The Rays Tank: Johnny Damon Wants Back, and How Much Is Friedman Worth?

I don't want it to be the offseason yet -- who ever does? -- but sadly, here we stand. It feels weird to say the end of the season caught me by surprise, as the Rays were lucky to even be in the postseason, and yet I can't say I was prepared for this. 

But whether I want it to be here or not, the offseason is upon us. So without further ado, I'd like to introduce a new daily feature at DRaysBay: a morning links post. There is normally a wide collection of great baseball writing that happens over the offseason, and I want to find a way to highlight work that people may not find otherwise during their daily reading. We'll run this feature first thing each morning -- assuming people enjoy it -- and use it as a way to highlight different articles and news tidbits from around baseball.

Hopefully this will provide us with some conversation starters in the morning, while also providing people with some interesting links to news, analysis, and great reads. There will definitely be a Rays focus to these posts, but I'm also planning on branching out and touching upon MLB news in general. And then, around mid to late morning, we'll still be providing you guys with the same sort of analysis pieces you're used to from us over the offseason. This is merely an addition to our normal schedule.

I'll be grouping all the link posts under the category "The Rays Tank", so you can always find the full archives by clicking the category tag on the left-hand sidebar. If you ever have a fun link you'd like to highlight in one of these posts, shoot me a note on Twitter or email. And if you have feedback on how to make the feature better, just let me know; this is all one giant experiment, and I'm game for trying to improve things.

All that said, let's get this thing started.

Rays Talk

Just because the offseason is only a day old doesn't mean the ol' MLB Trade Rumors is barren for news about the Rays. There's still plenty of time before rumors start flying and the hot stove warms up, but the first trickling of news about the Rays is already popping up: B.J. Upton and Johnny Damon have both stated they'd like to return to the Rays next season. I love Damon, but that's going to be an interesting decision this offseason; he'd be best served as a bench bat at this point, but I simply don't see him accepting such a role.

And of course, there are still rumors being circulated by the Chicago press that Andrew Friedman is "on the radar" for the Cubs' GM spot. Color me skeptical until something happens.

Along those lines, Dave Cameron tackled the issue of what an All-Star GM is worth to a franchise. The punchline? Not as much as you'd assume.

General Chatter

Maybe the Rays shouldn't feel too badly about getting beat by Adrian Beltre on Tuesday. When you contextualize his home run rate this season, he's been nearly as powerful as he was back in 2004...the year he hit 48 home runs. He's a darn good hitter.

Joe Posnanski talking about the DRB buzzword "narratives"? Yeah, that's worth a read.

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This is a tad shorter than I'd normally like to do, but I wanted to get the ball rolling for today. Let me know if you have any feedback.