Feb 28
Tom Jones of the St. Pete Times, who writes the blog “Tom Jones’ 2¢,” names the teams he believes have the most and least supportive fans in the major sports.
And who gets the honor of the “Least Supportive” fans in Major League Baseball? St. Pete’s own Tampa Bay Rays…
Least supportive: Tampa Bay fans set records for watching the Rays on television, but the criticism fans get for not showing up at Tropicana Field is deserved. Blame the economy, blame stadium location, blame whatever you want. Bottom line: The Rays had the second-best record in baseball last season but played to only 52 percent capacity. The other teams that played to less than 60 percent capacity last season were the Marlins, Mariners, Nationals, Royals, Pirates, Diamondbacks, Orioles, Indians, A’s and Blue Jays. Of those teams, only one had a winning record. And that was the Blue Jays, who finished fourth in the American League East. It also included all six of the majors’ last-place teams.
First of all, why use “percent capacity” as a measure of fan support? Would the Rays suddenly have the most supportive fans if the Trop’s capacity was only 20,000?
And second of all….what the eff Brutus? We have to read this crap from national writers all the time. Writers that always fail to mention the economy and the TV ratings. You mention that stuff and still bash the attendance. The same attendance that has shown steady growth in recent years despite the economy.
2¢ for this? We want our money back.
Feb 28
Joe Maddon joined Raheem Morris of the Buccaneers and Guy Boucher of the Lightning for a round table discussion of their profession. It was a five-part series, and you can see all the videos at this link. [TBO.com]
Feb 28
Back in June, 2008, James Shields plunked Coco Crisp after Crisp had slid a little too hard into second base in a previous game and then mouthed-off about the incident.
In an interview with David Laurila of Baseball Prospectus, Crisp offers a rare insight into the makings of a baseball brawl and the events that led up to it.
Crisp seems to blame the entire situation on Jason Bartlett who blocked second base with his knee, breaking an “unwritten rule.” But more importantly — and this shows just how nuts Crisp is — Crisp was apparently most upset about what happened when he got up and yelled at Bartlett…
So I got up and had some choice words for Jason Bartlett. He didn’t even look at me…My next at-bat, I get up and I’m like “I don’t care how I get on, but I’ve got to get on.” If he covered the bag, I wasn’t going to slide. I was going to do the dirty, you know, take him out. He didn’t want to say anything to me, fine. You play it dirty, I can play it dirty too. You’ve got to nip stuff right in the bud when it happens.
He then goes on to describe the brawl in great detail, even noting who did what in the scrum… Read the rest of this entry »
Feb 28
The GBT – The Good, The Bad and The Telling sandwich, where The Bad is nice and lean and the The Telling is ripe.
click above image for boxscore
THE GOOD: Robinson Chirinos. We have described Chirinos bat as being similar to John Jaso but with more pop. Well, that pop was on display yesterday when he hit a home run. Sure, it came in the 9th inning off of a guy that might not be big leaguer, but you have to like what you have seen early on from Chirinos…Alex Torres. The prospect was given the all-important role of first reliever (gets to face big league hitters) and responded with 2 scoreless innings allowing just 1 baserunner, a single…Pena Who? Casey Kotchman put his gold glove caliber on display with a couple of great defensive plays.
THE BAD: James Shields. Maybe his nickname should be “Big Blast.” Shields, who led the AL in home runs allowed last year (34), gave up another one in his first inning of the spring. Is he unlucky? Joe Maddon doesn’t think so, saying the home runs are “on him.” And it is something he needs to fix if he is going to be more productive this season…Bootcheck and Bayliss. Chris Bootcheck and Jonah Bayliss are both non-roster invitees trying to win spots in the bullpen. Their first outings did not go well. The two combined to give up 4 runs on 7 hits and a walk in just 2 innings.
THE TELLING: On travel day, Matt Joyce and Kelly Shoppach were the only players in the starting lineup that will likely be on the opening day roster, although Casey Kotchman and Felipe Lopez certainly have a shot…Felipe Lopez started at third base a position he started at 52 times last year…Manny Ramirez will start in left field today. The other starters will no doubt be on high alert.
THE JUNKYARD DOGS WEBTOPIA…
Feb 27
Evan Longoria and Caity Kauffman at a recent Lightning game
The GBT – The Good, The Bad and The Telling sandwich, where The Bad is nice and lean and the The Telling is ripe.
click above image for boxscore
THE GOOD: Going Deep. Evan Longoria and Sean Rodriguez brought the power to the Rays first game of the spring, with each hitting long home runs…Strong Relief. Matt Bush, Dirk Hayhurst and Rob Delaney combined for 5 perfect innings of relief. Bush and Hayhurst were especially impressive, getting their work in against the Pirates starters. And considering how much Joe Maddon likes his relievers to be able to work more than one inning, Hayhurst and Delaney made strong opening bids for one of the final bullpen roster spots…Robinson Chirinos. The catching prospect had 2 hits and 4 RBI. Unfortunately he also had 2 passed balls. It will be interesting to see if Joe Maddon uses Chirinos at 2B or SS this spring. If his bat continues to impress, he could be an interesting candidate to be the Rays 3rd catcher giving Maddon some extra roster flexibility.
THE BAD: Tim Beckham. An error in his first game of the spring is not the good start Beckham was looking for…Adam Russell. He is out of minor league options, so he will be on the opening day roster. Giving up 3 hits and 2 runs against the Pirates starters was not an impressive debut.
THE TELLING: In what could be the Rays opening day lineup, John Jaso led off, followed by Johnny Damon, Evan Longoria and Manny Ramirez. Ben Zobrist was in RF (not Matt Joyce) and Dan Johnson was at 1B…The Rays wore green St. Pete police caps in honor of officers that were killed in the line of duty recently…Manny Ramirez will play left field on Monday, but don’t look for that to happen during the regular season except during interleague games…Albert Suarez will be out 1-2 weeks after having his knee scoped.
THE JUNKYARD DOGS WEBTOPIA…
- The Rays automatically renewed the contracts for their 27 players with less than 3 years of experience. Jeff Niemann will get $950K in 2011. The rest will be at or near league minimum ($414K). [Marc Topkin]
- Here are the “Manny Ray” t-shirts Read the rest of this entry »
Feb 25
Ken Rosenthal recently wrote a piece in which said there are “rumblings” from some owners that they want to see the Rays (and A’s) contracted. John Romano of the St. Pete Times wrote that “Tampa Bay is now on the clock.”
Over at Business Insider I wrote a short piece about who might be behind the “rumblings,” and why it is not something we should worry about.
“The Yankees Can’t Beat The Rays, So They Want To Contract ‘Em” [Business Insider]
Feb 25
What can only be described as “must see TV,” is this video report from JB Long of Bright House Sports.
The clip includes a great sequence in which Joe Maddon is actually instructing Manny Ramirez on the art of hitting. And Manny seems receptive to it. Even more fun, JoeMa is instructing Manny in Spanish.
But maybe the best part of the entire video comes in the final 4-5 seconds, as can be seen in the screenshot above. It is Dave Martinez lurking in the background with his new beard. After hearing about how the Red Sox investigated Carl Crawford, if we didn’t know that was Dave, we would swear it was a Red Sox investigator in a cheap disguise.
THE JUNKYARD DOGS WEBTOPIA…
Feb 24
i was working on my “Chart of the Day” feature over at Business Insider and was trying something new, a word cloud (created using Wordle.net). And I thought it would be fun to see what it would look like over here.
So here are all 43 players that have played at least 200 games with the Rays. The size of their names is relative to how many games they have played. Carl Crawford, with the largest name, has played the most games ever in a Rays uniform (1,235). Aubrey Huff is next at 799. BJ Upton leads all active players with 667 games as a member of the Rays.
Feb 24
This really shouldn’t be much of a surprise, but Carl Crawford confirms that the Rays never offered him a contract. This comes in response to Crawford being asked if his situation was similar to that of LeBron James leaving Cleveland…
“No, I didn’t LeBron them at all,” said the Rays outfielder of nine seasons. “This situation was different. The thing with Tampa is I never got a contract offer from them either, so it was like I had to go. They gave me no choice. It was totally different.”
We had wondered aloud whether the Rays would put together a creative contract package to try and keep Crawford for another couple of years (creativity is their specialty) or if they would just withhold any offers so as not to insult CC. It turns out it was the latter.
Feb 24
Baseball America released their annual list of the top 100 prospects. And the Rays are well represented…
Jeremy Hellickson (6)
Matt Moore (15)
Desmond Jennings (22)
Chris Archer (27)
Jake McGee (71)
Josh Sale (88)
Hak-Ju Lee (92)
Hellboy was no. 14 on ESPN.com’s Top 100 and no. 2 on MLB.com’s list of the top prospects. This is the first time we have seen Josh Sale listed among the top 100 prospects from one of the major sites. And Chris Archer’s ranking is the highest we have seen him. ESPN.com has Archer as the 40th best prospect and MLB.com has him at no. 47.
Tom Jones of the St. Pete Times, who writes the blog “Tom Jones’ 2¢,” names the teams he believes have the most and least supportive fans in the major sports.
