Tampa Bay Rays news and links: Roberto Clemente Award voting opens

The Roberto Clemente Award nominees were announced, and I don’t think it will surprise anyone here that the Rays nominee is Chris Archer.

The winner of the social media fan voting will get one extra vote in the main voting.

Archer seems like a good, deserving guy, doing good, deserving work, but the Roberto Clemente Award balloting is sort of a fake competition, where the real goal is to recognize all of the good work done by good guys across baseball.

So take a read through the nominees.

And for those youngsters who don’t know who Roberto Clemente was, here’s the Baseball Hall of Fame to explain.

Links:

• In case you were under a rock the past few days, yes, hitting coach Derek Shelton was fired and the Rays have promoted Chad Mottola. Danny wrote about why.
• The Hudson Valley Renegades won their first playoff game in extra innings.

• Meanwhile, the Montgomery Biscuits lost their first playoff game in extras, despite a fantastic scoreless start from Chih-Wei Hu.
• The strike zone may be changing, and it may be resulting in extra home runs. Brian Mills investigates.
• The BBWAA hates Mike Trout. From Henry Druschel at Beyond the Box Score, no other player has been this dominant for this long while failing to win the MVP award multiple times.
• Tim Tebow will sign a minor league deal with the Mets. He may be sent to the Instructional League or the AFL.