Tampa Bay Rays news and links: A farcical call

So there was an odd replay call yesterday. Here’s the play. Honestly, you can just watch the beginning and then skip ahead six minutes to the very end where the umpire is explaining the call to Kevin Cash. You’ll see the face of a man who clearly doesn’t understand the sense in what he’s being told.

The explanation was this: Casali never applied the tag, but Blackmon also never touched home plate. That means, oddly, that if the call goes to replay, the runner ends up safe (even though the call on the field was “out”). To avoid this happening, Cash would need to have appealed the play—despite it being called in his team’s favor—before Colorado made the replay challenge.

I’m not sure what that means, but I sort of want to see Cash start randomly appealing close plays for no apparent reason. Farces are fun.

Cash talked about the play after the game.

Links:

• DRaysBay community favorite Dan Vogelbach is headed to Seattle, with the Cubs acquiring former-Rays Mike Montgomery.
• Travis Sarandos at Beyond the Box Score broke down former-Ray Wil Myers’s breakout, and it’s pretty interesting.
• Baseball America has their Rays midseason prospect list update.
• From Topkin’s notes, Alex Cobb, whose rehab has been shut down with fatigue and mechanical issues, threw a 28 pitch bullpen session today and reportedly felt good.
• Yes, we need articles about the physics of catchers’ knees.
• John Choiniere asks an interesting question: Does a pitcher’s release point influence the umpire?