Our old pal Joe Henderson had an interesting column in yesterday’s Trib.  He opined, based on an email he got from a reader named James Ramirez, that watching ballgames in high definition is more fun than watching them live. (Before responding to James and Joe, I should note, in the interest of full disclosure, that  [ Read More ]

The discussion in the comments the last few days has been so good I didn’t post anything new this morning.  Sorry.  But I did answer five questions for Fantasy baseball owners over at Baseball Prof.  You can check it out here.

The peanut is neither a pea nor a nut.  Discuss. No, seriously.  Today’s news that Rocco Baldelli is hanging up his spikes for good raises an interesting question.  Who has it worse? Rock, a guy that had all the talent to be a long-time Major Leaguer, got a taste of big league success, and then  [ Read More ]

Now that the initial shock of Friedman’s coup is waning, it is only fair to examine the potential downside that comes with adding Manny Ramirez and Johnny Damon to the Rays’ clubhouse. Yesterday, in the comments section, reader TTNORM accurately laid out the case against this move: I’ll start by saying again that I think  [ Read More ]

Rays fans have had a strange winter.  It is only our second attempt at being the defending AL East Champs.  It is the first time we saw beloved cornerstone pieces depart for greener checking accounts. And, through the trusted rules of loss aversion, we as a group have collectively groaned over what we thought to  [ Read More ]

Earlier this week, Rays Prospects had a great breakdown of Hak Ju Lee (recently acquired from Chicago) and Tim Beckham (drafted ahead of Buster Posey –  poor kid is going to be the Rays’ equivalent of Sam Bowie unless something changes for him and for Posey). Based on RP’s statistical analysis it looks like Lee  [ Read More ]

Yesterday, Bob R., TTNorm, Rome, LJK, and I had an interesting discussion in the comments section about the value of “closers.” This morning, through either luck or divine providence, Baseball Prospectus adds meat to the bones of our speculation.  In this piece, Colin Wyers breaks down the value of using a team’s best pitcher as  [ Read More ]

Sweet Spot member It’s About the Money Stupid has a guest-post up by Joe Tetrault from Biz of Baseball. And it’s awesome. Go check out Joe’s thoughts on the draft picks making The Evil Empires quake in their (expensive Italian suede) shoes.

Yesterday, I was fawning all over Andrew Friedman for all the moves he didn’t make. So, the baseball gods smote me for my hubris by ensuring that the Rays would continue not making moves now that  Brian Fuentes signed with Oakland and Jon Rauch signed with Toronto. Woops. (I really left the baseball gods with  [ Read More ]

The Common Man, over at Sweet Spot member The Platoon Advantage, posted this on Thursday ranking the work each big league front office put in this winter. If you just follow the club through the newspapers, you might be surprised to see the Rays come in third.  Don’t be.   TCM hits the nail right  [ Read More ]