Tampa Bay Rays news and links: Lots of baseball on the Rays off-day

No game for the Rays yesterday.

Rays Radio continued their profiles of Rays players, though, with one of Patrick Leonard.

Not all former-Rays were off, though, as Sam Fuld did his part to help Israel to a tense 2-1 win over one of the hosts, Korea.

Israel went on to also beat Chinese Taipai on a quick turnaround, while Korea was upset by the Netherlands this morning. There’s quite a bit more star power on the Dutch team than you might think.

Flash Trivia: By my count, the Netherlands has six current major leaguers on their WBC roster, one pitcher, one second basemen, and FOUR natural shortstops. Name them?

Roster here.

Chris Archer, Alex Colome, and Jose Alvarado left camp to join their respective national teams.

Cuba and Japan are in a good game right now, with Japan up 9-6 in the eighth. Both teams are stacked with some of the top players outside of the Major Leagues ($$). I imagine Cuba will be even better if US-Cuba relations ever do fully normalize, and their players IN the major leagues can play too. On that topic, John Lott wrote about Lourdes Gurriel Jr.’s complicated path from Cuba to the Toronto Blue Jays. Worth a read (h/t MLB Trade Rumors).

Links

• How are the Rays using their off-day?
• Dana Eveland talked about golf.
• Eno Sarris wonders if David Price’s cutter location last season gave a clue that there was something wrong with his arm. Rays fans will understand the setup. Price used to throw his cutter to the high outside corner against righties. Last year it was mostly right down the middle.
• Watch the Trop get ready: