Tampa Bay Rays news and links: Jake Odorizzi doesn’t allow hits

Yesterday, the Rays got a dominant performance from Jake Odorizzi, and backed him up with some quality offense.

The good work by Odorizzi puts him atop a neat leaderboard.

Also yesterday, Matt Duffy arrived at The Trop and started to work out, on the way to completing his rehab. He also spoke to reporters. From Bill Chastain’s article, Duffy talked about moving back to shortstop:

"When I think about the transition to third, the toughest thing was mentally slowing myself down because balls get on you so much more quickly," Duffy said. "You have so much more time to throw the ball. So I think going back [to shortstop], the biggest change for me is going to be speeding myself back up because I'm going to have more time now to set my feet in a position to throw versus before you kind of play hockey goalie, then set your feet to throw."

Mark Topkin also has good quotes from Duffy. Apparently, Evan Longoria (then at Long Beach State) once asked Duffy (then a high school freshman), if he could join him to work on turning double plays.

Also, in news from the Rays, Richie Shaffer is back up. And he and Brad Miller took some time to answer questions from a hat. Shaffer’s pretty good on camera. And he thinks Justin Bieber is cool.

And on a more serious, less entertaining note, here’s audio from Drew Smyly ahead of his start.

Other Links:

• August Fagerstrom broke down why Brandon Guyer is the best at being hit by pitches. Answer: he doesn’t mind being hit in the leg.
• Carltriano of Beyond the Box Score posits that both the Giants and the Rays won the deal.
• Baseball will return to the Olympics in 2020. Japan and Korea will send their domestic professionals. The USA will probably not send major leaguers.
• John Larue wrote about the changing profile of the leadoff hitter. Logan Forsythe is one of the guys changing it.
• Craig Edwards wrote about exit velocity underperformers and overperformers. Brad Miller and Logan Morrison are two guys getting inferior results out of hard contact.