Tampa Bay Rays news and links: Poche Posse

Every spring one or two players get the underground buzz really going surrounding What Could Be for the season to be. This year, 25-year-old Rays prospect, lefty Colin Poche, is getting that buzz.

He’s the perfect candidate for this kind of treatment: Never tooooo big of a name; he got the FanGraphs treatment in the form of both a Jeff Sullivan article and Effectively Wild discussion; his stuff isn’t overpowering, which makes him intriguing; and his numbers were mind-bending at Triple-A last season (14.04 K/9; 1.08 ERA).

Poche got the Toribio Treatment yesterday, as the Rays MLB.com beat reporter focused on the “invisible fastball” that has played such a big role in his rise to “fame” the past year or so.

With the baseball community as smart as it is these days, these spring training gems are actually panning out far more frequently than in the past, when all we had was “best shape of his life” to rely on. Hopefully that rather bold statement that I didn’t back with any sort of statistical evidence is actually true, and Poche spends 2019 poche-ing our expectations higher and higher... I’ll see myself out now.

Rays Media

• Cash, who we are learning more and more is just a giant kid, talks about the rain and its impact on the first day back:

• This is a pretty cool idea, I hope they keep it going throughout the year.
• Speaking of kind of cool, I like the look of these, too.

• Day 3 of the Rays Radio spring training blog has clips from Emilio Pagan, Kevin Cash, and Blake Snell.
• Neil also had an interview with TJ-recovering pitching semi-prospect Ian Gardeck. That’s a hardworking man right there. Oh, and so is Neil!
• Yesterday was Valentine’s Day, in case you hadn’t heard. And not to toot our own horn, but we here at DRB slayed it:

• I love me an artsy sports photo:

Quote of the Day

KK flashing a bit of his bilingual chops:

Other Links

• Rosenthal: Old friends and new managers Rocco Baldelli and Charlie Montoyo know how to have fun - Ken Rosenthal was a day late and a day more (behind a paywall), but his take on Charlie Montoyo and Rocco Baldelli was still mighty excellent.
• Rays spring training guide: With Pham’s arbitration settled, all pieces are in place - Josh Tolentino is going to get the beat for the Rays at The Athletic this season, and his first piece is quite a good overview.
• Stark: The 2019 spring training preview extravaganza - Here’s a lengthy spring training piece from Stark that includes the Rays in a tie for the second-most improved AL team.
• Pagan working to develop offspeed pitches - Emilio Pagan, learn up on him. Emilioooooooooooooooooo!
• Ranking the five most disappointing offseasons - I’m shocked, SHOCKED, that Mr. Anderson is down on the Rays offseason... but he’s also kinda right ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
• Slugger C.J. Cron says he didn’t see Rays’ DFA move coming, ‘but I wasn’t shocked either’ - Honestly, I think we’re all kind of with him there.
• Bowden: Ranking baseball’s top 200 prospects, Part 4 (50-1) - Wander at No. 5... I put a lot more stock in FanGraphs having him at No. 2...