Tank: James Loney on his place with the Rays

This Date in Team History!

In 2012, the Rays signed Chris Gimenez to a minor league deal with an invite to spring training. Although he failed to make the team, Gimenez would be up and down with the Rays during the season and returned for a brief spell in 2013. He dominated in Durham, but failed to translate the numbers to Tampa. He has since moved on Texas where he put up a solid season in 2015 in a small sample size.

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Trivia Time! (Ian)

Yesterday's answer was Roberto Hernandez (Fausto Carmona) and nobody got it right.

Today's trivia is a pitcher who sits ninth on the list of career appearances for the Rays. He was a first-round draft pick (#16 overall), and Baseball America once ranked him as the #46 prospect in baseball.

Here's one of his blurbs from Baseball Prospectus:

________'s season was one of extremes. From the start of the season through May 8, he was dreadful: 15 innings with an ERA of 7.80, a base-runner ratio of 2.33, saving two while blowing three. Then he found his split-finger pitch, and went the next 24 plus innings without allowing an earned run, with as many saves (15) as baserunners. Then he lost it again; the next 23 innings saw a 7.33 ERA, with four of ten saves blown; then September comes and he finishes the year with 8.2 scoreless innings and a 10-2 K:W ratio. He was twice publicly demoted from the closer's role; his resurgences coincided with those demotions almost to the day.

The following season (the one this blurb was previewing), this player got his act together and pitched very well, striking out 21.5% of the batters he faced while walking 10.3%, for an ERA of 3.07 and a FIP of 2.94.

Who is he?

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There are 47 days until Opening Day!

That's the same number of runs batted in by Desmond Jennings during the 2012 season,

Two of those runs scored during this seven run rally against Boston.

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Links! (Ian)

- Topkin on Loney on being traded.

- Jason Collette looked for adjustments in Kevin Kiermaier's approach.

- There's what I assume is a good article from Mike Podhorzer at The Hardball Times on projecting a pitchers' left-on-base-percentage. This is worthwhile, because while we generally like to assume that changes in LOB% are mostly random from year-to-year, they're not entirely random. Better pitchers are better able to strand runners (FWIW, this is something that the pitching metric SIERA takes into account). Unfortunately, the link is broken right now, so check back later and maybe it will be fixed.

- The KATOH prospect evaluation metric ranked the Rays system eighth.

- Go laugh at Hanley Ramirez.

- Speaking of bad fielders, there's a possibility that the Orioles will sign Pedro Alvarez, pushing already-signed Mark Trumbo into right field. Roch Kubatko says that wouldn't be so bad (h/t MLBTR). Please read this, Orioles. Please make it happen.

- I took part in round two of the baseball game theory simulation over at Beyond the Box Score. This round went worse than the first round.

- Baseball America writers debate Blake Snell vs. Steven Matz.