Rays Rosterbation, Holiday Edition

I would love to find a way to include Manny Parra in the deal, a lefty who did well in relief and strikes out lots of batters.

My other notion, if the Rays fail to close the Jenks deal, is to sign Balfour to a 1 year deal (say at $4 million) with a mutual option for $6 million or some sort of buyout and make him the closer. For the Rays, assuming they believe Balfour can succeed in that role, they get a closer at below market price with a chance to hold onto him for another year at a decent cost if he does well. For Balfour, it provides him an opportunity to build his closer creds in case he wants to sell his services the following year.

Trade BJ Upton to the Angels for 1B Trumbo and RP/CL Walden which gives us a hard throwing right handed power bullpen arm and a right handed power hitting 1B/DH guy.
Both are cost controlled and Trumbo is blocked right now but ready and the Angels have lots of bullpen. They get the speed outfielder that they have been searching for. If Jennings is not ready at the start we have S Rod and L Anderson that can patrol center and can combo them with Zorilla and Joyce.
2nd Trade Garza to the Nats for Espinona, Ramos and Storen and maybe a throw in from us to also get Marrero included as well. This gives them the top starter they want and we get a switch hitting 2B/SS, a Closer candidate for the pen and a right handed catcher so we can get rid of Shopp. All are cost controlled and give us great left/right and position flexibility. The only other need would be a Marcus Thames type for a right handed DH. We trade 2 and get 5-6 players back and look at the position flex:
1B: Trumbo/D. Johnson/Zorilla, 2B: Espinona/S Rod/Zorilla/E. Johnson SS: Briggy/Espinona/E. Johnson 3B: Longo C: Jaso/Ramos LF: Joyce/L. Anderson/S Rod/Zorilla CF: L. Anderson/S Rod/Jennings when ready RF: Zorilla/ Joyce/S Rod DH: Thames/D. Johnson

http://www.plaidreport.blogspot.com/

Jose Canseco? Are you serious? I’d rather Bonds it up if we are going that route..