Tampa Bay Rays News and Links: Alex Colome follows St Louis Cardinals instagram account

The winter meetings are in full force, meaning nothing is actually happening, just a lot of talk about what ifs and could haves and might be’s going on.

The Tampa Bay Rays have actually been one of the most active teams as they have made two trades already and are likely progressing towards a third trade in which they’ll acquire international spending money in order to sign Jelfry Marte.

However, the Rays are still looking to make moves and the most popular name of the meetings for them has been RHP Alex Colome, the team’s All-Star closer. Teams like the St Louis Cardinals and Colorado Rockies have been the most heavily linked to El Caballo and things almost reached a boiling point last night when it was shown that Colome had started to follow several St Louis Cardinals accounts on Instagram, leading to widespread speculation that a deal was in the works.

This was posted at 10pm, leading to a night full of people constantly refreshing their twitter for updates on the trade that looked to be done.

Until early this morning, word came straight from the horse’s mouth.

Now, Alex Colome could be just trolling everyone, or the Rays could have told him to keep everything hush-hush until things were official.

Onto other things...

• The Rays made a trade yesterday, acquiring INF Ryan Schimpf from the San Diego Padres for a low level minor leaguer
• Which players would bring back the best return for the Rays? JT breaks them down
• Former Rays catcher, Derek Norris, has been signed by the Detroit Tigers after being suspended for Domestic Violence. They think he is worth another chance
• The Rays Radio Blog looks at how the Rays bullpen usage could be different in 2018
• Neil Solonds reviews the 2nd day of the winter meetings for the Rays and also talks with Mark Feinsand and former Ray, Carlos Pena

• The Baltimore Orioles are supposedly shopping star 3B Manny Machado
• The Philadelphia Phillies signed RHP Tommy Hunter to a two year deal, giving the RHP a nice payday following his minor league invite to the Rays last off-season
• Speedy OF Billy Hamilton is on the trade block, and the San Francisco Giants are considered the favorites to get him
• Former Rays LHP, Drew Smyly, received a two year deal from the Chicago Cubs as he’ll rehab from Tommy John surgery in 2018
• Viva El Birdos loves to build trades with the Rays and Chris Archer, they did so again yesterday morning