Tampa Bay Rays news and links: Celebrating Twenty

With an unhappy players union

By Ian Malinowski@dog_whelk Feb 8, 2018, 9:13am EST

The Rays will be celebrating the first 20 years of their team history this season with some throwback uniforms, a lot of cool swag, and a new menu.

Mister Lizzie reported from the unveiling/announcement.
Danny collected pictures of most of the swag.
And those very classy pint glasses come as part of a very reasonably priced flex pack.

Bill Chastain wrote about prospects to watch this Spring Training.
Chris Archer applied for a job in Houston.
Anthony Castrovince put Steven Souza Jr. on his All-Underrated Team.
Buried in an MLBTR article recapping a Darren Wolfson podcast on the Twins being about to offer Yu Darvish a deal, is the tidbit that the Twins remain in talks with the Rays about trading for a starting pitcher.
Baseball America has been doing a series on what teams would look like if every team was home grown and there was no free agency. The Rays would pitch. They would not hit. Also, did you know that Omar Narvaez was once a Ray?

There’s been a lot of talk about this already, but a few good articles just came out.

Mary Craig and Jim Turvey dove into the history of labor in MLB and the flaws and inconsistencies of the current structure, with some speculation of what might come next. Short answer: if teams are going to stop giving rich long-term contracts to free agents, something else will have to change as well in the next CBA.
It’s behind a paywall, but Russell Carleton noted that while it may be true that teams are getting smarter about not awarding too-large contracts to free agents, the best players—including those on free agent contracts—are actually way underpaid. That’s interesting, and he goes into “The Guiness Effect” as a possible reason for why.
The MLBPA is not monolithic.
Travis Sawchik makes a team out of nothing but free agents.

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