the Rays currently have 41 players on the 40 man roster but two (Orvella and Baldelli) are on the 60 day DL and so do not count against it and Salas is still called “restricted”.

I am guessing that Salas simply has to be removed from the restricted list and that nobody has to be dropped for him to be added. When Baldelli is activated from the 60 day, that should still leave the Rays with 40 players as Orvella will still not count against the total.

In any case, for the first time I can remember, I can only identify one player who clearly has little use for the Rays and can easily be replaced by someone not currently on the 40 man. That is Ryu. Otherwise, it seems to me the Rays would be loath to lose any other member of the 40 man without some compensation.

I may have written (spoken?) too soon as I suppose Birkins might be another who could be let go with little angst, and I imagine Orvella will not be allowed to hold anyone back once he is ready to return. Guzman is another possible sacrifice as he has made little progress in fulfilling what once seemed to be great potential.

That will create an issue soon enough when players like Davis & Hellickson need to be added.

Reyes was lights out the 1st two months of 2007. Since then Al has been nothing less than horrible. This is definately a step in the right direction. Good luck to barr roon Reyes the rest of his career in Pitt/ SEA or wherever he may end up.

Calgon, take Al away….....

but Reyes deserves some respect and gratitude for his work here. And he has not been terrible since June of 2007. He did become somewhat erratic after his first two months last year, but he remained a generally effective closer. The high ERA resulted from a few terrible outings, but by and large he continued to pitch reasonably well throughout the year.

Throughout his career, his two main problems have been health and control. In 2005 in St. Louis and then in 2007 in TB he had decent control and health and was excellent in St. Louis and good here. And he has always been a big strikeout pitcher. For his career, he has Ked nearly 1 per inning and even this year remained at 7.5/9.

His control did decline this year also and combined with more health issues he was less effective. So it was right to replace him with Bradford, but that is not necessarily an indictment of Reyes who may yet help a team win. After all, 22.7 innings in an injury plagued year hardly trumps a long career of solid relief work. Signing him and having him sit a full year was one of the early indications that the new front office knew what it was doing.

I also point out that in his 26 appearances this year, he did not allow a base runner in 10 of them nor a run in 19. We may remember the awful games, of which there were 3 obvious ones when he allowed more than 1 run, but forget the workmanlike efforts because, especially as they were not saves this year, easily fade because of their ordinariness. The Rays are upgrading the bullpen, we hope, but not getting rid of a worthless player. They are losing a good major league reliever.