sports.

In his six seasons at the helm the Rays are 495-477, something that seemed impossible in the franchises' first ten years of existence. He may infuriate some with his lineup tinkering, but there's no questioning the success he's had with an ever changing roster. He's transformed himself into the best manager in baseball and I'm glad he's on our side. Congrats, Joe.

On to the links:

Over at Baseball Nation, Jeff Sullivan runs down the worst swings of the 2011 season -- complete with GIFs! Johnny Damon checks in at number 10, swinging at a pitch from Josh Beckett that was 46.6 inches away from the center of the strike zone. Beckett dominated the Rays at times last season, and Damon can take some funky swings, so this one isn't a surprise. Geoff Young of Baseball Prospectus spoke with former Rays farmhand, and occasional Major League reliever, Dirk Hayhurst, about his baseballing future. If you hadn't heard by now, Mr. Hayhurst is taking his talents, both of the pitching and journalistic variety, to the Italian Baseball League. It's a good synopsis of the whole situation. How much does a win cost? In the first of a two part series at FanGraphs Matt Schwartz tries to answer that question. He does a very good job explaining how FanGraphs comes up with their price estimations and how we can use them to analyze free agent contracts. If being David Price wasn't enough fun already he gets pitching tips from Kate Upton, she of SI Swimsuit Issue fame, in this commercial for MLB2k12. Not a bad life.

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"RHP Brandon Gomes will be behind at the start of spring training after undergoing November surgery to clean up a disc problem in his lower back, but is expected to be ready by opening day."

Odd that he starts the season on the DL making room in the bullpen?

h/t Rays Digest: http://rays.scout.com/2/1157924.html

1 day ago staplemaniac 9 comments