The Rays Tank: Oviedo option not exercised

On Monday the $2 million option for RHP Juan Carlos Oviedo, who spent all of 2013 recovering from Tommy John surgery and didn't end up pitching at all for the Rays, was not exercised and the team chose to buy out his contract for $30,000 instead.

The Rays also didn't offer qualifying offers to any of their free agents by end of day yesterday, allowing the following players to become free agents:

RHP Roberto Hernandez, DH/OF Luke Scott, RHP/Closer Fernando Rodney, 1B James Loney, C Jose Molina, IF/OF Kelly Johnson, RHP Jesse Crain, RHP Jamey Wright, DH/OF Delmon Young

In other news, OF Brandon Guyer, RHP Jeff Niemann and RHP Alex Colome were all reinstated from the 60-day DL as well.

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Wil Myers garnered AL Outstanding Rookie honors from the Players Choice Awards on Monday, while Marlins/Tampa product RHP Jose Fernandez received the award for the NL. BBWA's Rookie of the Year honors will be announced on November 11th.

Links:

- Fangraphs critiqued the Rays signing of David DeJesus, calling the long-term commitment a reward for "being boring, consistently and reliably boring." I'll take it.

- The Process Report provided their input on the somewhat uncharacteristic Rays move with DeJesus as well, and of course, ICYMI: Ian's case for DDJ is here.

- Jay Jaffe of The Strike Zone examined eight plausible trade destinations for David Price, with the Rangers and Diamondbacks leading the way. In Cliff Corcoran's list of the top 10 offseason storylines, Price's trade ranked second.

- Grant Brisbee of Baseball Nation looked at the declining workload of starting pitchers, noting James Shields' American League leading 228 2/3 innings thrown this past season; which was the lowest total ever from a league leader in a non-strike season.

- In the not-so-serious baseball spectrum, Buzzfeed compiled "15 Reasons Baseball Rocked in the 1980s" and it's pretty amusing.

- Payment required to see the entire list, but Baseball Pro released their 2013-2014 Top 50 Free Agents today.