Tampa Bay Rays News and Links: How is the Rays bullpen shaping up?

The MLB off-season continues its slow chug towards spring training as the hot stove has failed stay lukewarm this winter.

First, it was thought that Shohei Ohtani and Giancarlo Stanton were clogging up the works, but it’s been over a month since their respective deals went down and little has happened since, with the exception of the Rays ripping the hearts out of most of their fanbase as they traded Evan Longoria

(I’ll get over it eventually)

An important day coming up on Friday as it is the deadline for teams to submit their arbitration figures with all of their eligible, tendered players. The Rays are one of the several teams that commit to a ‘File and Trial’ system, so if they can’t reach agreements by Friday, they will go to an arbitration hearing.

They offered contracts to 9 arbitration eligible players at the beginning of December: Alex Colome, Corey Dickerson, Jake Odorizzi, Dan Jennings, Matt Duffy, Adeiny Hechavarria, Brad Miller, Steven Souza Jr, and Jesus Sucre

• MLB.com has a current look at the Rays bullpen and how it could change by Opening Day
• Steve Kinsella continues his series on tracking the Rays rebuild, looking back to when Andrew Friedman and Joe Maddon departed and Matt Silverman took over the reigns
• The Los Angeles Angels signed former Rays catcher, Rene Rivera, to a one year major league deal
• Another former Rays backstop (although not at the major league level, thanks to the Arizona Diamondbacks), Oscar Hernandez signed with the Boston Red Sox
• Who was the unluckiest hitter in baseball during the 2017 season, Lookout Landing has pegged former Rays infielder, Taylor Motter with that unfortunate honor
• Tim Kurkjian wrote this beautiful, heart breaking piece on Rich Donelly, a former coach that now has to mourn the deaths of two of his children
• One of the Trenton Thunder’s bat-dogs tragically passed away on Monday