The Rays new backstop Mike Zunino is “extremely excited” to be joining Tampa Bay, per reporters who interviewed him yesterday.
New #Rays Catcher Mike Zunino: "I'm extremely excited to be a part of the Rays organization."#RaysUp #MLB
— WDAE (@620wdae) November 8, 2018
Mike Zunino said "I’ve heard nothing but great things (about the #Rays). Denard (Span) was very high on them and how they run their organization."
— Neil Solondz (@neilsolondz) November 8, 2018
As John Ford pointed out in our Slack, this is (one of the many) reasons to treat all your players well. Word gets around.
New #Rays catcher Mike Zunino on getting to work with a TB staff that is used in different ways: “I think the success they had doing that speaks volume of how innovative they are. I’m extremely excited to get to know their staff and to develop relationships with those pitchers"
— Juan Toribio (@juanctoribio) November 8, 2018
Great to have Zunes (that can’t be his nickname, can it?) on board with the cool things the Rays front office is trying.
New #Rays catcher Mike Zunino feels his struggles offensively last year were due in part to an oblique injury at the start of the season, but feels he's healthy now and will get back to 2017 success offensively.
— Neil Solondz (@neilsolondz) November 8, 2018
A healthy Zunes (yeah, let’s make this thing happen) could be a legit 4-win player, so let’s help he’s on to something here.
#Rays Neander said Brandon Lowe should be included in group of outfielders in the 2019 mix with Pham, Kiermaier, Meadows and Heredia
— Marc Topkin (@TBTimes_Rays) November 8, 2018
This is not surprising, although it is good news if you want to slot into the “large doubts about Heredia” camp. Darby will have more on Heredia later today.
Rays News
- The former Gators star sat down with Neil Solondz to discuss the trade in detail on the latest Rays Radio podcast, which you can listen to here:
- Here’s Tommy Rancel at The Athletic doing what Tommy does best; and Juan Toribio looking at what could come next
- Here’s Baseball America bringing the heat with their scouting breakdown of the trade
- Here’s Marc Topkin telling us just what the deal means; and here’s Topkin again with what the insiders say about Zunes
- Here’s BP with a weirdly similar title to Jeff Sullivan’s breakdown of the trade yesterday
- Here’s Rays Colored Glasses own scouting report on Plassmeyer.
- And for some reason, this question was asked:
Which outfielder do you think was more expendable/ would you have preferred the #Rays traded today? #RaysUp
— WDAE (@620wdae) November 8, 2018
- Blake Snell provided a fun interview to Men’s Journal and it’s legitimately a good read.
- Rob Mains looked at the effect The Opener had (and is going to have) on league-wide pitching splits.
- Oh, and I’ll just leave this here...
Carlos Gomez for 3B coach https://t.co/6o77DZ8ZgI
— Danny Russell (@d_russ) November 8, 2018
Other Links
- J.D. Martinez somehow won two Silver Slugger awards which seems very dumb.
- Eno Sarris with, per usual, a great piece looking at where there will be the most added value on the free agent market. A must-read for Rays fans, of course.
- Over at The Hardball Times, Robert Cheng took a fresh look at pitcher injuries.
- I hate the Red Sox more than the next guy (trust me), but man, Mookie Betts is hard to dislike.
- Finally, Kiley McDaniel provided a detailed breakdown of J.T. Realmuto’s trade value.