I am still new to the world of baseball blogs but, based on my limited experience, it seems like the Rays have the biggest, most dedicated, most well-written network of blogs covering their every move.  It is wild how interesting all these different blogs are to read.

Imagine how good he would be if he used a whole bat? (AP Photo/Mike Carlson)

To wit, yesterday I posted three interesting tidbits from a Joe Maddon Q and A.  The most newsworthy bit of information concerned Maddon’s intentions for Matt Joyce in 2011.

That spawned the following posts, all of which are required reading for Rays fans:

1. RJ Anderson at The Process Report writes that Matt Joyce will improve against lefties just by increasing his (at bats).  Do not be intimidated by concepts like “regression” or “sample size.”  I let the math in posts like this scare me away for too long.  This is fundamentally interesting stuff.
2. Cork Gaines at Rays Index writes that the plan to start Joyce against reverse-split lefties is sound in theory but doesn’t add that many opportunities given the small-number of reverse split lefties.  This is a question I didn’t even think of, much less endeavor to answer.
3. Figure Filbert projected out Matt Joyce’s year. (This is unrelated to my little post but it is awesome anyway so read it).
4. Tommy Rancel explained (via the Danks theory – I am not sure what it is but I like that it exists) that Jon Lester’s counts as a reverse-split lefty even though his actual splits are pretty identical.  Not only does this post include heat maps, which I don’t totally understand, but it indirectly addresses Cork’s point above showing that Maddon thinks outside the stat sheet.  So cool.
5. [UPDATE] While I was writing this Steve Slowinski posted at DRaysBay breaking down all the potential lineups we could see versus lefties.  I need more time to digest.  This is awesome.

So.  Go tear another day off the countdown to actual baseball and, in the meantime, read all this incredible analysis about the Rays 3rd or 4th outfielder.