Tampa Bay Rays news and links: Sensitive sexiness and buttered caps

The Rays made a lot of moves on Friday, including trading former first-round pick Richie Shaffer to Seattle. Yesterday, RaysRadio had Vice President Chaim Bloom on to talk about the moves.

For his part, Shaffer looks to be a class act.

But he does need to charge his phone.

There’s a new must-have hat in the Rays organization.

This tweet is from days ago, but it’s important.

Links

• Update on the Jason Castro sweepstakes. The Rays are in on him. So are other teams.
• Eli Ben-Porat wrote about the relationship between minor league swing-and-miss stuff and major league success. Picture of Blake Snell at the top!
• Drew Smyly is drawing trade interest from Texas, says broadcaster Dewayne Staats.
• David Laurila got some insight from Bud Black about how the manager-front office connection works.
• In Baseball America’s Rule 5 preview, Yonny Chirinos of the Rays is ranked as one of the top unprotected targets.

Trivia

Yesterday’s trivia answer was Jason Standridge, answered correct by both J.T Morgan and Brickhaus.

I like top-10 lists, so today’s trivia is another one. This can be a series for each pitch type, but because this is the Rays, let’s start with the changeup.

By linear weights, who amassed in their Rays career the most value by throwing changeups? It’s a counting stat so both quality and volume are rewarded.

Number one is James Shields, and it’s not especially close. Who are the other top nine?

Hint: Of the ten, seven pitched more innings as starters, three pitched more innings as relievers.