The Rays Tank: Longoria injury flares up, Cabrera good

The biggest news is that Evan Longoria left last night's game with a flareup of the plantar fasciitis he's been dealing with this season. The condition has forced him to the DH spot this season, but hasn't seemed to affect his play when he's been able to go. There's no official word yet on what to expect from him going forward, but don't be surprised if we don't see Longo again until the all-star break. If you want to read up a bit on plantar fasciitis, here's a good article from 2011 on it's affect on other athletes.

Oh, and Miguel Cabrera hit two home runs against the Rays yesterday. In case you didn't already know it, he's pretty good, and having his best season ever, according to Dave Cameron.

The city of San Jose is suing major league baseball about the MLB antitrust exemption, based on the territorial rights restrictions that keep the Oakland A's from being able to move to San Jose. If San Jose wins, all of the chatter about the Rays potentially moving out of Tampa Bay would suddenly have a lot more teeth.

It's behind the pay wall, but Ben Lindbergh has a great piece up about how the Rays pitchers use their changeups. Traditionally, no one throws a changeup inside to a same handed batter, but the Rays have discarded this tradition, using their changeups against batters of both handedness and throwing them to both sides of the plate.

And finally, Larry Granillo has a great piece investigating, through video, whether the neighborhood play is still called by umpires. He looks at every GIDP for a two week period, and doesn't find any. It's rather a lot of work to do this on a larger scale, though, so let's do our part. Let's make a note of every GIDP we see in a Rays game, and whether the neighborhood play was called or not called, and keep a running tally.