Tampa Bay Rays news and links: Sternberg talks stadium financing

The most interesting news, from Tampa Bay Times beat reporter Marc Topkin, to come out of the Winter Meetings so far is that Rays principle owner Stuart Sternberg says the Rays want to pay $150 million of the estimated $800 million cost of a new stadium.

That’s the number that’s been bandied about before, although Sternberg notes that it could go up or down based on revenue projections.

The article goes on to discuss some amount of disunity within the Hillsborough County city council, and to mention the difficulty in figuring how to down the difference, if that’s really all the Rays are in for. Give it a read.

Other Rays Links

• Topkin also noted that Alex Cobb will, as expected, decline the qualifying offer.
• Erik Neander went on MLB Network’s High Heat to discuss the Rays 2017 season.

• And the Rays’ plans for the offseason.

• This was a few days old, but Chaim Bloom did a Q&A with Bill Chastain that goes a little bit deeper into how the front office views this team.
• Bloom, along with other MLB GMs also answered David Laurila’s question about who in his organization is underrated, flying under the radar.
• Daniel R. Epstein tried to make a formula to predict where Shohei Ohtani will sign. His prediction was not, Tampa Bay, therefore it’s clearly wrong.

Other Links

• Ken Rosenthal wrote that the Braves will lose prospects for cheating in the international free agent market.
• The MLBTR article on the Braves notes that the Boston Red Sox also had contracts voided when they were caught cheating.
• Max Scherzer and Corey Kluber won the NL and AL Cy Young awards. Full voting in links.