Tampa Bay Rays news and links: Should teams promote prospects faster?

The season is moving along quickly, and every day that passes gets us closer to making more accurate assessments on which players are products of small samples sizes (both positive or negative).

For the Rays, changes have already been made with playing time and batting orders. With Desmond Jennings and Logan Morrison's early season struggles at the plate, and dreams of what exciting prospects like Richie Shaffer and Mikie Mahtook could bring just around the corner, the Rays could be faced with tough choices over if/when a move should be made.

Links!

- Matt Silverman seems to bring an aggressive approach with promoting prospects through the minors. Henry Druschel at Beyond the Boxscore makes a compelling case for teams being faster with promoting their prospects, and not wasting those valuable resources in the minor leagues.

- Brad Miller is starting to settle in quite nicely, both with the Rays and at number 2 in the lineup. With the Rays in Seattle, Miller got a chance to speak about his time coming through the M's system, and his new team.

- The Rays will take on the Oakland A's when they return home to the Trop, and Sonny Gray should be in line to start one of those games. Having to face Gray used to be a daunting task, but not so much this year. Jeff Sullivan takes a look into Sonny Gray's struggles so far in 2016.

- The Washington Nationals locked up Stephen Strasburg to a 7 year, $175 million dollar deal. Over at Fangraphs, Dave Cameron makes his argument for why this extension is win-win.

- Bryce Harper is starting to get the Barry Bonds treatment, and teams are walking him at a very high rate (though it doesn't help that Ryan Zimmerman is hitting a measly .227/.283/.327, with both of his HRs coming last night, h/t rglass44 for the correction). Michael Baumann at Baseball Prospectus shares his thoughts why a rule change limiting the number of intentional walks would be a bad thing.

- Jeff Zimmerman on the Hardball Times tries to find the answer to the question: can pitchers actually prevent solid contact?

- This last link is just a vine of a player on a division rival team trying to make a play, but instead had the ball bounce off his head. Baseball is a hard sport sometimes.