Oct 13
Below you will see three polls that ask about your confidence in the Tampa Bay Rays. We will present these same polls every Tuesday. The results will be presented in graphical form on Thursday, and will be displayed permanently in the sidebar. The goal of the Confidence Graph is to get a feeling of how Rays fans feel about the team and the franchise and track how that level of confidence changes through time.
Oct 13
- BJ Upton
- Carl Crawford
- Evan Longoria
- Carlos Pena
- Ben Zobrist
- Pat Burrell
- Jason Bartlett
- Gabe Kapler
- Dioner Navarro
Above is a pretty standard batting order used by the Rays this past season versus left-handed pitchers early in the season. In fact, no other batting order was used more often this season. How often? Six (6!) times. Joe Maddon employed 125 different batting orders this season. He used 115 in 2008. By comparison, The Yankees used 107 and the Red Sox used 114.
DEVIL DOGS WEBTOPIA…
- Joe Nelson, Michel Hernandez and Joe Dillon were granted free agency as minor leaguers. We would not be surprised to see Hernandez and Dillon back with Durham next season. [Baseball America]
- Rays Renegade spoke with members of the bullpen about their off-season plans. JP Howell, Grant Balfour and Scott Cursi will all be getting married (not to each other). [Rays Renegade]
- Strange story: Former Devil Rays pitcher Geremi Gonzalez will have his body exhumed in Venezuela to determine if he died of a lightning strike (as original believed) or foul play. We are not really sure how those two could get confused…Gonzalez made 33 starts for the Devil Rays from 2003-2004, going 6-16. [St. Pete Times]
