Last week Mark Simon (Mets fan but not-so-secret Rays admirer) of the Baseball Today podcast had a great interview with Jim Hickey, touching on a number of interesting insights that deserve further review. The full interview can be found here (Hickey interview starts at 27:27).  On the process of ‘remaking’ someone like Fernando Rodney  Hickey  [ Read More ]

Watching Desmond Jennings hit two home runs in two swings yesterday had me thinking back to another athletic leftfielder’s first few years in the Majors. When Carl Crawford showed up in Tampa Bay, we knew he could run.  We also knew he was an above-average fielder.  But no one knew what kind of hitter he  [ Read More ]

[Tom Chang is a freelance journalist. He graduated from USF in 2004 with a Bachelors Degree in Mass Communications at USF in Tampa and is currently pursuing his Masters in Media Studies from USF St.Petersburg. Tom submitted the following post channeling Aretha Franklin while demanding a little R-E-S-P-E-C-T! Let him know what you think.] By  [ Read More ]

Looking at the toteboard this morning, I couldn’t help but think of Lou Brown’s famous pre-game talk from Major League II. We won a game yesterday. If we win one today, that’s two in a row.  If we win one tomorrow, that’s called a winning streak.  It has happened before….I got a feeling things are  [ Read More ]

A random thought occurred to me on the way to work this morning: Is “That’s Bull—-, That’s Bull—-, That’s Bull—-, That’s Bull—-” the new “9=8?” I hope so.

In conjunction with ESPN.com’s season previews, my colleagues in The Sweet Spot Network have all posted X-Factors for their respective teams.  Go check them out. Here are the X-Factors for the teams we are going to see the most this summer: New York: It Is About the Money Stupid Boston: Firebrand of the American League  [ 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.

Jonathan, who best I can tell made his first two comments here at The Ray Area today, wins the first ever “Commenter of the Day” award.  This isn’t super prestigious, because I just made it up, but Jonathan earned it by reading random old posts I wrote during the season and pointing out how Nostradamus-y  [ Read More ]

Bill, over at Sweet Spot member The Platoon Advantage, has been running a great “3 Questions” series breaking down each team in the bigs.  (Incidentally, if you haven’t spent some time hanging out on TPA, go do it.   Bill and The Common Man are smart dudes and good writers — even if he did take  [ Read More ]

The owner can’t afford to keep the ballpark up.  So, the owner asks the government to invest tax money in the park and the surrounding neighborhood.  Both the city and state are facing dire economic circumstances that make it seem unlikely that they will be able to help. All the while, the fanbase of a  [ Read More ]