Last night I had a chance to see Matt Moore pitch live for the first time. Over the past few years I've had a chance to watch Hellickson, Price, Davis, Cobb, Torres, Niemann and more pitch for the Durham Bulls on their path to St. Pete. The anticipation of seeing David Price was probably the only thing that exceeded seeing Moore for me, however Moore did a better job of living up to the hype.

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For whatever reason, Jeremy Hellickson has been the most interesting pitcher to me in the Rays organization for the past two or so years. I was thrilled when he was given a shot last year with the big league club, and even more ecstatic when he came out and quickly proved his composure, control, and change-up were worthwhile of staying in 'The Show'. Much to my dismay, I've had to miss his first two starts of the 2011 season: the Angels start due to work, and I chose to see Durham play instead of his Red Sox start since the Bulls were in town.  Feeling a little deprived after watching three Price starts and a few Niemann gems, I decided to take a further examination into Hellboy's first couple of outings. While the two lines look pretty similar in the base metrics, there are quite a few interesting differences.

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Turning the calendar from January to February is a fantastic thing.  February brings some wonderful events: we get to have a rodent play weatherman; buy overpriced flowers and other random presents for our loved ones; and most importantly SPRING TRAINING FINALLY BEGINS! With the sense of the beginning of the season actually near, I spent some time staring at the Rays 2011 schedule today.  Obviously, certain things are known, like 18 games against our friends in Boston and NY.  But I was focusing on some of the details, like when were our west coast swings?  What was the longest road trip that Maddon could break out a themed event?  Were any months looking easier or harder?  And most importantly, which games was I going to plan on going to. 

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A college roommate of mine used to always have a saying whenever a redundant conversation came up: "the sky is blue...... the sky is blue," he would say. This was his little way of telling us he was about to zone out as he had no further interest in the conversation our group of friends was having. As I was thinking of this article, I could hear Louie's voice ringing in my ear, "the sky is blue.... the sky is blue."  Well, damn you Louie!  Not this time!  Besides, as Steve warned you on Monday, these are slow times in the baseball world, so what better way to pass the time then a little further dive into the long balls Shields gave up this year?

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Another day of the off-season, another bullpen problem for Andrew Friedman to deal with.  Marc Topkin over at the St. Pete Times is reporting that JP Howell's recovery isn't going as swimmingly as many of us had hoped.  I think the optimistic consensus around these parts was that JP would be back to Chiller form come the beginning of the season.  Most hoped he would quickly step back into the late-inning specialist role giving the Rays at least one key reliable cog to work with out of the pen as they look to rebuild the group.

Friedman didn't paint the rosiest picture when updating JP's health:

"He's been incredibly diligent in the rehab process, he is as motivated as he can be to get back, and I think one thing all of us have learned about J.P. is to not bet against him, but it's going to be difficult," Friedman said. "It's going to be something that's hard to predict until he gets back on the mound and starts throwing pitches. I would definitely anticipate him missing some time, but I think it's hard to say whether that's coming back in May or July."

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As I find myself in a quasi state of still reflecting on last season more than looking forward to next season I was reminded of two open items that merit discussion: Joe Maddon's preseason goal of the starting rotation pitching 1,000 innings; and our Improbable Prediction Contest. 

I've been meaning to research this for some time now, but since the Rays season ended the thought has popped in my head but I've yet to act on it until now.  I suppose part of the reason was that I knew, the five starters couldn't have reached the 1000 inning marker with Niemann and Davis taking a August siesta.  But all in all, the rotation was very healthy.  So how close did we get? 

And for those of that you that are new (or forgot like the rest of us), we did a little preseason prediction contest where Steve asked the community to come up with two predictions that would be outliers to the consensus thought.  I thought it would be fun to go back and look at the preseason predictions we made here on DRaysBay to see how outlandishaccurate we were.  Who had the foresight to predict a Matt Garza no-hitter?  Let's see.

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I (like many of you no doubt) love looking forward to the next season and trying to anticipate what Friedman and Co will do to make the Rays exciting and competitive again next year; however, today we’re going to break from that and look back to what I call the "Modern Era" of Rays baseball. 

I don’t know about you, but I’ve recently found myself only half-heartedly paying attention to the Post-Season, post Rays.  While plenty of match-ups were intriguing (a la Lee v. Lincecum), on more than one occasion I sat at my computer with eyes drifting away from the HD and towards the computer screen and randomly browsing around ESPN.com and somehow clicking over to the final regular season standings and just admiring the Rays name being listed there on top, towering above other great teams.  I’m not sure what started it, but I started comparing this season with the two prior.  First with just some basic measures like home and road records and run differential, but then I just kept going.

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Editor's Note: It's very hard to choose just one FanPost of the Week, considering we had two excellent submissions this week concerning David Price and his fastballs. Mulva dug into Price's four-seam fastball and swinging strike rates, while Sticky Bandit chose to focus on Price's two-seam fastball usage. Considering it's a refreshing change to have quality FanPosts on the sidebar, we'll be featuring both of them this weekend - one this morning and one tomorrow morning. Enjoy!

I’m not sure about you, but I seem to find myself paying a little bit of extra attention during a David Price start.  It isn’t that I don’t enjoy or respect the work of say, Jeff Niemann, but a Price start has something that gets that little extra excitement in me that keeps me from getting distracted (pick any of wife, kids, work here) while watching a game.  I think of it as the "butt in the seat, eyes on the TV" effect.  With that, I find myself noticing his tendencies and trends a little more so than the other pitchers on the team.  His last start (Monday 8/9 against the Tigers) saw a continuation of a trend where he seemed to be firing heat and getting good results from it.  Two points in the game seemed to encapsulate some trends I had been commenting on.  The first was his seventh strikeout where they flashed the "K" counter on the screen and all seven were forward K’s, swinging strikes to end each at-bat.  The last, and one that has been pointed out on this board, was his final pitch of the game where the radar gun put up a red 100.  I’m sure I wasn’t the only one thinking at the time the radar gun was a little juiced that day, but as the game went on and Qualls, Benoit and Soriano all seemed to be pitching in their respective fastball speeds (maybe 1mph higher), it added credibility in my mind to Price’s flaming fastball.

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Since this game is getting a little frustrating, I thought I'd share some thoughts/observations from last nights Bulls game against the Charlotte Knights.

Wade Davis got the start.  I got to the field just in time to see him finish up his warm-up tosses in the bullpen.  I commented that he didn't seem all that comfortable, as his body language was clearly expressing his frustration.  He carried that onto the mound for the first inning and a half.  His fastball sat 92-93 but was a bit off the mark to begin with.  He walked a pair and gave up a few line drives before completely settling to finish the 2nd and make waste of the Knights in the 3rd and 4th.  His curve was clearly his out pitch, it seems as if it resulted in either a groundball or strike (2 or 3 swinging) nearly every time he used it.  I was disappointed that he was pulled right as his stuff was peaking, but clearly for good reason.

Dale Thayer was the other pitcher of interest who got some action.  He came in with one out in the 8th, and got the next five outs with only allowing one baserunner (a hard hit line drive in the gap by a LH batter).  His FB was 90-91.  I was surprised a bit by his height.  I don't believe for a second he is the 6'0'' they have him listed at. 

As for the bats, nothing too interesting.  Briggy had a nice shot down the LF line, Jaso one-hopped the wall, and the mountain of a man Adam Kennedy provided the only HR.

The most interesting thing of the night was David Price.  He was sitting in street clothes in the scouts section behind home plate charting the game.  He actually had a radar gun and was recording what the Bulls pitchers were doing (but not the Knights).  He also signed tons of autographs starting about the 3rd inning when people realized who he was (nice to see him be so accomodative).  My wife was asking if that was typical, and to be honest, I have never heard of a player do that before.  The best answer analogy I could come up with is it is like a teacher giving the A student a little extra homework to push them further.  Another creative tool in the development from the FO/Maddon?  Trying to get him prepared for the extra studying at the next level?  I went over and wished him good luck on the season and joked with him after the game about whether or not he would be scouting the next night as well. 

I've got two extra tickets to the Thursday game and would like to trade them for two to the Friday game.   My tics for Game 1 are in Section 101, Row AA, seats 3 and 4.  Ideally I'd get something in the lower box for Friday's game.  Hoping to avoid selling to a scalper or going the EBAY / StubHub route and making sure some Rays fans fill the seats.  Anyone want to swap?

Email me at jeff.johnston@wachovia.com if you are interested.