The Rays have one more game to play before the non-waiver trading deadline. Yesterday, they got it done against Matt Garza and the Brewers, but received almost no help from the rest of the league against the teams they're chasing. The Orioles walked off against Anaheim in the 12th. The Blue Jays continued to dominate Boston. The Mariners beat Cleveland. New York won a slugfest against the Rangers.
Only Kansas City lost, 2-1, to the Twins. The Rays are now one game behind the Royals. Playoff odds holding steady at 15%.
As for the trading deadline, Jon Lester has been scratched from his start today.
Lester scratched
— Jason Mastrodonato (@JMastrodonato) July 30, 2014
David Price has not been scratched from his start today, although Jon Heyman reports that rival executives think Andrew Friedman has humongous balls (I'm paraphrasing), and that he would trade Price even with the team winning if he thought that it was the right move to make.
As for those Royals, Mike Petriello has a good article on FanGraphs reexamining the James Shields trade in light of Jake Odorizzi's emergence.
Two Good Articles from THT:
- We were talking about baseball stadium orientation some time back. There's a rule, but no one follows it. This is why Arlington is so awful in the afternoon. Amusingly, Tropicana field is oriented exactly as proscribed. It's also, as you may have heard, a dome.
- Jeff Zimmerman investigates whether teams appear to have insider knowledge about injury risks to their own players who become free agents.