Tampa Bay Rays news and links: Altuve and Bauer made it a good day

Yesterday was as good a day of playoff baseball as Rays fans could ask for, short of, you know, the Rays being in the playoffs. Both the Yankees and the Red Sox got dominated by the better teams they’re up against.

You can read about Jose Altuve hitting three home runs—and reminding the world that not everything is about Aaron Judge—en route to an 8-2 Astros victory, or you can read about the Indians not starting their ace in game one, but still cruising to a 4-0 victory over the Yankees with a dominating performance from Trevor Bauer.

Go ahead, live vicariously.

For the Rays, though, it’s the offseason, and that means an extra turn to community engagement and charity work. Here’s the roundup:

• Most urgently, Jose De Leon reminds us that Puerto Rico still needs a lot of help.

• Chris Archer was busy in Largo.

• And Evan Longoria is the Rays candidate up for the Roberto Clemente Award, for his work with Pet Pal animal shelter. Here’s a short video, with dogs.

Links

• MLB Pipeline named Brent Honeywell and Jesus Sanchez the Rays Minor League Players of the year. In the article, Rays Farm Director Mitch Lukevics discusses both players.
• This is from a few days ago, but I thought it was fun, and didn’t see it linked then. David Kagan broke down, in detail, the motion of a bat during a bat flip.