Links
- The gameday giveaways are announced.
Kevin Kiermaier Bobbleheads, Hawaiian Shirts, DJ Kitty Onesies & more. READ // 2017 Promos: https://t.co/Ei3e2zhGsA pic.twitter.com/HS52kPWcAL
— Tampa Bay Rays (@RaysBaseball) February 1, 2017
Complete listing here. I don’t think there’s anything on the level of a Zim Bear or a Maddon Gnome, but I’d wear that Hawaiian shirt.
- Anthony Castrovince picked four underrated teams for this upcoming season, and the Rays are one of his picks.
- Marc Topkin checked in on how Chris Archer is spending his offseason.
- I had missed this one, but Neil Solondz didn’t. J.P. Howell is coming back to the AL East.
- Bill Chastain answered reader questions about the Rays, including saying that it’s seeming more and more likely that the Rays could sign Matt Weiters.
- Are catching caddies a thing? Jon Lester and David Ross.
- I think that how foreign players adjust to the league is one of the more interesting things to watch, and that there’s probably a thread in there to pull that will help us isolate something and get a better understanding of the batter-pitcher matchup. Here’s Travis Sawchik on Byung-ho Park.
Trivia
Here’s a trivia connected to something I’ve been thinking about. Velocity, location, and deception all matter for whether a pitch gets pulled or taken the other way. What’s the interaction? Does the distribution of where pitches are hit tell us something about the pitcher?
Arrange the following pitchers based on what percentage of the balls in play they got—when they were with the Rays—were pulled, from least-often pulled to most-often pulled. Here they are in a random order: Alex Cobb, J.P. Howell, Chris Archer, David Price, James Shields, Scott Kazmir, Jeremy Hellickson, Matt Garza, Matt Moore, Wade Davis, Jake Odorizzi.
When you want to see the order, click here.