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After watching Alex Cobb allow only four hits in five and two thirds innings, it might be tempting to feel pretty good and say that Alex Cobb is back. But here’s something that will make you feel even better. Go over to Rays Radio and listen to the postgame interview with this pretty-good Alex Cobb. He does not feel like he’s back:
I’m not going to dominate a game with the stuff I have right now, but I can go out there and do something like I did tonight . . . I’m still searching for that A+ stuff, the stuff that I felt that I had before the surgery. . . No doubt in my mind that it’ll come, it just, uh, needs to hurry up.
There’s also interviews with Derek Norris, Corey Dickerson, and Kevin Cash. Cash on Norris’s stolen base:
I don’t know what Derek was doing, but I’m glad it worked out.
And in Business of Baseball news, the city of St. Petersburg proposed a stadium plan to keep the Rays. You can see the presentation slides here. If you don’t already, follow Noah Pransky for stadium stuff.
He points out that what makes this plan desirable from the Rays point of view is that there are loads of real-estate development opportunities. It may not boost attendance a ton, but do the Rays care if they’re making money off retail businesses on the property?
Links
- Mike Rosenbaum of MLB.com ranked the top-10 best Triple-A teams. Lead by Wily Adames, Jose De Leon, Jake Bauers, and Casey Gillaspie, the Durham Bulls sit at number two.
- Former-Ray Edwin Jackson signed a minor league deal with the Orioles.
- Former-Ray Kirby Yates was outrighted by the Angels.
- A fight! Luis Torres says that it’s wrong to criticize DRA for the wrong reasons. He’s right, of course. But I do think it’s also fair to criticize metrics whose guts are not put on display for their lack of transparency. You can’t peer-review something that you can’t see.
- Eno Sarris on pitching mechanics and top-changeups. Includes a peg about ex-Ray Scott Kazmir.
- Continued dialog on shifting, and whether there is now too much.