Rays Links
- Mark Topkin wrote about Nick Ciuffo’s journey from a failed drug test to the majors.
- Topkin also outlined what the Rays need to do to make the playoffs, comparing this season to 2011.
- Cliff Corcoran, over at The Athletic, wrote about the The Opener Strategy, and how it’s catching on around the league, and gave a good breakdown of it’s success, noting that the real winners have been the pitchers in the role we call here “the headliner,” but that he calls “the follower.”
- Our vote is :fire:.
.@snellzilla4 wants to know what y'all think!?
— Tampa Bay Rays (@RaysBaseball) September 6, 2018
via // @snellzilla4 IG
- I, for one, have always wanted a Rays W.B. Mason truck.
- Will Leitch wrote about potential superteams that could form out of free agents this offseason, and the Rays are on his list. So are the Orioles. I lol’d.
- Daniel R. Epstein wrote that Malcom Nuñez, a 17-year-old playing in the Dominican Summer League, has put up the best hitting season in baseball. Why is this a “Rays Link?” Well, Nuñez narrowly beat out the wRC+ record of Oscar Hernandez, that great and storied Rays phenom.
Other Links
- Craig Goldstein is leaving Baseball Prospectus, and he did so with a well-written, well-considered article on service time manipulation, and on our relation to teams. There is one paragraph that frames the league in a way I vehemently disagree with, and that I think many of you fans of a small market team from a peripheral part of the country will disagree with as well. Please ignore that paragraph, just this once, because there are other good ideas in here.
- James Fegan wrote about the impact James Shields has had on the White Sox rotation. We knew Shields was a fantastic leader and a good clubhouse guy from his time here, and teams have found that out about him everywhere he’s gone.
- Jon Heyman reported that the Blue Jays offered Donaldson a hefty extension but that Donaldson wanted more. Now Donaldson’s agent has come out and disputed Heyman’s reporting, as well as a previous report Heyman made about Donaldson.
- There was a physical altercation between the Detroit broadasters.
- David Laurila talked to rising star Reynaldo Lopez about learning to pitch smart.
- Sheryl Ring wrote about Joe West’s interpretation of “foreign substance.”
- Ever wonder how baseball bats are made?