AL East

Are the Tampa Bay Rays Onto Something? Let’s Check Twitter

By Mike Milius

Posted on February 26, 2018

Share

Tweet

Share

Share

Email

Comments

Finally, an AL East team that’s not the Yankees or Red Sox is making some noise. Let’s recap the Tampa Bay Rays’ eventful offseason:

• Traded Evan Longoria to the San Francisco Giants for zero Top 100 prospects
• Traded Jake Odorizzi to the Minnesota Twins for a below-average prospect from a below-average system
• DFA’d 2017 All-Star Corey Dickerson to make room for C.J. Cron, later traded Dickerson to the Pittsburgh Pirates for Daniel Hudson and an infield prospect
• Traded Steven Souza to the Arizona Diamondbacks for two prospects
• Signed Carlos Gomez to a 1-year, $4 million deal
• Top prospect Brent Honeywell diagnosed with torn UCL; Tommy John surgery likely

Are the Rays ahead of the curve by creating openings for their up-and-coming prospects? Maybe, but it is important to look at this realistically.

There’s something we don’t know about Dickerson

Now, There are two ways to look at the recent perplexing Corey Dickerson move. Either Dickerson is the only Ray to make the All-Star game last year…

or there’s more to it than that.

There’s still a lot of speculation about this move, and most of us will probably never know what Dickerson’s relationship with Rays owners was like. Will he contribute in Pittsburgh? Sure, but he can’t DH, and PNC Park’s outfield is large and unforgiving.

Trading Souza was the mistake

If there was one guy the Rays should have tried a lot harder to keep around, it’s Steven Souza. He hit 30 home runs last season, cost about half the price of Dickerson, and was under control until 2020.

Despite this, they traded him for LHP Anthony Banda and 2B Nick Solak. This caught the attention of some other Rays:

https://twitter.com/snellzilla11/status/966102062604931073

Truthfully, there is no issue with players disagreeing with a team’s business decision. But something about these tweets just doesn’t scream “professional baseball player.” Or, for that matter “professional baseball team.”

Say a prayer for Chris Archer and Alex Colome

Archer and Colome are the only players left who will get some fans to head to the historically ugly Tropicana Field. Considering Archer can only pitch one out of every five days when he’s healthy, and Colome will only pitch with a lead or a tie game in the ninth, it looks like the Lightning will outdraw the Rays for a sixth consecutive year.

But, don’t be surprised if they are both off the roster by this year’s trade deadline.

So, are the Rays actually onto something?

Doesn’t look like it. The farm system is impressive to a degree, but where’s the veteran leadership? Denard Span (who is 15% of this year’s payroll) and Sergio Romo may have a bigger role on this team than they expected. Alex Cobb is still a free agent, too, and bringing him back could only help their depleted rotation. This, however, looks awfully unlikely given the way the team has treated its payroll of late.

All kidding aside, the Tampa Bay Rays will be better as time goes on. However, the head-scratching and unorthodox moves of this offseason will certainly keep Rays fans on the edge of their seats.

But let’s check in with the team’s Twitter account, to see how they’re handling all this:

-Mike Milius