Tampa Bay Rays news and links: Going, going, Cron!

CJ Cron made his Rays debut, and he showed off some big time pop in his bat with a nice double and a towering homerun.

The competition at first base continues to be between INF Brad Miller and 1B/DH CJ Cron.

Cron previously made new in Rays camp by damaging cars with his notable batting practice derby on Saturday.

Rays Links

• Carlos Gomez has a locker and a uniform number with the Rays. Top position prospect Willy Adames relinquished his number for the new Rays right fielder, and changed to the No. 1 jersey previously worn by Tim Beckham.

• Steve Kinsella has a good rundown of the impressive and long awaited Spring debuts for the Rays happened in Game 4. Blake Snell in particular looked amazing, hitting 97 MPH already and notching 4 Ks in two just flat out dominant innings.

• Maybe the best comeback story in all of baseball is Jonny Venters. Venters has had many injuries, many surgeries, and many years of hard work trying to get back to the big leagues. Rays Radio with Venters after the game:

• Kevin Cash after the game had some reasons to be happy and always things to work on:

Other Links

• Former Rays 1B slugger Logan Morrison has (finally) signed with the Minnesota Twins. LoMo signed for 1 year and $6.5 mil guaranteed, but it could be as large as 2 years $16.5 mil with a vesting option and escalators.
• Eric Longehagen has a (brief) scouting report after the debut of Shohei Ohtani.
• If you haven’t checked it out yet, Ben Lindbergh’s newest piece on baseball economics is an absolute must read. There have been numerous attempts to explain complex situations with simple answers and even simpler math, and Ben’s piece doesn’t answer everything, but does give a really great breakdown of how things maybe aren’t as skewed or shifted as they might appear.
• LOL