Tampa Bay News and Links: Postseason schedules, “bubbles,” set

Rays News

The Rays opened a home series against the Washington Nationals last night, with Sanchez starting for Washington and the Rays going with Curtiss as their opener. With Yarbrough pitching strong “bulk” innings and Nick Anderson shutting the door with bases loaded in the ninth inning, the Rays came away with the 6-1 win. They remain in first place in the American League East, most likely four games ahead of both the Blue Jays and the Yankees. I’m a little shaky on the math but I think the magic number to clinch the division is 9 and to clinch a wild card is 4.

This season may be short, but it has still badly tested the Rays depth. Marc Topkin ($) discusses how the team has found replacements for injured players from within and from outside the organization.

Around MLB

It’s been rumored, it’s been discussed, but now it looks official: baseball will have a post season bubble (or bubbles in this case).

The locations will be Texas and southern California. Everyone — players and any family members who plan to join them — will quarantine for the last seven days of the regular season.

And now that we know where postseason games will be played, we can also add the when. Here is the postseason schedule.

Pablo Sandoval, released by the Giants, now has a deal with the Braves. He has reported to their alternate site.

This clip shows the conditions in which some west coast games are being played. With many of these areas experiencing very unhealthy air quality, should these games even be played?($)

Tim Cantu from our sister site Lookout Landing thinks this could have been handled much better. And apparently the league and team leadership got the message; last night’s game was cancelled as air quality continued to be rated “unhealthy.”

Looks like the Mets, finally, have a new owner, pending MLB approval. As evidence of how much Mets fan resent the Wilpons, they are now applauding the sale of the team to Steve Cohen, ($) a man who pled guilty to a huge insider trading scheme. (I could swear that the show Billions had a plot line where Bobby Axelrod could not buy an NFL team because the other owners didn’t want to be associated with a guy accused of insider trading violations. I guess the show’s writers got that wrong).

If you like underdog success stories, you can read about the Cubs’ Alec Mills’ no-hitter ($)

Football games have been played in front of limited fans. Will MLB sell tickets to playoff games?

Here’s a deep dive on “expected home run rate”.

Very much not baseball, but please indulge me:

I’m thinking there is some overlap between people who watch baseball and people who watch Jeopardy? (Well given how badly contestants tend to do on baseball related questions, maybe not). If you are a Jeopardy-stan, you’ll enjoy this.