Tampa Bay Rays news and links: “You’d rather have him on your team than playing against him”

In addition to, hopefully, an athletic outfielder who can hit, the Rays got one of baseball’s bigger and more polarizing personalities in Carlos Gomez. Tampa Bay Times beat reporter Marc Topkin wrote about Gomez and the perception and reality of that large personality, noting that in addition to the altercations he’s known for. Click through to read them all because there’s a number of good quotes in there, including this one from Sergio Romo:

“He’s very animated. So it’s easy in my opinion to read him wrong, or to sit there and find him frustrating, playing against him.

”But off the field, from everything I know about him, and my experiences with him, he’s a Grade A-human being. He’s family first.’’

He’s also apparently a funny, light clubhouse presence.

On the field, yesterday, there was an an unfortunate “altercation” that was non-controversial when catcher Nick Ciuffo got hit in the head with the backswing of a bat. Steve Kinsella and the folks over at Sports Talk Florida spliced together the postgame interview audio with video from the Rays.

Cash also talked about Jonny Venters’s outing.

Rays Links

• Today’s Rays Radio player spotlight was on lefty Adam Kolarek, who after 2016 signed with Atlanta, was released, and was immediately invited back by the Rays, and later went on to make his major league debut here in Tampa Bay. He talked about the process, including his experience playing agains the Orioles, his childhood team.

• The Rays ranked #4 on MLB Pipeline’s farm system rankings.
• Craig Edwards talked about the new Rays TV deal, and the TV market around the league in general.
• Jon Heyman wrote about the MLBPA grievance filed against the Rays.
• The Rays announced their special events schedule. I could just link to it, but it seems better to show a picture of a dog.

• Here’s the lineup the Rays will trot out against Philadelphia.

“Duh” Links

From Jon Heyman’s notes:

One team that’s talked to the Rays predicts, “No way they trade Chris Archer.” And how do you know? “They wanted our whole farm system.”

We already sort of knew that. Know what else was in his notes that we also already knew?

Matt Duffy, coming off a year-long injury, will have the unenviable task of trying to replace Rays legend Evan Longoria.

Thanks, Jon. Good thing we have highly professional national reporters.

Other Links

• Baseball Prospectus made a customizeable draft pick value calculator, which is a pretty neat thing for them to have done.