Draft Board

The Winter meetings are fast approaching and that means that the big free agents such as Cliff Lee, Carl Crawford, and Jayson Werth are getting ready to all become super-rich with big contracts from new teams. Obvious to say, the Rays will not be dining at that table. While everyone wishes to be able to shop at the exclusive stores, when you're on a budget, you're better off going to CostCo where you get the best deal for your dollar - which is how the Rays roll.

With so many players non-tendered this past week, there is a large pool of cheap, freely available talent for Andrew Friedman to go shopping. Obviously, you don't need us to explain why the Rays should sign some of the bigger names that were non-tendered (like Bobby Jenks), so instead, let's review some smaller names:

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Hopefully we win, especially with Vazquez going tonight in Toronto. Otherwise I'm blaming the hats.

As we delve into the rest of September/October, there are about 23 games left for the teams in the playoff hunt.  For the most part, the AL races have been decided; the Twins have the lowest percentage chance of making the playoffs out of all the leaders and they currently sit at 94.1%, while the Yankees, Rays and Rangers are all above 97%.  Outside of a miracle, these are the 4 playoff teams.  The Rangers are done with the AL West and have been in coast mode as they try to get healthy for their first division title in over a decade.  The Twins are playing solid baseball as they usually do in the stretch run.  So for excitement, that leaves us to watch the Rays/Yankees beat each other up for the right to claim the division title.

Right now, the Rays are in position to claim the Wild Card berth with a record of 84-55, as the Yankees have an even better record of 87-53 (2.5 game lead, 2 in the loss column).  Two and a half games isn't very much and with seven games left in head-to-head match ups - and considering the Rays have an easier schedule down the stretch - the division title could be anyone's to win. 

So the question stands: who would the Rays rather face in the first round, Minnesota or Texas?  This is not to say you don't try to win as many as possible and take the division, giving you have home field advantage throughout the playoffs. Home field advantage is important in the postseason, especially in the ALCS, and would especially help versus the Rangers, who are a poor road team (33-37).  But ignoring that, for the five-game ALDS, who would the Rays stand a better chance beating: Cliff Lee and the Rangers or Joe Mauer and the Twins?

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It's the only remaining exciting day left on the calendar, September 1, until the last day of the season.  Each team has about 30 games remaining on their schedules.  The Rays find themselves in a good position this year.  They have a record of 81-51, second best in baseball and only a mere 1 game back from the New York Yankees for the overall best record and division lead.  As the Wild Card leader, the Rays have a 7 game lead over division rival the Boston Red Sox.  The Red Sox and Rays only have 3 games left to play against each other, making it extremely difficult for them to catch up.  The Red Sox also still have a west coast trip left this year and their last 10 games are @NYY, @CHW, NYY compared to the Rays who have a final 10 of BAL, SEA, @KCR.  Needless to say, if you can't win those, you probably on't deserves to go to the playoffs.

Now, onto the Rays potential roster.

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In 2009, the 8 playoff teams were Minnesota, New York, Los Angeles, and Boston for the American League and Philadelphia, St Louis, Los Angeles, and Colorado for the National League. In the end, the New York Yankees won their 27th championship thanks to strong starting pitching, timely hitting, and a lockdown bullpen. Of course, when Mariano Rivera is pitching, everyone and their cat basically stops paying attention. Last year, he was essentially was the last "closer" standing. When your best relief pitcher takes the loss in a playoff game, it becomes difficult to win. That's what happened to Nathan, Papelbon, Fuentes, Lidge, Street, Broxton, and Franklin. Whether or not the losses would've changed the postseason is up for debate, but when there's no tomorrow in October, every win is critical.

We've seen how much locking down the end of the game has affected the Rays over the last few years. In 2007, the then Devil Rays fielded an underwhelming team, but even with a bottom-feeding defense and some underwhelming players, they compiled 17.0 WAR for players and a 12.1 WAR for the pitchers; neither was last place in the league and should have prevented a worst record overall in baseball for the fourth time.  While they did have a weak team in many areas, none was as glaring as the bullpen. FanGraphs has the bullpen valued at -23.8 runs over 497.0 IP. That's more than 20 runs worse than the next lowest ranked bullpen of Pittsburgh (-2.2 in 514.2 IP). That'll lead to a lot of losses, and also helps explain the charge to an improbable pennant in 2008 and why there were no playoffs for the Rays in 2009 despite another strong roster.

WAR (Wins Above Replacement) is one of the best measures of player value, but it just never seems to translate correctly to relief pitchers. Granted, you have players only in games for 60 innings a year and the fluky nature of a bullpen makes for low replacement value. And in a vacuum, all the innings are generally the same. After all, the game can be "saved" in any inning, not just the ninth.

Rather than use WAR to try and place a value (in wins) on how much the different bullpens have added to the Rays, let's look at something a bit different: WPA (Win Probability Added).

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Thankfully that is over with after today.  After just getting a two-game series with Oakland at Tropicana Field back in late April, the Rays have had to play the remaining 7 games against the Oakland Athletics on the west coast.  In addition to playing an annoying team in a difficult place to play, the games are at 10pm.  It's not much fun to stay up that late and watch when you have to get up the next morning.  But enough with that and onto the game.

When the #1 team in Runs Allowed and the #2 team in Runs Allowed, a lot of runs should be not be expected and when you have 4 games that end with 1 run differentials in both games, certainly lived up to that.  Garza went 7.2IP giving up only 4H and 1R(on a balk) with 3BB and 3K, helping give the bullpen a much needed rest.  Garza once again focused on the fastball, with 79 of the 100 pitches(43 for strikes).  Also of particular strength today was his curve ball. Of the 12 times he used it, 7 were for strikes.  When Garza can get his curve ball going, he can become unstoppable.  There were only 4 total swinging strikes, all off the fastball, leading to a low strike out total.  But all the pitches were spread out over the strike zone, making it difficult for a light-hitting team like Oakland to center many pitches and drive them deep.

via www.brooksbaseball.net

Also good to see the relief pitching able to get a modest 4 outs, but an important 4 outs none the less as they have had 2 bounce back games after 2 rough ones.

The offense today was not overly impressive, but they were able to scratch enough runs across today.  Most days, 3 runs isn't going to win you many games, but when you have strong starting pitching like that from Garza, 3 is the same as 30.  The Rays were able to take advantage of enough opportunities to score their runs, including 2 from first base.  Overall, going 1-7 with RISP isn't very good, but it was good enough today at least with Longoria having the key 2-Run Double with Kelly Shoppach having the other. He's got a slash line of .292/.433/.479 against LHP, you can easily forget that because of the all the very bad ABs against righties.

Notes from the game:

• Garza is now 40-41 and has a good chance to be a +.500 pitcher in his career this year.  Yay for outdated stats.
  
• Oakland has only allowed 476 Runs this season in 123 games after losing 3-2 to the Rays today.  That's pretty impressive even if Seattle is in your division.  If they could find a bat to help that line up out and stop being a bad road team(38-27 at home, 23-35 away) they could win that division next year or so.
• Somehow Chad Qualls was able to sneak into borderline Type-B FA via MLBTR's rankings. DRAFT PICKS DRAFT PICKS DRAFT PICKS.

Now that the semester has resumed for the Fall, I'm not going to have the 25 extra free hours everyday to waste here sadly :(.

It's been an up and down season for James Shields. After a hot start to the season in which he led the lead in strikeouts and touched 94-95 routinely with his fastball, it looked like he was going to have that great follow up season we were all expecting after 2008. But soon after that, the train went off the track and the results have been bad and head-scratching. It does not appear that Shields has an injury, as he still maintains his normal velocity from his previous years, and his change-up is still as good as ever.

So what gives? Why is he having some many struggles this season? Let's take a look at his season numbers (click "wide view" on the sidebar to view the entire table):

Needless to say, James Shields is not Mr. Consistency, Jeff Niemann. The good sign is that his strikeout production can (and did, in the beginning of the year) exist without large amounts of home runs. The question is, how can we get the good production out of Shields but keep the hits and home runs down?

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You hear it all the time, baseball is a game of inches.  The difference between a ball and a strike.  A ball hit toward the gap in the outfield just out of reach from your center fielder.  A grounder up the middle or a line drive down the left field line.  All these situations can be turning points in a game.  If the inch is in your favor-it will give the joy of a victory.  But if it's against you, it's leads to the heartache of a defeat.  Unfortunately for the Rays, not one, but instances of the "Game of Inches" came into play tonight that led to the 4-3 defeat.

It's pretty rare to have two plays where an inch or so makes a huge impact.  One is generally enough to decide a game.  In the case of this game, if one or the other goes the Rays way, they have a really good chance to win the game, but unfortunately, neither play did.  The first was in the top of the 6th.  The Rays had just taken a 3-1 lead on an Evan Longoria home run(it's nice to see him drive the ball again). That's the 2nd one of the night for the Rays and given the tough conditions to hit it out of Oakland, and off Cahill, that's a good start for the offense.  Then Pena hits a sharp line drive back up the middle, his 2nd hard hit of the day in addition to his 2-run home run, looked like the Rays had something going just like the last week or so for the offense.  Now if a runner at first for Joyce, it was looking up, especially after he drilled a fly ball to deep center.  It seemed for sure it was gone, especially given the way Joyce swings that bat, that the Rays were about to go up to a comfortable margin of 5-1.  But the game of inches struck as Coco Crisp raced back to the wall and was able to get set to rob Joyce of the home run.  It was a deflating feeling to see a 410ft fly ball go from home run to out and Joyce looked disappointed on the bench afterwards.  Couple more inches in his favor and it's a no doubter.  Unfortunately, after that, the Rays offense wasn't able to muster much more as Cahill was able to go 8 innings limiting the Rays to 7 hits and 14 ground balls total.  It's easy to see why he's doing so well.  He's got great movement on his pitches with good control and are tough to get into the air.

On the other hand, Rays pitching tonight struggles with control for much of the earlier innings.  Giving up 4 walks and 6 hits while only striking out 3.  Now Andy Sonnanstine is not going to be confused with David Price, but one of the things that's always been a strength for him is the ability to throw many pitches for strikes, but that wasn't the case tonight.  He was only able to throw about 61% for strikes, but when you can't get swings and misses, that sometimes isn't enough.  He generally threw his cutter, his main pitch about half the time, 47 of 91 times with 30 being strikes. His next most used pitch was his curve ball for 23 times, 15 strikes and 3 swinging strikes overall.  Although Sonnanstine was handling most of the night well until the 6th, it seemed sometimes that he struggles to hit his spots, whether they were out of the strikezone or missing over the plate, resulting in hard hit pitches or walks. All seemed well until the 6th inning.  A lead-off walk to Kurt Suzuki and a single to Cust, things weren't looking good.  Fortunately, he was able to get Ellis to flyout and then Maddon came to get Sonny from the game.  Hard to argue with the timing.  He was already running a high pitch count in the inning and his stuff was not very effective.  That's why you have a bullpen.  Going to Wheeler felt like the best option, since he was the best reliever to go to in this situation with a righty up next.  Unfortunately this happened.

via www.brooksbaseball.net

This is what Dan Wheeler's specialty is.  A righty that is effective against RHH who can throw strikes and get strikeouts.  But not throwing strikes defeats yourself.  A ball in play more times than not is an out, but there is no defense for a walk.  That loaded the bases with 1 out.  He was then able to coax a groundout from Rajai Davis and throw him out at first. It's tough to turn a double play on Davis, but why not go home when the opposing team's catcher is less than half way down the line when you have the ball fielded doesn't seem to be the best decision. I would've gone home, prevent the run from scoring and go on.  But he chose the out at first and with runners on second and third, Cliff Pennington, established Ray killer, lines a double into the corner.  You wanna talk about inches, it didn't hit the line or the wall, it essentially hit the little cement indentation below the wall so rather than a foul ball by 2 inches and another shot at an out, it's a 2-run double and that's all the scoring that occurred in the end.

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Cliff Lee versus David Price.

Stick those 5 words into that order and many thoughts come into your head.  A pair of great lefties in the AL? Battle of two Cy Young candidates? A potential game 1 match up in the playoffs?  Tonight felt like all those things considering it was just a regular home game on a Monday in August.

It was pretty much as advertised.  The first few innings went by so fast, you would think the game would end in 2 hours in a 1-0 score.  Lee profiles as the ultimate problem starter for the Rays, a low-walk, high-strikeout left-handed pitcher. Price presented many challenges to a worn-down Rangers line up that does not hit well on the road.  As Price was throwing in the upper 90s with pure power and getting swings and missed with his fastball, Lee was using his pinpoint control to dominate the Rays.

With Shoppach behind the plate, we saw the usual game plan, lots of fastballs that generate the swings and misses we've come to enjoy. Of his 108 pitches, 89 were fastballs and 56 went for strikes. Of those 56, 14 were swinging strikes or 25% leading to 8 strikeouts.  But in his 6 innings in addition to those strikeouts, he had 5BBs.  Price still has bouts of temporary control loss, but it's much better this year.  The only time he had noticeable problems was in the top of the 7th, after a 27-pitch, high stress inning, was back out onto the mound after only a 4 minute break.  The results lead to a Molina double and a 4-pitch walk to Murphy and his night ended.  Unfortunately the bullpen did not fair much better.  Chad Qualls had a day of control issues too, walking the bases loaded and also allowing the tying run to score in the top of the 7th after getting a double play.  The 8th didn't fair much better as the Rangers got a lead off triple from Joaquin Arias, the Rangers scored again on another double play, and got a 2nd triple to score their 4th run on an infield single. Not exactly our bullpen's best pitched game lately, but a couple of misreads by Crawford on Molina's double and Zobrist on Cantu's triple didn't help matters.

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@conorglassey: #Rays sign first-rounder Josh Sale for around $1.62 million and supplemental first-rounder Drew Vettleson for around $845,000

So after winning an exciting game, the Rays have reportedly locked up their remaining first day picks.

Josh Sale is regarded as one of the top high school hitters and best pure power hitters available.  He's not quite the speedy toolsy defensive player the Rays have focused on, but still projects to be about an average defensive corner outfielder.  Sale is a 6ft 215lb, 18 year-old out of the Seattle area, having attended Bishop Blanchet High School.

Also out of the Seattle area is the S-1 pick of Drew Vettleson from Central Kitsap School in Silverdale, Wash.  While Vettleson has been known to be a "switch"-pitcher, he was drafted as a position player by the Rays, likely a Corner Outfielder.  He has been called one of the best "pure hitters" in the draft.

Thanks to the Rays scouting and managing, the future still looks bright for our Rays.

Just what one of the top farm systems in baseball needs, more talent.

ysportsncaabb #Rays fourth-round pick Austin Wood is going to college at #USC. That’s big news for Frank Cruz and the #Trojans.

bahighschool #Rays 7th rounder Michael Lorenzen headed to school as well. #mlbdraft

These are the only other 2 notable picks to have not been signed by the Rays.

Rays just beat Cliff Lee, now onto signing Sale & Vettleson.

GET IT DONE FRIEDMAN!

Cliff Lee v David Price

That's a  pretty nice match up

I'm not sure what was worse to watch-seeing the Rays fail to hit or watching the Orioles hit a whole bunch.  I know the Rays are scuffling a bit around now, but these are the games you are suppose to use to right the ship and get back into the win column.  Sadly that didn't happen tonight.  The Rays were only able to muster 3 hits and barely got those, including the only XBH as a bloop triple.  They did hit some line drives that didn't amount to much, but they too often popped up weakly.  Shields also struggled in the first inning to do much and without some nifty defense, could've really had an ugly night.  But the offense was far worse, so we'll start with the pitching.

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It's now August and the Rays are right in the middle of chasing down the Yankees and keeping ahead of the Red Sox.  They've been able to be so successful by great starting pitching, solid defense, a reliable bullpen, and a strong offense.  Well, it appears strong on the surface.  They are scoring a lot of runs, over 5 a game, and are near the top in all of baseball for that.  But the Rays just came off a 5-game losing streak with a set of 2-1, 2-1, 1-0 losses.  The 1-0 loss was about 6 inches away from being a third no-hitter!!! (Is it really that special now if you throw it against the 2010 Rays?)  So why are the Rays striking out so much and looking lost on a lot of days? Is it the hitters? The hitting coach or just plain old-baseball life?

Derek Shelton was hired this off-season to help improve the Rays kooky 2009 offense when half the team were MVP candidates and the other half non-existent.  So instead of the high-powered HR offense of 2009, they went with a more rounded offense with an increased emphasis on getting them on, getting them over, and getting them in aka GTMI.  GTMI has been a mixed bag for the Rays this year.  Early on it was great, working almost every night.  Then it completely went away for a stretch in June.  Granted it doesn't work when there aren't very many base runners like in a no-hitter, but it's also broken down in regular games too.

So lets see how the defense for Shelton is before passing judgement.

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Up until Wednesday, things were going pretty well.  Rays were on a 3 game winning streak, were in the midst of a 8-1 home stand and just seem to keep rolling.  Somewhere along the way though the wheels came off as the Rays have dropped 3 straight, each in its own excruciating fashion.

Tonight's downfall was spearheaded by the defense.  Yes, the offense was once again nonexistent, but the one big advantage that the Rays have is defense over the other teams and that decided to take a vacation tonight as 2 errors led to 2 runs.  The first occurred on a throwing by Sean Rodriguez.  With no outs and Edwin Encarnacion on 2nd after a double(He probably should've been held to a single, but was able to get to 2nd on a bad read by Kapler), Jose Molina lined out to 2nd, and tried to double him up.  Why he tried to double him up when there was no play? Just poor decision making mostly, trying to make something out of nothing and it proved costly as he misfired badly and the ball went into LF, scoring the first Blue Jay easily.  Garza would then retire the remaining batters of the inning keep the score at 1-1.

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As the Rays begin to start their approximate final third of the season, a lot has occurred for the first 106 games.  We've seen the highs of a 32-12 start to the lows of a 5-10 June interleague finish along with a confrontation between Upton and Longoria on the last game of interleague vs Arizona back to the high of a 11 game home stand against not 1 or 2 but 3 playoff teams that was kickstarted by Matt Garza's no-hitter against Detroit.

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Coming into tonight, the Rays were once again tied for the division lead in the American League East.  After the game tonight though, they were once again in sole possession of first place in the division since way back on June 12 thanks to the Blue Jays's 8-2 victory over New York.

The Rays sent Jeff Niemann out to pitch against a slightly healthier Twins team with Mauer in the line up.  For his 22nd start of the year, it was not all that different from his 2nd start as Niemann did what we all expect him to do-be a consistent starter.  Not overly dominating, but not bad, right in the middle getting the job done. 7IP 8H 3R(3ER) 2BB(1IBB) 4K.  He generally relied on his two-seam(35x) and four-seam fastball(38x) against the Twins hitters with his curveball at his third pitch having it go for 11 strikes out of 13 times with 5 SwStr overall(7.46%).

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Emergency GDT Thread.  Since our usual poster hasn't made one for tonight yet.

It felt good to finish off a dreaded June with a win over the Red Sox with a solid offensive showing and a good start from Garza.  But it still left the team with a 11-14 June record and a 6-11 stretch from June 10th(day after they last won back to back games) and the 30th.  So why did they struggled to score any runs?  It begins and ends with RISP, which the Rays put on a clinic of "What Not To Do".  When you're an average BA team with good OBP and power, you can ride it out, but the Rays are not hitting very much lately and the HRs are few and far between lately(and not often of the multi-R variety).

Lets look at how the main Rays hitters performed in the 6-11 stretch of June 10th to 30th.

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As we all know, 2010 is the big "GO FOR IT" year for this set of Rays player since many will be headed into FA.  Luckily the franchise & team won't fall into a state of disrepair due to a loaded farm system.  This farm system which has produced player after player is about to head into one of the most talent-laded drafts in an era and the Rays are lucky to be able to get additional draft picks from their FAs.

But how good of a position may they be in, well lets use the Elias Rankings from MLBTR as a guide for rankings & compensation types.

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Since tonight was another offense abomination when we need to score, lets take a look at ways to fix & help improve the Rays line up.  Upton is obviously a target for needing to help step up when the usual players are not tearing the cover off the ball.  From a 2007 masher to a 2008 OBP to the 2009-2010 mass of confusion.  Where did all of BJ's talent go & how can he go back to being productive.  Obviously altering his mechanics & approach would solve a lot, but where specifically could he improve.

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via www.fangraphs.com

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As we all know, 2010 is the last guaranteed year that CC will be in a Rays uniform and the likely scenario is that he won't be back due to depth/money.  But where would he be potentially signed? Let's due a mini-analysis about the Rays vs the 29 other available teams in MLB. This will be done in a vacuum so to make it realistic. The odds of injuries, attendance changes, money issues, playoffs, bizarre contracts, etc will all be largely negated.

Rays

vs.

Yankees, Red Sox, Blue Jays, Orioles, White Sox, Tigers, Twins, Royals, Indians, Angels, Rangers, Mariners, Athletics, Phillies, Mets, Marlins, Braves, Nationals, Cardinals, Cubs, Reds, Brewers, Pirates, Astros, Dodgers, Rockies, Giants, Padres, Diamondbacks.

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